Empathy

Studio Introduction

The Empathy Studio valued process over outcome; and analogue production over digital. It required students to develop their own creative practices and work collectively and reflexively. The material that was offered to students ranged from films, lectures, walks and print making workshops. The overall question that was asked is: in developing an empathetic practice, how does one craft the space of empathy? This question was reflected on as we nurtured the design projects that the student’s and produced.

ARCH 352

What is the scale of empathy?
Thomas Aquilina

The Empathy Studio offered students the films, theories and creative practice of John Akomfrah as a prompt to create their own spaces of empathy within Liverpool. In the first semester students developed their own practices of representation of using techniques such as lino printing, gel printing, rubber stamps and cyanotypes. These techniques were then used to make publications where their design processes, their insights and their ideas were illustrated, together with a letter to Akomfrah explaining the work further. In the second semester students continued with this process, but this time they had to propose a walk of remembrance that further relates to the themes in Akomfrah’s work. Along this walk they had to identify a place and a building purpose of empathy. It was important that these self-identified routes, self-ascribed purposes and self-found places encapsulates the studio’s ethics of care, empathy and crafting designs of enchantment. We give thanks for the work that was produced and the labour that nurtured the work.