The New School Collaboratory

About The New School Collaboratory:

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The New School Collaboratory is an initiative at The New School, New York, that seeks to create and support a community of people interested in socially engaged learning, scholarship and practice. Consisting of scholars, activists, students and practitioners in and beyond The New School, The Collaboratory works to achieve The New School’s vision to be “the preeminent intellectual and creative center for effective engagement in a world that increasingly demands better-designed objects, communication, systems, and organizations to meet social needs”.

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Academic experiences centered on collaborative, project-based and socially engaged learning and public scholarship can help students become critically engaged citizens, dedicated to solving problems and contributing to the public good. These academic experiences are located within the subject areas of Arts & Culture, Design, Entrepreneurship, Environment, Health, Media, Public Education, Public Policy, Race & Gender, Technology, and Urbanization.

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The social engagement central to its mission is also achieved through partnerships with NGOs, enterprises, community activists, and across academia – there are hundreds of collaborations across programs and disciplines. Through public scholarship and action research, The New School Collaboratory builds bridges between the university and local communities. To achieve this, students learn how to be a constructive part of activist and community work, and learn from two kinds of “teachers”: the professors in the university, and the community itself.

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Part of what The Collaboratory addresses is the need to challenge the traditional way of doing research, as well as the question of what role academia can and should play in the context of social engagement and activism. The New School Collaboratory holds potential for CEA: at the annual conference 2019, the idea of creating an online platform for working together and sharing projects was discussed.

 

A summary of The New School Collaboratory's presentation on Community Partnerships as Co-Education and Co-Creation at the 2019 CEA conference in New York can be found on page 9 of the conference report: