VENDINGeducation

VENDINGeducation
La Paz, Bolivia. 2010-present

In the summer of 2010, the IDC, with Bolivian non-profit partner Creativo Cultural Espacio, began a collaborative design effort with kids working on the streets of La Paz in order to generate new, street-based versions of education that more adequately fit the unique lifestyle of these children. Unlike current school systems, which demand the kids choose between working (and thus eating) or pursuing their education, the IDC’s street-based educational system will be designed in a manner that allows each child to pursue learning in a manner congruent with their schedule, circumstances, lifestyle, experiences, and interests.

To create a foundation for this street-based educational system, the IDC has engaged in a rigorous, two-year assessment of the lifestyles of these children using both traditional research methods and more radical investigative acts, including a series of architectural instigations and registers. Installed within the Bolivian streetscape over the course of several years, these small, simple event- and space-making devices were designed to provoke, measure and react to the responses of both the children and others who might one day occupy, possess, or evolve a street-based educational system. The readings gained through these constructions set in motion an iterative, design-based investigation that made clear, using both indirect and direct observational techniques, the relevant conditions at hand, paving the way for larger and more complex iterations of the work.

Over time, this development resulted in the creation of an educational system based upon the potentials (in terms of architecture, distribution, mutability, transportability, and programmatic elasticity) and costs (financial and personnel for the educator, time and travel for the learner) offered by the existing network of vending architectures within the Bolivian streetscape: VENDINGeducation_EXTRA SMALL uses postcards to introduce, using viral marketing techniques to offer key educational concepts and core skill sets at very little cost to either the educator or learner, VENDINGeducation _SMALL distills education into components that can fit within the small boxes carried by the Lustrabota, or Shoe-Shine Boys, of La Paz, creating micro- educational events throughout the city, VENDINGeducation _MEDIUM, adjusts education to the module of the handcart, offering more predictable and detailed educational events throughout the week, and VENDINGeducation _LARGE, creates micro-schools within the architecture of the vending booth, offering a light-duty center of education within key neighborhoods.

As the IDC continues to develop these installations, their costs and potentials will overlap, creating a networked series of educational opportunities and architectures specifically designed to the lives of children working on the streets of La Paz, Bolivia – a School for the Creative and Performing Arts capable of thriving within the rigors of sidewalk offices and other informal settlements.

+ Although not yet completed, numerous venues have published the methods and research supporting vendingEDUCATION, including a peer-reviewed writing and presentation at the 2011 ARCC Research Conference and a 2011 posting in the highly respected online design journal, the Design Altruism Blog. In addition, the San Francisco Museum of Art in Bolivia hosted an exhibition of the research surrounding vendingEDUCATION in 2011.

Scott Shall, founding director of the IDC, has procured over $21,000 of peer-reviewed grants to support his research and work in Bolivia, including an $8,000 grant from the Ludwick Family Foundation.

ADDITIONAL FUNDING SUPPORT:
International Design Clinic

PARTNERSHIPS:
International Design Clinic
Creativo Cultural Espacio
Creative Corners