Ｈｏｍｅｔｏｗｎ ｉｎ a Ｇｌｏｂａｌｉｓｉｎｇ Ｗｏｒｌd
Sensitised in ‘Furusato’: the hometown in a Globalising World is a built environment excursion which began almost a decade ago as an intercultural exchange between Perth and Japan. Although its humble beginning was an intra-disciplinary study tour, it went from strength to strength to become a discursive global platform of transdisciplinary learning and teaching across education, design, architecture, planning, policy and Japanese studies.
Benchmark 2017 tour encapsulates the very essence of inter-contextual and interdisciplinary student and faculty engagement between Curtin Architecture and Planning disciplines with Japanese universities such as Toyo, Doshisha and Tokyo City Universities which generously was facilitated by a plethora of corporate giants including but not limited to Tokyu and Mori corporations. Inculcated in structured learning tasks along with exploratory field studies, the study tour enabled students to develop cultural intelligence and international perspectives for resilient global futures. As lightly expressed as exhaustion by students due to intensity of its schedule of events, the tour design was true evidence of rhythmically choreographed sequences of transformative knowledge and career building opportunities geared toward specific graduate competencies and beyond.
The collection narrates vivacious legacy of the study trip’s past, present and its future via a diverse bricolage of curated learning outcomes, archived and simulated memories, reconstructed moments and choreographed performances. From the photographs of the treasured moments at global cities to city of Iiyama Place Activation endeavour, each weave of this rich tapestry of intercultural experience represents values beyond knowledge for participants. Innately, students immersed in nurturing and harvesting of globally staged blended-learning experience at pre-tour workshops, during the tour seminars and post learning reflections including the ‘Furusato’ exhibition.
