The School of ______
Cultural Dimensions
Anonymous, 2016
The multiple and interrelated crisis we face are a natural outgrowth of man's having developed a new dimension - the cultural dimension - most of which is hidden from view. The question is, how long can man afford to consciously ignore his own dimension?
E.T Hall
The School of Cultural Dimensions is the first in a series of etheral programmes to actively depart from a discipline focused specification of a courses context, to a context focused specification of course disciplines. The context in this instance being the acknowledgment that the things we make inturn make us, that the process of realising and the process of reality are symbiotic, and the man-made cultural dimension we collectively inhabit is alien to all other naturally observed dimensions.
The School of Cultural Dimensions is consciously media, discipline, technique, and aesthetic agnostic. Those accepted to the school posses a shared belief that in changing the shape of our extensions we can also change ourselves. Students have a proven ability to craft objects, materials, systems, methodologies, narratives and provocations that materialise this belief for consideration and critique by both a niche expert and broad public audience. The School of Cultural Dimensions primary focus is to foster an internal and external departmental culture where students have freedom to think, freedom to act and freedom to make without the responsibilities of traditional problem solving. Department members thrive on an individual and collective basis, both during their time in the department and critically outside of the department as practising alumni re-defining 'design'.
The department operates as an institutional cross programme venture, and as a social investment in defining the future of design education through the students themselves and the ongoing success and failure of the work itself. As such the department is currently in liminal space awaiting full validation.