Ukuphosa itshe esivivaneni’* What does an Afrikan Cantered Design Course look like Circa 2023.

 

 

In her paper titled: DO THE MAHI, REAP THE REWARDS Working Towards the Integration of Indigenous Knowledge Within Design Education. Nan O’Sullivan the Dean of the School of Design Innovation, Te Herenga Waka, Victoria University of Wellington in Aotearoa New Zealand, documents, reflects and states that: 

 

“A particular focus of this paper is the motivations, opportunities, challenges, and outcomes of efforts made to facilitate the recognition and integration of indigenous knowledge into design education” furthermore she writes that.. 

 

“We seek to transition away from the dominant Eurocentric model of design education to a place-based pedagogy, informed by culturally inclusive principles, traditional knowledge, and strategies that hold at their core the health and wellbeing of both people and place – past, present, and future.”

 

Almost 30 years into the establishment of post-apartheid South Africa there are (to my knowledge) no institutions of higher learning in the country that have a design curriculum and pedagogy that is based on and from an indigenous Afrikan perspective. Most if not all art and design courses in South Africa are still based on the Bauhaus model developed in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. This presentation will seek to answer why this is the case and what a uniquely Afrikan centered design curriculum could look like. 

 

One that is not premised on a particular European “modernist universal” assumption of the discipline but open to the myriad potentials to be found in the Pluriverse understanding of what design is.

 

*- A proverb in isiZulu that refers to the individual’s contribution to a greater, collective good – literally to ‘throw one’s stone on the pile’. 

 

 

Afrika, Design, Pluriverse, Values, Decolonizing design, Indigenous knowledge.