What place do the arts have in the business sector, particularly in a commercial furniture business? How can young people be an integral and important part of the conversation when it comes to innovating organizations, redesigning protocols, and moving processes forward in new and exciting ways? What does leadership look like? Why is joy such an important component of the workplace? When can we create spaces where intergenerational, interdisciplinary learning and exchange is taking place, and what is the beautiful potential for growth that exists within those spaces?
These were the questions that Justin Villalobos and I were thinking about during our semester-long residency with Goodmans Interior Structures in Phoenix, Arizona. As students in the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at Arizona State University, we participated in the project as a part of the Institute’s Design and Arts Corps. Design and Arts Corps is an initiative that tries to solve problems in the community through student leadership in the arts. It is the embodiment of socially-engaged practice, looking at how the arts can be the leading voice in identifying, deciphering and eliminating certain difficulties in private, public and nonprofit sectors.
As dancers, specifically hip-hop dancers, we were tasked with increasing workplace incentive to participate in workplace-led volunteerism and with increasing the amount of joy and positivity at Goodmans as a whole. We were both used to working with kids, but this would be the first time that either of us really worked with adults in this way. At first, we were nervous and unsure about how we would connect dance with the seemingly unrelated goals of the company. But, under the guidance of Stephani Etheridge Woodson, professor and director of Design and Arts Corps, we knew we had the skillsets and the open minds necessary to accomplish what was asked of us (and what we were asking of ourselves).