Creative Waves: Exploring Emerging Online Cultures, Social Networking and Creative Collaboration through e-Learning to Offer Visual Campaigns for Local Kenyan Health Needs

Abstract

The past few years have seen the promise of online collaboration vastly augmented by developments in online technologies and emerging creative practices. Through our work with the Omnium Research Group, the authors argue that design should never be a solitary activity and benefits from many levels of collaboration - never more so than when dealing with complex issues facing today’s world. The highly connected global society in which many of us now live frequently uses web-technologies to enhance nearly every facet of day-to-day life. The authors strongly believe that design education should not isolate itself from such communal and collaborative potential. This chapter explores what happens when online creative collaboration is applied to a realworld design project tackling critical health issues affecting local communities in Africa. It offers an account of the most recent, fully-online Creative Waves project - Visualising Issues in Pharmacy (VIP) that saw over 100 graphic designers join forces with a similar number of pharmacists from over 40 countries worldwide to produce graphic proposals for public awareness campaigns about six health issues seriously affecting the people of a village community in Kenya. The three-month VIP project is explained in relation to its aims, objectives and graphic outcomes, as well as the online environment in which it took place. Creative Waves is a concept created in 2005 by the Omnium Research Group, based at The University of New South Wales in Australia, to form online communities of design students from many institutions around the globe. Consisting an array of enthusiastic students, teaching staff, professional practitioners and luminaries invited as special guests, these online creative communities have proved that amazing results can be produced through careful facilitation between distanced individuals who will most likely never meet. The Creative Waves concept has to date been offered twice in collaboration with Icograda and the Icograda Education Network.