In the Making: Carrier Bag
This year, the Design Thinking Initiative is exploring process through ideas of gathering, relating, and carrying. We invite individuals and groups to take on this theme over the course of the academic year through supported work on objects, interventions, research, or any other form you conceive. Works and the processes of making them will be exhibited for a week in April.
What Is a Carrier Bag?
Design Thinking is exploring a “carrier bag” approach to design and making. This exploration is inspired by Ursula K. Le Guin’s 1986 essay, “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction.” In the essay, Le Guin built on Elizabeth Fisher’s evolutionary theory (1979), which proposed that the first human tool was a vessel to gather, contain, and share things, rather than a weapon to conquer with. Together, Fisher and Le Guin invite us to re-story our worlds, emphasizing what it means to hold the jumble of collective life rather than focus on individualistic triumphs.
Interested in telling untold stories in new ways?
Been dreaming up a creative intervention that flips a script?
Curious to explore a material process without knowing exactly where it will lead?
If it is a human thing to do to put something you want, because it’s useful, edible, or beautiful, into a bag... then I am a human being after all.
Event Timeline
Program |
Date(s) |
Location |
What It Offers |
|---|---|---|---|
Info session focused on Carrier Bag project |
Wednesday, September 30 (lunch provided) |
Capen Annex |
Learn more about this year’s theme, exhibition opportunity, and the programs that support it. An opportunity to ask any and all questions. |
Design process workshop series |
Fridays: September 11, October 2, October 9, October 23, November 6, from 1:20 to 2:35 p.m. |
Capen Annex |
Five workshops open to faculty, students, and staff. Learn foundational design and making approaches, get hands-on practice, and apply it to your own work. |
Visiting designer: Åsa Ståhl |
Wednesday, November 18–Friday, November 20 |
Capen Annex |
Visiting design researcher who combines participatory design, speculations, and feminist technoscience to explore futures, un/making, and sustainability |
January studio residency |
Monday, January 11–Friday, January 22
|
Capen Annex |
A funded, two-week residency t dive deeper on your project with staff support, fellow residents, and guidance from visiting artist Kayla Powers (place-based textile work, showing at Oresman Gallery) |
Feedback session(s) |
Week of Monday, February 8 (details forthcoming) |
Capen Annex |
An opportunity to receive constructive critique on your project before submitting to the exhibition. Applications will be reviewed by a committee created by the DTI. Submissions due: March 1 |
Spring Break studio access |
Saturday, March 13–Sunday, March 21 |
Capen Annex |
Spring Break studio access with staff support for participants accepted to the exhibition |
Carrier Bag exhibition |
Opens Friday, April 9; closing reception Saturday, April 17 |
Alumnae Gymnasium |
Weeklong exhibition with closing reception and event on Smith Arts Day |