Activating Networks, Gathering Knowledge

3 cr. course created by Avrie Allen
2026

This course reimagines how to gather inspiration and conduct research for creative practices, and positions research as a creative practice itself. Using surveys and hand-coded web archives (HTML and CSS), students will gather community-generated submissions to respond to with an open-ended final project. The course explores how community archives can counter harmful narratives, combat erasure of identity and culture, engage collective memory, celebrate personal experience, or reveal unanticipated insights about a topic, whether new or old to your practice. Open to all disciplines and grade levels.

The course combines studio practice, lectures, readings, and discussions. Students will be introduced to key figures to provide examples of how web-based archives can inform and be a part of creative bodies of work beyond the course. Guest speakers Rebecca Fasman, curator at the Kinsey Institute, and Dr. Kennedi Johnson from the Visiting Room Project will provide insight to the real-world implications of archival practices. Experimentation and the cultivation of a collaborative studio culture are emphasized in the classroom as students explore how situated knowledge, lived experience, and varying perspectives can be gathered, shared, and represented.

Taught:

• RISD Wintersession 2026
  Instructor of record in the graphic design department. Wintersession classes are primarily engaging students outside of the departments they are taught in.

Select Final Projects:


Select Survey Flyers / Posts: