Crafting Communities: The vital link between interdisciplinarity and community

By Quentin Stuckey

To state that a subject area or practice is interdisciplinary is to assume it combines multiple disciplines for the purpose of greater, expansive knowledge seeking. Yet the practice of interdisciplinarity differs from simply adopting an interdisciplinary approach. As the Open College of the Arts (external link)  observes, interdisciplinarity requires “working with other disciplines to create something new, transforming and creating a new language out of this integrated approach to thinking and working [which] is by its practical nature reaching out and therefore requires us to form connections with ideas from a broader cultural context.” Adopting interdisciplinarity as a framework not only requires “working with other disciplines” but “working” “to create something new” by making “connections with ideas [and practices] from a broader cultural context.” The diverse practices and ideas, in effect, come together to create something “new” rather than something which propagates hegemony. Just as applications of interdisciplinarity constitute “reaching out” to “a broader cultural context” (as opposed to normative cultural contexts), so too does work or efforts in a community constitute “reaching out” to broader cultures.

Communities may possess a common connection amongst its members, but a community is always comprised of individuals who possess diversity in experience, thought, race, sexual orientation, gender identity and other pluralities. Thus, I would argue both interdisciplinarity and community (within the context of research and project work) share a commonality of utilizing diversity in ideas, practices and individuals for the pursuit of something new, worthwhile and outside the norm.

This was my takeaway from Crafting Community, a collaborative symposium at Toronto Metropolitan University from October 19th to 21st 2022 that explored the unique intersections/tensions between arts practices and normative academic research, and bridged interdisciplinary boundaries. Not only did panelists outline the role of interdisciplinarity in their respective work as academics, writers, graduate students, activists, and librarians but the event also created collaboration between the Jack Layton Chair, TMU Libraries, the Faculty of Arts and the Faculty of Community Services. Like the diversity reflected by the panelists in their respective work, these departments collaborated on the symposium with differing perspectives, expectations and traditions. Yet, these differences ultimately enriched the experience of both the content and execution of the event. This has been the starting point of thinking more deeply about this relationship between interdisciplinarity and community within the context of arts practice/research.

As a webinar attendee, I witnessed the relationship between interdisciplinarity and community in action through all the work showcased by the symposium participants. As an example, Panel One very much stood out to me because of the work of Olivia Shortt and Linda Zhang in adopting interdisciplinarity practices within community projects. Activist and musician Olivia Shortt discussed their experiences attending conservatory school and how the academic culture did not meet their needs/expectations of creating music within a supportive, safe and collaborative environment. Presenting an online, collaborative performance of the composition “Mana-hatta” as part of Kaufman Music Center’s “Face the Music” program, Shortt outlined the importance of checking in with team members on any creative project especially given the complexity of individual intersecting identities. The performance of “Mana-hatta” not only musically crossed/bridged disciplines through music genre, but also technologically brought a diverse community of musicians together. Team members like Olivia Shortt ensured that the creative goal could be attained by showing empathy towards its individual members during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Additionally, architect, designer and artist Linda Zhang’s Planting Imagination aims, as the official website states, “to promote community resilience, reduce stress and stigma, and support the affected groups in Chinatown through the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as ongoing displacement, by making use of VR co-creation and other tools of architectural design” (Planting Imagination. com). A large component of the project included giving community members in Toronto’s Chinatown the ability to design and implement a community garden at the Cecil Community Centre utilizing digital and virtual reality (VR) technology. Not only did Zhang’s collaborative project integrate interdisciplinary practices by adopting disparate architectural, technological and EDI frameworks, but the project sought to implement community involvement and support at every stage. For example, Zhang described the importance of ensuring that team members are compensated properly even without a permanent address as dictated by financial processes. Like Shortt’s collaboration with a community of musicians, Zhang’s collaboration placed the Chinatown community at the forefront of this interdisciplinary project, making sure that all community members in their diverse living situations/identities had equal ability to imagine/design and be rewarded for it. What both panelists demonstrated in their own respective work is this connection between interdisciplinarity and community: the pursuit of a creative goal in a diverse paradigm of disciplines and people. Ultimately what this particular symposium demonstrated across all panels, workshops and events is that bringing together and disrupting normative practices through diversity can create something new and better in a post-pandemic creative and academic paradigm. 

Works Cited

“About Planting Imagination.” (external link)  Planting Imagination.com.

“Creative Arts, Part 1: What Do We Mean by Interdisciplinary?” (external link)  Oca.ac.uk, Open College of the Arts, 2019