Check out these great interviews with some of the students from our Collab: Sex Ed course at Parsons! They are part of the Working with People : Keywords project. The Keywords project is an online resource that explores the different definitions of words like “Collaboration” and “Environment” that are frequently used, but can have very different meanings for different people.

http://www.working-with-people.org/dylan-demanski-collaboration/

http://www.working-with-people.org/maxime-coleon-collaboration-environment/

Working with People creates a critical framework for the increasing interest that has emerged in working with people beyond the academy, in collaborative and generative practices. “Civic engagement,” “design for social change,” and other types of “engaged” pedagogical practice create both opportunities and responsibilities for developing new curricula that explicitly focus on teaching and learning about collaborative practices and contexts. It is critical when, as is often the case, the people and groups in question are regarded as societal “others” and issues of sensitivity and translation across cultures or other real or perceived divides could become a challenge.

Yet, when we talk about community-university collaborations, some powerful words are ill-defined; other critical words are conspicuously absent. This project and this online resource hopes to foster challenging collisions between different understandings of crucial keywords to build a more nuanced way of working with people.