Community Engagement¶

Reflections about the seminar¶

The community engagement seminar was focused on a range of topics including community engagement and design, with a particular emphasis on using design principles and practices to facilitate positive change in systems and communities. The sessions covered topics such as the role of the designer, approaches to systems transformation, tools for facilitation, and the use of our bodies as epistemological instruments.

For me one of the highlights of the seminar was the concept of transition design, which I became aware of only in this seminar. Transition design seems to have recognised and conceptualised many of the issues I have experienced in my practise as a service designer. Having found a theoretical framework and vocabulary to talk about these issues, is something I’ll benefit on my professional journey.

I also enjoyed the distinction that was made between designing over / for / with / within. While I understand that “designing within” leads to superior results due to personal immersion of the designer into the problem space and utilisation of the wisdom of the collective; I wonder if there’ll always be cases of designing for & with others because not all design challenges may allow the designer to be fully involved in target communities. Some examples that come to my mind are if you’re designing for dogs, other species, for the elderly as a young designer or if you’re designing for kids… Does this mean that there’ll always be a case for participatory design where you have to design “for” or design “with” in the best case?

I’m curious if the ultimate solution is “specialised” designers, who work as integrated designers only within specific communities they immerse themselves into and do not design anything beyond the boundaries of that community. It’s a curious question to explore.

Jumping to another note, the Group Works card deck was a good tool to facilitate a discussion around “facilitation”. While facilitation is a huge topic in itself, I enjoyed the curation that Holon did to provide a quick intro into all these huge topics we touched upon in the seminar. However it’s required to dig into the resources of the seminar which I will copy below for my own benefit.

I picked the card about “emergence”, which has been one of my biggest recognitions and learning from this master degree so far: Getting comfortable with seperation from predefined rigid plans & structures and allowing for observation and following gut feelings without scientific proof to navigate complex challenges.

All in all, I believe that many subjects of the seminar required a deeper-dive and it was a lot of ground to cover in a single week. I felt the need to explore the systems mapping of our “actants” more rigiorously, and I was expecting to learn more about the nitty-gritty of community engagement: How to start interacting with, immersing into and designing within a community. Without these skills, I feel a bit vulnerable and lost as a designer, as if I’d blame myself for doing the wrong thing if I’m designing for & with others but I don’t have much of a clue about doing it the right way: “designing within”. But maybe these questions are valuable enough as awareness raisers that will allow me to keep exploring, and evolve my practice for better.

Creative Community Engagement¶

My project is about utilising water as an integrated material in our living spaces and making the domestic water systems more open-source and environmentally friendly. Here´s the creative community template for one of the potential communities I can engage with.