At Home in the Desert: Youth Engagement and Place

Contemporary representations of desert life, particularly in the mainstream media, do not usually reflect the lived experiences of local residents, especially youths.  At Home in the Desert: Youth Engagement and Place, the first major creative project initiated by the newly established Public Practice Research Group within the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, addresses this discrepancy through integrated use of dance, music, science, and technology.  Specifically, this project brings together accomplished artists, youths from Phoenix, and ASU faculty and students to investigate the experience of living in the low desert through an artistic lens.  Two such teams, one working in a site-specific location and one in ASU facilities, will develop trans-disciplinary, inter-arts performances that reinterpret how the landscape, land use, ecology, and weather of Phoenix shape the experiences and cultures of its residents.  This artistic research will then be shared with the scholarly community at ASU and the general public through five (5) performances (two in desert habitats, one in Civic Space downtown, one at ASU Tempe, and one at the Phoenix Fringe Festival) and a symposium at ASU.

This project was sponsered by the Institute for Humanities Research.