Designing for Good

A few years ago, Sanjit Sethi, artist, professor, and director of the California College of Art’s Center for Art and Public Life, wrote a paper called "Getting it Wrong: How We Fail and What We Learn." In the paper, written with Nicole Garneau of Columbia College, he discussed the need to talk about failure as much as success. "When students get out into the real world what do they do when they fail? They’re not taught that," he says. "There’s a specific set of procedures that need to be followed. How do students learn what to do when they're in over their heads?"

Failure in community-based work is important to acknowledge yet difficult to speak about. Putting it at the forefront of curriculum is just one of the many things that sets Engage, a project-based learning program at CCA run by Sethi, apart.