a2ru Ground Works Releases Latest Special Issue, “Creating Knowledge in Common”
Nov 14, 2024
Ground Works, a2ru’s peer-reviewed online platform for outstanding arts-integrated interdisciplinary research, has released a new special edition, “Creating Knowledge in Common,” focused on university-community partnered research. It is guest-edited by Kevin Hamilton and Mary Pat McGuire from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and Shannon Criss from the University of Kansas. The edition was officially released today at a special session during a2ru’s 2024 conference “2024 National Conference: “Generate | Integrate: Technology, the Arts and Design” at the Rochester Institute of Technology.
In their introduction, the editors write: “We (Criss, Hamilton, and McGuire), currently academics working within land grant institutions, recognize the responsibility that universities bear to share resources and directly engage with publics to address needs across society in order to fulfill their institutional mission and educate their students as engaged citizens. In a reciprocal manner, public organizations and communities also seek collaboration with faculty and students to expand resources and organizational capacity, broaden advocacy, and create public programs and spaces that address needs at the community scale…Ideally, knowledge drawn from diverse partners creates both common and uncommon grounds for advancing greater understanding and action on entrenched issues within both communities and institutions.”
They add: “Within collaborative partnerships, the arts and design fields facilitate creative methods for shared expression and exploration, converging multiple viewpoints into broader re-imaginings that result in advocacy, activism, and action with both rational and emotional force.”
The entries in this special edition include:
- “Apothecarts: Mobilizing Abolition,” by Emilie Taylor Welty (Tulane School of Architecture), Jackie Sumell (Solitary Gardens), and Jose Cotto (Tulane School of Architecture’s Small Center)
- “Engagement, Education and Implementation: Supporting Community-Driven Adaptations to Rising Waters in Princeville, North Carolina,” by Andy Fox and Carla Delcambre
- “Mapping the Relationship Between a University and Community Music School,” by Amy Hillis (York University) and Richard Marsella (Community Music Schools of Toronto)
- “New Americans’ Pavilion: A Space of Cosmopolitan Cooperation in Syracuse, New York,” by David Shanks (Auburn University)
- “Participatory Planning and Design Research for the ARTery,” by Lily Song (Northeastern University) and Tania Fernandes Anderson (Boston City Council)
- “Prairie Block: Designing and Building Community Resilience in the Heartland,” by Suzan Hampton and Keith Van de Riet (University of Kansas)
- “Side by Side: Navigating the Messy Work of Staying Relational in University-Community Partnerships,” by Ann Holt (Penn State University) and Cindy Maguire (Adelphi University)
- “Tres Comunidades, Un Río: Supporting Urban Amazonian Floodplain Communities Through Data and Art,” by Leann Andrews (Penn State University), Alexandra Jhonston Vela and Xiomara Valdivia Zavaleta (Centro de Investigaciones Tecnológicas Biomédicas y Medioambientales), Jose A. Alarcón Piscoya (University of Washington), Gemina Garland-Lewis (Gemina Garland-Lewis Photography), Kathleen L. Wolf (University of Washington), Ursula Valdez (University of Washington), Susana Cubas Poclin (Centro de Investigaciones Tecnológicas Biomédicas y Medioambientales), Christian Ampudia Gatty (Centro de Investigaciones Tecnológicas Biomédicas y Medioambientales), Carlo Tapia del Águila (Centro de Investigaciones Tecnológicas Biomédicas y Medioambientales), Rebecca Bachman (The City University of New York), Christina Flores (Pennsylvania State University), and Clancy Wolf (University of Washington)
- “Virtual Forests as a Creative Medium for Community Co-Creation and Collaboration,” by Aidan Ackerman, Daphna Gadoth-Goodman, Emily Esch, Robert Malmscheimer, Timothy Volk, Sara Constantineau, and Lauren Cooper
Veronica Stanich, the Managing Editor of Ground Works, shares: “At the core of this special edition are the individual projects that represent such thoughtful and inspiring work; in addition, the Editors have created a “meta” layer in the form of a tagging system and index. The tags put the individual projects into conversation in interesting, cross-cutting ways, while the index provides readers who are new to this sort of research with the vocabulary and concepts they may need.”
“Creating Knowledge in Common” is the second special edition published by Ground Works; the first, 2022’s “Vibrant Ecologies of Research” was awarded Best Special Issue by the Council of Editors of Learned Journals (CELJ).
Online Events
In conjunction with the publication of “Creating Knowledge in Common,” a2ru will be hosting a number of online events throughout January and February 2025. In keeping with the open access mission of Ground Works, all of these events are free and open to the public.
Ask-Them-Anything webinars will feature Creating Knowledge in Common Editors Shannon Criss, Kevin Hamilton, and Mary Pat McGuire as well as select contributors to this special collection. Each hour-long webinar highlights projects that cohere around a broad topic:
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- Jan 17: Creative Placemaking and Placekeeping
- Jan 31: Community Art-Making
- Feb 14: Design/Build
On February 21, 2025, “Creating Knowledge in Common, Together: A Round Table” will bring together community and university partners whose shared art- and design-centered work is published in the Ground Works special edition Creating Knowledge in Common. This session will include an introduction to the special edition, but will quickly move into storytelling, question and answer sessions, and breakouts to get into the personal and creative efforts and energies that drive this work forward.
Reading Clubs
Dig deeper into Creating Knowledge in Common in a reading club where you can discuss and cross-pollinate ideas. Whether you have a pre-existing group ready to read this special collection together, or you like the idea of reading together but need to be connected with a group, we can help you get started and provide fuel for your conversation. The reading club guides and webinars can also be integrated into curriculum, supporting courses and seminars on topics such as research methods, community-engaged scholarship, design/build pedagogy, creative placemaking and placekeeping, community art, and more.