The first proposal tackles barriers to success caused by gender stereotyping of women in the STEM sector with Vinita Marwaha Madill, a female engineer working for the European Space Station and founder of ‘Rocket Women’. The school children first see Vinita Marwaha Madill via her online profile which reveals her influences, aspirations, and the challenges she faced in her career as an engineer in the space industry.
Inspired by Vinita’s work developing a space suit, the MA Narrative Environments team designed a pair of interactive ‘Space Gloves’. One glove was made from materials associated with femininity and the other was made from materials associated with masculinity. Each glove also had male and female voice recordings that could be activated through different hand gestures. Putting on the ‘Space Gloves’ and activating the voices enabled the school children to question gender stereotypes. The role play game, set in a science lab, was designed to put their learning into practice, nudging them to consider how they would resolve gender bias in the workplace.
Group One also worked with architect Shajay Bhooshan, an associate at Zaha Hadid Architects and co-founder of the Computation and Design Group. His story highlighted the challenges of integrating into the workplace if you come from a different culture. Again his story was designed to be introduced through image, text and video on a website.
The MA Narrative Environments student team created an interactive object made from wire with a translucent, responsive surface that produced contrasting sounds originating from different parts of the world when touched. The school children further explored themes of multiculturalism and integration in the role play connecting outlines of different world landmarks to understand how Shajay used mathematics to gain different perspectives.
Student Team:
Yi Fu, Zijing Qu, Wenjun Ding, Liying Chen, Chris Mademtzis