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Dr. Audra Buck-Coleman

Designer, Educator, Author & Social Design Researcher

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Projects / Teaching

Sticks + Stones 2006: A Collaborative Exchange Exploring Labeling and Stereotyping

Sticks + Stones: A Collaborative Exchange Exploring Labeling and Stereotyping was a multi-university collaboration that prompts students to explore interpersonal and intercultural issues with others diverse in ethnicity, religious practice, heritage, gender, and sexual orientation.

Type of Project
  • Client Work
  • Experiential Design
  • Research
  • Teaching
  • Writing
Subject Matter
  • Discrimination
  • Diversity Training
  • Prejudice, Stereotypes and Bias
  • Racism
  • Social Justice
  • Structural Violence
The entrance to the Sticks + Stones exhibit. Shows a poster with a face.

Summary

49 Participating students
4 Collaborating universities
2 Exhibit locations

This iteration of Sticks + Stones invited 40 students from four U.S. universities to participate. The curriculum focused on the stereotypes of the “four corners” of the United States and how graphic design propagates those ideas. Students were challenged to make work regarding how graphic design dispel to those and other stereotypes.

They completed a series of design projects, participated in a three-day symposium in Los Angeles, and then produced design responses. I co-curated these works for an exhibition at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. The works then traveled to a Weber State University gallery.

Collaborators

Pamela Beverly, Students from Northeastern University, San Francisco State University, University of Alabama at Birmingham and Weber State University

Collaborating Institutions

The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute; Northeastern University, San Francisco State University, Weber State University, University of Alabama at Birmingham

Details

Three posters and a multiemedia piece

Students from four universities representing the four corners of the United States — Northeastern University, San Francisco State University, University of Alabama at Birmingham and Weber State University — participated in the 2006 project.

Sticks + Stones emphasizes that designers occupy positions of power in our global culture, that this power must be used responsibly, and that designers should assume proactive roles in support of community and society.

Example Assignment

Student self portraits

One assignment asked students to create abstract self-portraits, which were then exchanged with participating students and then anonymously labeled and stereotyped. Students then gathered in Los Angeles to discuss the terms they gave to others and those they received.

The corner of the exhibit with posters and a small installation

Both the portraits and their accompanying labels are displayed in the exhibit.

A small installation and a poster self portrait

Learn More

The Sticks + Stones project has had three iterations: in 2005 with two U.S.-based universities; in 2006 with four U.S.-based universities and in 2010 with six universities from China, Germany, Turkey and the United States.

See More Projects

Onlookers at the Sticks and Stones exhibit
Teaching:
Sticks + Stones 2010: Culture, Migration and Representation
Students from six international universities explored ways graphic design perpetuates and can negate stereotypes. Their work culminated in an exhibit at the DesignTransfer Gallery in Berlin, Germany.
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