Designing for Social Justice workshop

Thursday, 6 October on a foggy day in the Mother City, collaborators from the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT), the University of the Western Cape, the University of Cape Town and the American University in Cairo gathered at CPUT's hotel school situated at Granger Bay as well virtually from our partners in Cairo, as part of the University Capacity Development Programme (UCDP) for a workshop titled, "Designing for Social Justice  Partnerships". This is part of the Students as Partners initiative which is a process of collaboration and reciprocity between students and staff to provide an opportunity for equal contributions on decision-making, investigation and implementation or analysis in course or curriculum design, facilitation and research (Cook-Sather, et al., 2014:6-7). The make-up of the DJSP consists of staff and students in the university context. This is in line with the Students as Partners and student-staff partnership of co-creating a decolonial curriculum. 

Picture 1: get to know each other 

Upon arrival and welcoming, we started with an ice-breaker, where we got to know each other by sharing information about ourselves. If anyone resonated with what was said then you would connect a string of wool with that person. It was a great way to "break the ice" and familiarise ourselves with others we have yet to encounter 

Picture 2: Voices in the field

One of the key exercises was situating yourself in a role that is completely removed from your own reality. It was a task that posed difficulty for few as it was a role that you may never have encountered before or a role which you have been far removed of. As the participants got into the activity then the creative juices started flowing.

Picture 3: Role-playing

Picture 4: Role-playing

Our participants positively and deeply thought about the role they were placed in. Once the participants starting answering the questions pertaining to the role then creativity started flowing. We were able to extract interesting and thought-provoking answers, which will aid in the formation of DJSP course.

Picture 5: Knowledge tree

The final activity was titled 'Knowledge tree', this activity required us to think about the values we have learnt from nature, family, community and education. Thereafter, we created a tree and colour coordinated the values to a branch. It was to see who had similar themes but also to see what differentiating values each individual had. The workshop posed valuable as it was a way to establish a way for the future of the DJSP short course.


Stay tuned for more blogs!