Learn bamboo from bamboo: a kinaesthetic communication approach to curating cultures, crafts, and construction for higher education

Abstract

Purpose

Beyond symptomatic communication barriers between designers and communities, glocal resiliency building (GRB) by intercultural groups often challenges traditional service-learning trajectories. Without ambitious performance hurdles, two higher education institutions from Australia and Thailand built rapport via their shared love for Bamboo to level hierarchies between groups: architects, both social and professional.

Design/methodology/approach

The author used Basho’s “self” – object nexus, as depicted in “Learn Bamboo from Bamboo” Haiku, as a methodology to structure our observations of stakeholders (Haas, 1994). This reflective account, narrated through a tabulated account of iterative engagements among various stakeholders, narrates the metacognitive process of GRB.

Findings

Amidst intercultural communication tensions that could have alienated efforts, Bamboo’s resourcefulness prompted positive stakeholder interactions. Interculturally relatable Bamboo culture could become an effective mode of communication via a synthesis of craft and construction to cultivate culturally intelligent behaviours.

Research limitations/implications

Bamboo was a technology of community that overcame cultural tensions by completing an architectural product.

Originality/value

Despite different languages, work ethics and uneasiness, this activism project sensitised differentiating perspectives to transform traditional knowledge hierarchies to negotiate local know-how. Hence, it highlights activism as a methodology for figuring out the unknown layered in spatial and aspatial attributes of material cultures.

Citation

Subasinghe, C. (2024), "Learn bamboo from bamboo: a kinaesthetic communication approach to curating cultures, crafts, and construction for higher education", Journal for Multicultural Education, Vol. 18 No. 4, pp. 396-408. https://doi.org/10.1108/JME-05-2024-0055