Virtual Runway Project
Virtual Runway Project is initiated by Professor Hortense Gerardo for her HON101H.H and HON101B.B "Custom, Costume, and Culture" courses. The project includes a 45-minute documentary film and silent auction. Students created 2-minute group videos and 1-minute individual videos that documented:
- a social concern of their choice
- a piece of body adornment that they created to raise awareness of the social problem
- a non-profit organization to which they would donate proceeds of their product
One of the objectives of the course was to study the fluid nature of the aesthetic ideal and how the active, self-ascribed maintenance of attractiveness is a reflection of cultural identity, the distribution of power, the allocation of resources, and a perpetual struggle to embody the culturally-relative, unattainable attributes of physical perfection. The Virtual Runway Project helped the students attain these objectives by encouraging them to think about an area of social concern that was meanignful to them, and, by applying the concepts they learned in the course, made use of the decorative arts and the media to raise awareness to these issues.
All 33 students in the two sessions are freshmen. To help freshmen students improve technology competence, TLC provided two Digital Story Telling training workshops and two Video Editing Workshops to the classes. Professor thought the workshops offered by TLC helped "The students learned many skills, both conceptual and practical, in the making of the film, that will inform the kind of lifestyle choices they make in the future."
