Towards a live project framework for community engagement in South Africa: an architectural education perspective

Abstract

Live projects have a long-standing history in architectural education (Brown, 2012). The practice of live projects has increased substantially over the past 20 years and is currently being adopted in many other disciplines (Live Projects Network, 2019). Live projects can be defined as projects that “comprise the negotiation of a brief, timescale, budget and product between an educational organisation and an external collaborator for their mutual benefit. The project must be structured to ensure that students gain learning that is relevant to their educational development”. Internationally and locally, live projects have also increasingly become vehicles for meaningful community engagement (Harriss, 2011). Often, live project literature focuses predominantly on project descriptions. In such cases, the project stories are told without critique and primarily from the author’s perspective, without positioning the projects “within a wider theoretical, historical or cultural context” (Anderson, 2017: 1). However, during the past few years there has been an increasing attempt at more in-depth reflection on, and analysis of, live project practices, principles and methodologies (Morrow, Chhaya & Pomal, 2014). Anderson and Priest (2012) have been instrumental in developing several tools for classifying, analysing and discussing live projects. Through the Live Projects Network, they have published a spectrum of live project factors (Live Projects Network, 2019) and Anderson has also continued to develop a live project taxonomy (Anderson, 2017). In developing the taxonomy, Anderson found that the “expertise of the live project participants is capable of overcoming contextual resource limitations” and that the taxonomy itself “allows us to identify the ways in which live projects are influencing contemporary ... education, research and practice” (Anderson, 2017: 1). On a similar trajectory to live projects, community engagement initiatives in South African higher education have also seen exponential growth over the past two decades. However, definitions, practice and administration of community engagement projects still vary greatly (Bhagwan, 2017) and are often “uncoordinated and ... the result of individual initiative, rather than of strategically planned, systematic endeavours” (Council on Higher Education, 2010: iii). Being enthusiasts of both live projects and community engagement projects, the authors want to explore existing live projects that are embedded in community engagement activities through the lens of Anderson and Priest’s spectrum of live project factors (in Harris & Widder, 2014: 47). The context of the selected projects is positioned in architectural education in South Africa. The aim is to see if the spectrum of live project factors highlights specific pedagogies, practices and expertise (Anderson, 2017) within these local projects. The projects will be identified from existing live project literature, with specific reference, but not limited to, the Live Projects Network.