November 22nd to November 25th 2022 : Community Engagement¶
Design over, for, with → within.
We spent one week with Holon, a studio particularly interested in Transition Design. They emphasized the importance of designing within [communities] rather than for anyone. For me this posed many questions. Community is a complex term. Having lived around the world, I have dipped toes in many communities. I have also actively animated digital spaces, been part of communities of practice, visited intentional communities. But whether I really belonged in any of these is a question. It seems, nowadays, this concept of community is becoming much larger, and we can belong in many at once. Yet this question of deep belonging is not unimportant. It’s by immersion that we can truly relate. And the energy we spend in various spaces impacts how much we give and get from it or how much we drain it. In other words: how well we can design within. The concept of communities is becoming larger in that it also starts again to recognize the non-human. Holon talked about the importance of mapping all the actants of a place and uncovering all the things that form the mesh of your design problematic (eg laws, lands, assumptions). This indeed seems crucial to relearn. [actants: any kind of agent human or non human that intervenes in the problematic you’re facing].
Holon also talked about Optimistic Grumpiness- their stance as designers. They know the world has issues - hence the grumpiness but chose to be optimistic in tackling these issues.
We also talked about communities as complex systems. We need new patterns and vocabulary as designers. We cannot design for complexity the same way we design a chair. Today, more and more things are conscious objects of design. Systems, Bodies, Ecosystems. Some concepts that particularly stood out were:
MULTI-STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT: In the problem of waste there are many actants: Households , Waste management services, state laws, European laws, municipality, waste habits- that’s why we have to design at a multi-stakeholder level. For any success, all of these things have to be involved in the design process.
EVERYDAY PRACTICE. The battlefield is everyday life. We have to keep in mind the micro level of the day to day when we design, because that’s also the scale at which we impact things. For eg when designing a room, can we ask ourselves how does it feel to be there for 30min? for 2hours? Design has to take into account the intricacies of physiological response.
DESIGN AS MEDIATION. What’s interesting is not the actants per se, but more the dynamics and tensions between them. We cannot understand systems 100% - there’s always a part of unknown.
→When we grasp the system, we can then try an understand/identify the pressure or leverage points.
→We can them dream about what could be different. Establish collective Desirable Futures that act as a north star.
→Then we craft an intervention portfolio (across different lenses - fabrication, legal, community)
→Wait. Probe, Sense, Respond, Repeat.
Assignment:Build a map of your community and its Actants.