Our Daily Work, Our Daily Lives

Work shapes our lives. When we meet strangers, our first question is "what do you do?" We are not asking about their non-work activities as much as we want to understand one of the most important ways of defining ourselves and others: what we and they do as "work."

Both on and off the job, we explore the effect work has on us and how we affect our work. We talk, complain, celebrate and struggle. Our relationship to work is not only economic and social, it is cultural as well. Our personal and communal relations to work take many cultural and artistic forms expressed through poetry and narrative, sculpture and painting, humor and drama, craft and representation. Through expressive culture, we integrate our occupation and personal life. "Our Daily Work/ Our Daily Lives" is a cooperative project that focuses on the cultural traditions of workers, workplaces as contexts for the expression of workers culture, and the diversity of historical and artistic presentations of workers' lives. Acting out of common interest, the Michigan Traditional Arts Program ( MSU Museum) and the Labor Education Program (MSU School of Labor and Industrial Relations) established "Our Daily Work/Our Daily Lives" to explore and present the richness and diversity of worker experience and workers culture with exhibits, lectures and presentations; writing and research projects; and reunions, dialogues, demonstrations and discussions.

"Our Daily Work/Our Daily Lives" received a university's Sustained Effort Toward Excellence in Diversity award in 2003.

Diversity has been a hallmark of the "Our Daily Work/Our Daily Lives" program, co-directed by John P. Beck and Yvonne R. Lockwood, since its inception more than a decade ago. The collaboration between the School of Labor and Industrial Relations and the MSU Museum is dedicated to the exploration, preservation, and presentation of the richness and complexity available within "worker culture." While program presentations have included poetry readings, a film opening, and a concert, the most visible activities were three major campus exhibits: the paintings of worker/artist Ralph Fasanella, the art of African American artist and former rail worker Mark Priest, and the memorial quilt honoring federal workers killed in the Oklahoma City bombing. Lockwood and Beck are conducting field research on South African worker culture for inclusion in an upcoming exhibition. The program's diversity focus is also reflected in the presentations offered through the brown bag seminar series in which MSU faculty and off-campus presenters focus on the diversity of worker experience and worker culture across the boundaries of occupation, gender, ethnicity, age, region, nation, and time.

Our Daily Work/Our Daily Lives has been described as a program designed to transform the perceptions and understanding of the greater institution and our student community by establishing a forum for understanding diversity of people in our daily lives. It celebrates diversity through an understanding of the richness and value diversity adds to our daily lives. This program has demonstrated an organizational culture that not only respects diversity and pluralism, but also one that establishes diversity and pluralism.

Lockwood and Beck are a team that represents in an exceptional way efforts deserving of the Sustained Effort Toward Excellence in Diversity award.