Ground
Works

How can design start a conversation and serve as a tool for advocacy and education? A team of artists, abolitionists, and architecture students combined efforts to answer this question through the design and fabrication of several mobile apothecaries, or “Apothecarts” for short. The Apothecarts challenge us to imagine a landscape without prisons by facilitating space for knowledge exchange and healing rooted in plant medicines grown at Solitary Gardens (the partnering non-profit). There are 2.2 million incarcerated people in the United States, and of those, around 90,000 are subjected to indefinite solitary confinement every day. The Apothecarts transform plants from Solitary Gardens into herbal teas and tinctures for communities most deeply impacted by the insidious reach of mass incarceration. This work is part of an ongoing effort at Tulane’s Small Center to expand design access, improve the design process, provide a design/build education and prepare a new generation of architects to create a more just world. Small Center is Tulane School of Architecture’s Community Design Center which includes design/build projects where students learn through making. This design/build process is an interdisciplinary collaboration that begins with interviews, area expert teach-ins, observation, and surveys as part of the project design phase. Students co-create design options that are presented to a core group of stakeholders. After a multi-stage feedback loop, students deliver a final built project, or in this case two small built projects. Since their debut in 2021, the carts have been part of multiple fairs, festivals, and events in their home city, and have sparked a conversation beyond New Orleans through inclusion in venues such as MOMA’s PS1 and in global design awards.

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a prevalent public health issue characterized by a pattern of abusive behavior by an intimate partner in a dating or family relationship, wherein one partner exerts power and control over the victim or survivor. Survivors who have experienced repeated trauma in their relationships utilize several resources and services from mental health support to legal counseling as they work to rebuild their lives. IPV is a complex social issue requiring a collaborative and interdisciplinary response. While the importance of addressing the effects of trauma on the body is recognized, there is a dearth of research exploring the impact of movement on survivors of IPV. Created as a collaboration between dancers, survivors, and social workers, Gibney's interdisciplinary Move to Move Beyond® program (MTMB) has been offered to thousands of IPV survivors since 1999. Recent findings from a randomized controlled trial suggest positive outcomes for female survivors of intimate partner violence who participated in the virtual Move to Move Beyond program during the COVID-19 pandemic. From its inception, the research was designed and conducted using an interdisciplinary approach through a partnership between the New York City-based dance and social justice organization, Gibney; Sanctuary for Families, a non-profit organization dedicated to aiding victims of domestic violence and their children; and Teachers College, Columbia University. Using the MTMB program as a case study, this paper highlights how an interdisciplinary approach to a dance and movement-based intervention is vital in centering the communities the program is designed for. Furthermore, it examines potential benefits of dance and movement for survivors of IPV through the lenses of participants and facilitators. More broadly, it demonstrates the value of interdisciplinary structures between academic and community partners to leverage resources and elevate the impact of the work within the community and beyond.