1. Understand social diversity in Singapore and Asia
2. Understand theories that explain diversity and diversity management
3. Identify dominant and normative discourses on diversity and diversity management
4. Analyse and evaluate the policies and programmes that seek to manage diversity
5. Devise evidence-based approaches in understanding and managing diversity
This course builds on SSOC 2227 and SSOC 2234, which introduce theoretical background underpinning sustainable development and science. In this course, you will learn how to apply these concepts to the real-world problem. At the end of the course, you will be able to:
- Identify relevant theories and good practices in sustainable development with a focus on addressing the interplay between economic and environmental goals.
- Understand cultural principles and processes working in a cross-border (Indonesia vis-à-vis Singapore) setting.
- Gain experience and effective skill in developing and presenting proposals, including responding to the needs of the client organisation.
Since globalization and innovation are two key forces that shape individual and business success in the 21st century, this course aims to enhance students’ understanding on how people can utilize their cultural knowledge to generate creative and innovative ideas, by means of integrating different perspectives, theories, strategies, and technologies. In this multicultural environment, people must collaborate effectively across cultural borders, broadly defined, to solve pressing problems and to develop new products and solutions that will appeal to the global market. Cultural and creative industries are one of such sectors that emphasizes culture as the foundation for developing and supporting industries through creativity (e.g., cultural tourism, community cultural development, performing art, product design). Via collaborating with the students and faculty members in the Institute of Creative Industries Design at the National Cheng Kung University, SMU students will have hands-on cross-cultural collaboration experiences with their Taiwanese counterparts. Through participating in class discussions and learning different case studies of Taiwan’s cultural and creative industries during the field trip, students will receive ample opportunities to sharpen their cultural knowledge and skills and to apply these new insights to benefit creative productions in the real world. Students will also gain cultural immersive experiences through conducting in-depth analysis of the business client in their SMU-NCKU work team. At the end of the course, students will be able to integrate theories of culture, psychology, and design thinking to broaden their knowledge about the development and sustainability of cultural and creative industries. They might also identify from the insights gained from the Taiwan cases to benefit the cultural and creative industries in Singapore.
The primary focus of this course will be on urban cultural planning, with a focus on critically
interrogating the recent popularity of “creative placemaking.”
This focus will be contextualised within a wider exploration of the arts and its urban environment,
through an entanglement of actors. Key questions include:
- How have the arts and culture emerged as an urban planning and development target in cities across the globe?
- What are the shared global strategies and what is unique in the purposes, practices and outcomes of urban cultural planning in Singapore?
- What is the place of the arts in community based urban development today?
- What is the relationship - and disconnects - between cultural planning efforts and the on-the-ground life and needs of arts and cultural activities?
- How can artists, planners and community development practitioners employ the arts to promote positive and inclusive change while addressing the agency of those they address?
Students who complete this course should acquire the following course-specific skills :
- A critical understanding of the development of cultural planning approaches globally, with the ability to highlight central assumptions, global trends and practices, and local peculiarities
- A sound grasp of the major scholarly approaches to, and debates on, urban cultural planning and urban cultural economies, and the ability to contextualise them in relation to specific instances and case studies
- A critical ability to question the role of the arts in urban regeneration and revitalisation, and the consequences and repercussions
- An inter-disciplinary comprehension of the use of the arts for global urban competitiveness, such as biennales, cultural districts and blockbusters, and how they relate to different spaces and communities
By the end of this course, you will be able to:
- Appreciate the Social Sciences as a praxis-driven endeavour
- Apply Social Sciences knowledge and skills to frame real-world problems into actionable data for interdisciplinary analysis
- Design processes to effectively bring out the value of Social Sciences in action
- Collaborate with stakeholders to connect lived experiences and engagements with grounded and well-thought-out solutions or insights in furthering positive impact
By the end of this course, participants should be able to:
- Understand and articulate the complexities of social change initiatives.
- Exercise interdisciplinary thinking in examining and addressing social change issues.
- Evaluate social change messaging and campaigns.
- Apply research skills through study design, data collection, and data analysis.
- Understand the sociocultural nuances of working with Thais and Bangkokians.
