Colourful Building Bricks

Due to current circumstances,  the original 3D Intervention has been converted into a photographic project. The pictures connected by different arrows show my personal progress during the  Change Maker project.  

Primarily, we have individual building blocks. Although they are all unique alone, they do not show or transmit anything in particular to the observer. These blocks represent the participants of the module when first walking into the room alone and starting to engage with the project.

Similar blocks are the joined, building slightly more complex shapes and working as a unit. This is the first step in team work, in which we engaged with the people we found most similar to us and easiest to access and talk to based on common views and interests. Although still restricted in variety, these interactions allowed us to grow and build new shapes which were previously inaccessible.

Finally, we see the outcome of all the different blocks joining and building something together. The presence of the different colours builds a more complex shape of which the individual colours are now brighter and stronger due to the contrast they make with the different colours alongside them. Each one adds to the final outcome, which is more colourful and significant that the partial outcomes of the groups. It is the ideal team work achieved at the end of the project. We engaged with everyone, talking and exchanging opinions with group members we would not approach in our usual environment. Only through this variety of new opinions and experiences was it possible to build and construct an output that was more global, and which took into account different views and perspectives. This was particularly rich due to the broad spectrum of cultural backgrounds that were present in the group.

 I hope following the arrows on your own will allow you to understand and appreciate the importance of team work and how it allows us to think of ideas and create projects that consider a larger perspective and moveover may have a greater impact. This is therefore the first step to a more equal and just society. Working together is essential in our digital interconnected world today and an opportunity we should never stop taking advantage of.

Student: Johanna de la Cruz
Degree: Biological Sciences
Nationality: Argentina
Biography: I get up in a mix of two very different cultures: my Mum being German and my Dad from Argentina. Going to a German school in Argentina lead to me constantly being exposed to both cultures and slowly as I got older being more and more aware of how different they were but also how they both enriched each other and opened doors connecting their best qualities and working together. This made me appreciate the importance of listening and considering different perspectives, especially paying attention to where opinions come from and how our background can shape them, making no opinion right or wrong, simply different. I believe that being open to listening and perceiving these fundamental differences is the first step to working with others and building global and interlinked projects that can make an impact in our society.