Abstract
Across many universities in Australia, design schools are exploring new ways to integrate Indigenous knowledges, from specific course curricula to institution-wide policies. This paper examines the developmental stages of a small-scale pro-ject to support Indigenous students already enrolled across creative programs, who may be interested in learning design skills, tools, and career pathways. Spe-cifically, we explore how a cultural and relational internship model might sup-port student learning, through partnering with an Indigenous-led design agency, to develop expertise in commercial illustration. We draw on decolonising and pluriversal design literature, while learning from Australian Indigenous design scholars who offer a counternarrative to universal design education and model ways for different knowledge systems to come together. Here, we reimagine the ‘work’ in work-integrated learning, to develop a more relational and culturally integrated experience. Our aim is to develop an internship model that can move design education outside of the institution, to enable culturally-led and commu-nity-based learning.
Keywords
indigenous knowledge; internship; communication design education; illustration; plu-riversal design
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2024.684
Citation
St John, N., Nally, R., Sultan, E., Haylock, B., and Abos, R. (2024) Reimagining institutional design internship programs to foster Indigenous-led and community-based learning and teaching, in Gray, C., Ciliotta Chehade, E., Hekkert, P., Forlano, L., Ciuccarelli, P., Lloyd, P. (eds.), DRS2024: Boston, 23–28 June, Boston, USA. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2024.684
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Conference Track
Research Paper
Included in
Reimagining institutional design internship programs to foster Indigenous-led and community-based learning and teaching
Across many universities in Australia, design schools are exploring new ways to integrate Indigenous knowledges, from specific course curricula to institution-wide policies. This paper examines the developmental stages of a small-scale pro-ject to support Indigenous students already enrolled across creative programs, who may be interested in learning design skills, tools, and career pathways. Spe-cifically, we explore how a cultural and relational internship model might sup-port student learning, through partnering with an Indigenous-led design agency, to develop expertise in commercial illustration. We draw on decolonising and pluriversal design literature, while learning from Australian Indigenous design scholars who offer a counternarrative to universal design education and model ways for different knowledge systems to come together. Here, we reimagine the ‘work’ in work-integrated learning, to develop a more relational and culturally integrated experience. Our aim is to develop an internship model that can move design education outside of the institution, to enable culturally-led and commu-nity-based learning.