Creative Action Integrated Learning

Section Description: Confronting the precarious balance between a growing urban space and a delicate wild one. The Ballona Wetlands occupy a largely forgotten swath of Los Angeles ground. Though representing a rare example of wilderness within LA sprawl, the wetlands endure assault and encroachment from increasingly dense surroundings. Concurrently, surrounding Los Angeles neighborhoods boast sharp increases in real estate prices, an indication of their desirability. The growth of Silicon Beach will rapidly increase the demand for housing in this area. This course will investigate issues that arise from this tenuous relationship, and explore the capacity of art and design in mitigating or highlighting those issues. Partner: Friends of Ballona Wetlands

Section Description: Working with The Regenerative Farm, part of the Will Rogers Learning Community, this class will dig, both literally and metaphorically, into the practice and planet-positive consequences of Regenerative Farming - the sustainable future of agriculture. Working directly with the stewards of the farm, students will research the background, systems and strategies of Regenerative Farming and propose and develop creative projects to support the mission and work of the farm, as well as having an opportiunty to experience life on the farm. Examples might include wayfinding and signage, educational public murals and installations, digital storytelling and content.

Section Description: In this interdisciplinary course, students from Otis College of Art and Design will engage in a transformative journey that integrates art and design principles, branding, historical education, social design, and the cultivation of a growth mindset through creative collaboration. By the end of the semester, you will refine your design skills, deepen your historical knowledge, and complete a socially impactful research project. This course offers a comprehensive educational experience, equipping you to become a socially conscious and versatile creative professional.

Section Description: An exploration of comics and their rich history of championing progressive causes, creating community, and inspiring real-life heroes. This course focuses on the power of storytelling and collaboration in the medium of comics. Working with students from different programs of study, and hearing from distinguished guest speakers with years of experience in the world of comic creation, you will learn techniques to create a compelling visual narrative–and the value of teamwork as it applies to comic production and beyond. By the end of this class, you and your team will deliver and present to the community partner a final work that will serve as a form of outreach and inspiration for LGBTQ+ youth. Community Partner: It Gets Better.

Section Description: AI PLAY Play Your Way to a more Conscious, Just and Humanized Technological World By the time you finish reading this, AI programs like Midjourney will have generated at least three hundred thousand images. It is estimated that 400 million workers could be displaced because of AI, including teachers :-( AI has little or no ethical oversight or commitment to values. This course takes place in a liminal space, a space in between, on a journey. * Going back to the beginning - to Cultural Ideas focused on Consciousness - to Analog and Sensory experience . . . in order to engage in a more meaningful way with AI, as an artist, designer and creator. PLAYMATES include guests who will engage us in conversations about topics like Drugs, Dreams (-_-) zzz, Outer Space, and Brain Activity to better understand what consciousness is. PLAYTIME includes activities like Teaching an AI machine to recognize sound and image, Playing with the meaning of programming language, Making music visible, and Understanding a computer by pretending to be one. Join us. Real, chill, experimental and unexpected. ( ͡❛ ͜ʖ ͡❛) Partners: A Brain Scholar, A Jungian Analyst, A Folklorist / AR Enthusiast, an Ayahuasca Enthusiast

Section Description: How can we build an inclusive community of creatives that thrives because of our differences, our neuro-diversity, and our unique abilities (disabled - non-disabled)? Immersed in the field of Disability Arts, Otis students and artists from ECF Art Centers will participate in inclusive, experimental and reflective processes throughout this in person studio course. The resulting art and design projects, meant to connect us across differences, will be presented to the public in an exhibition at the end of the semester. Partner: ECF Art Center https://www.artecf.org/

Section Description: Structured around an open collaboration with SHARK - a public pediatrics clinic specializing in holistic care for survivors of childhood trauma, The Art of Care will introduce students to the principles of trauma-informed care with special attention to how those principles can guide socially engaged artists’ and designers’ practices. Students will have the opportunity to learn about, engage with, and collaborate on SHARK’s trauma-informed creative programming (including existing mindfulness and meditation, art, and urban farming programs); to participate in and propose strategies for the clinic’s ongoing trauma-informed redesign; and to develop and help implement creative public events to promote resiliency and health in children and families affected by trauma. Students’ creative work will be grounded in readings, talks, and discussions addressing the role of care, trauma, and repair in socially engaged art and design practices. The course will also include site visits where students can experience trauma-informed practices and reparative methods in action, including a visit to the Rancho Los Amigos Rehabilitation Hospital where the SHARK Clinic is housed and a visit to one of the urban farms partnering with SHARK to provide holistic programing to patients and their families.

Section Description: This course will be an adventurous engagement into what philosophers call relational ontology and will focus these engagements on the homelessness crisis, specifically examining the relationship between unhoused humans and their pets. We will utilize methods that come specifically out of surrealism to help us retool our conceptions of this world, building toward dynamic notions of gratuity, presence and relationality. All along we will be focused, together with our organizational partner PalsNPets, on the dynamic and vital relationship between homeless people and their pets and will work to solve some of the unique challenges those relationships pose.

Section Description: This course engages students in a process that looks at history, urban planning, art, design, and community organizing in order to reimagine MacArthur Park in the Westlake neighborhood of Los Angeles (the original home of Otis College). Student work will support three planned closures of Wilshire Blvd where it bisects the park. Working with the City of Los Angeles Council District 1 as a client, Student artists will design alternative visions of the park that interrogate the park's history, reunify its 35 acres of greenspace and reimagine its place in the city.

Section Description: Student teams learn about FM, AM, and Internet radio production, producing content that reports on, engages, and rediscovers the Westchester community. Students gain hands-on experience in the audio production studios at both Otis and LMU, while learning to listen, record, and edit the sound around them. They produce a creative, fun, and informative radio show, available online at Otis and rebroadcast on the LMU radio stations. Partners: KXLU, KLMU