Art Ladies. 

The “Art Ladies” is a group of retired women from a local community in Shanghai. These ladies rescue and reuse trash, making it into beautiful artwork. As a part of the Dean’s Service Scholars’ service learning initiative, we set off to find sustainable ways through trash upcycling to help these ladies address some of the challenges they face in their art practice and by doing so support their creative initiative. For this project we researched and tested various methods of remaking and reusing materials from locally less recycled trash materials, such as Polypropylene (PP), or paper. We also created our own degradable bioplastics, all in order to limit the amount of trash that, if thrown out, makes its way into nature and greatly contributes to global pollution.

 

My reflection on this service learning initiative was documented and will be published as a part of a case study to be shared with other universities in China with the goal to promote more successful service learning and upcycling stories.

You can find my citation here

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Skills used: Human-Centered Design, service learning, fabrication, trash upcycling, producing bioplastics

Course: Re-Made in China

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You can find the full course documentation here

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