Agents of Alternatives_Making by Anja Lisa

Agents of Alternatives

Re-designing Our Realities

Edited by: Alastair Fuad-Luke Anja-Lisa Hirscher Katharina Moebus

First edition produced and published by Agents of Alternatives, Berlin, Germany in May 2015

Edited by: Alastair Fuad-Luke, Anja-Lisa Hirscher, Katharina Moebus

This work, copyright ÂŠ 2015 Agents of Alternatives and the individual contributors, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International, available here http://creativecommons.org/licenses/bync-sa/4.0, with the exception of the essay by David Bollier, which is reproduced here from his book Think Like A Commoner with kind permission from New Society Publishers, copyright ÂŠ 2014

Visual concept & cover: Anja-Lisa Hirscher and Katharina Moebus Editorial design: Anja-Lisa Hirscher Page layout: Anja-Lisa Hirscher and Gaspar Mostafa British-English proofreading: Isabelle Machado Aires Translation: German to English by Katharina Moebus

Font: Brandon Grotesque and Aleo, which is licensed under the SIL Open Font License, Version 1.1 Printed by InPrint, Latvia, 2015. The paper is Multi Design Original Natural, Forest Stewardship Certified (FSC)

ISBN: 978-3-00-049379-9 paperback

Agents of Alternatives e.V. Berlin, Germany www.agentsofalternatives.com

Agents of Alternatives

Re-designing Our Realities

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Many people and organisations helped make this book a reality. We give a particularly warm thanks to our contributors who generously gave their time and energy to share their experiences and thoughts. We extend our grateful thanks to our crowdfunding sponsors who funded some of the key production costs via a campaign on Sponsume. We thank them for their trust and patience throughout the project. Some of them, as page or content sponsors, also contributed thoughts and words, which we think enriches the content of the book. We thank the Finnish Cultural Foundation (SKR, Suomen Kulttuurirahasto) for funding the early stage research from September 2012 to September 2013. Also, we wish to acknowledge Aalto ARTS (The School of Arts, Design & Architecture, Aalto University), Helsinki, Finland for the research and writing time we were able to dedicate to this project. Alastair extends his thanks to Lahti Region Development (LADEC) Finland for funding received through Aalto ARTS under the Elite 2 project, and to Riikka Salokannel, Design Development Director, with whom he worked from 2011 to 2014. The editorial team acknowledges the support of Professor Pirjo Hirvonen, Head of the Design Department at Aalto ARTS during that period. We are very grateful to Gaspar Mostafa for his significant contribution to the page layout design and for converting raw diagrams into stylish graphics; to Isabelle Machado Aires for the eagle-eyed dedication she brought to British-English proofreading; to Cathérine Kuebel for her contribution in the early phase of the research and to the two workshops we held in Berlin in October 2013 and February 2014. We give sincere thanks to the founding members of the non-profit association Agents of Alternatives agreeing to publish this book as one of its first activities. In addition to the editors of this book, our co-founding members are Malin Bäckman, Nicholas Torretta, Gaspar Mostafa, and Peter Breuer. We thank our lawyer Julia Breuer for her advice during the formation of the organisation and Tabea Glahs and Sanneke Duijf for their input during the organisation's early development together with Daphne Büllesbach and Cecilia Palmer for their experienced advice. Warm thanks to all the contributors who penned something for the book, and to all the named and un-named contributors to the projects we featured: Amber Hickey, Ana Malalan, Andreas Unteidig, Andrew Paterson, Anna Richter, Antonia Schui, Ben Becker, Ben Pohl, Bernd Kniess, Bianca Herlo, Caleb Waldorf, Cecilia Palmer, Christina Nägele, Christopher Laumanns, Cindy Kohtala, Claudia Garduño, Cordula Andrä, Corinna Fuchs, Daphne Büllesbach, David Bollier, David

Griedelbach, Diana Krabbendam, Elisa Garrote-Gasch, Eric Schuldenfrei, Fiona Geuß, Florian Sametinger, Fotini Lazaridou-Hatzigoga, Francesca Weber-Newth, Frauke Hehl, Frigga Haug, Gabi Sobliye, Gesche Joost, Harald Gruendl, Isolde Nagel, Jennifer Schubert, Joel Rosenberg, John A. Harris, Lisa Gutermuth, Luisa Maria Schweizer, Malin Bäckman, Malte Bergmann, Marcin Jakubowski, Marco Kellhammer, Marisa Yiu, Martin Parker, Maya Indira Ganesch, Michel Bauwens, Otto von Busch, Sam Muirhead, Samantha Riccio, Stefanie Gernert, The Public School Berlin, Thinkfarm, Tiina-Kaisa Laakso-Liukkonen, Trade School New York, Valerie A. Brown, Wendy Brawer and Zoe Romano. Sponsors: Adam de Eyto, Aita Bott, Anna-Miia Suihkonen, Anne Badan, Antti Vaahtersalo, Caroline Lutteri, Carolyn Strauss, Christopher Barlow, Claudia Garduño García, Colin Webb, Daphne Büllesbach, Fahrettin Ersin Alaca, Fernando Lusitano, Gaspar Mostafa, Graham Hill, Helge Mahne, Inês Laranjeira, Ingeborg Zimmermann, J. E. Frost, Jakub Bobrowski, Jenni Väänänen, Jessica Walsh, Julian Lindley, Kirsi Niinimaki, Kristiina Karinen, Larry Hickey, Liam Hinshelwood, Lucero Donaji de la Huerta, Merced Gómez, Malin Bäckman, Matei Cioata, Matti Jäppinen, Michael Moebus, Mike Waller, Mima Pejoska, Ying-Ju Lin, Paula Bello, Peter Breuer, Rebekka Moebus, Lili de Larratea, Ricardo Gonçalves, Sakari Karinen, Sarah Johnson, Selçuk Balamir, Siegfried Hirscher, Susanne Bergner, Suvi Kajamaa, Svetlana Usenyuk, Tabea Glahs and Tom White. We would like to extend further personal thanks: Alastair: I am grateful to all my friends, family, co-editors, students and colleagues with whom I’ve shared many conversations during the preparation of this book and who helped me turn emergent thoughts into words. Anja: I would like to thank everyone from my family and home in the Allgäu — my dear friends there — for inspiring walks and talks, plus my friends, colleagues and co-editors in Helsinki and elsewhere, for great discussions and support all along the way. Katharina: My dearest thanks to my love Peter and our little daughter Ofelia, to my family, old friends and new ones made through this book, my co-editors Anja and Alastair, colleagues and co-activists from Helsinki, Berlin and elsewhere for all the inspiring discussions and perspectives that helped make this book.

the contributors The contributors to this book come from diverse fields including architecture, art, design, landscape architecture, urban planning, education and research, to name a few. They are practitioners, activists, designers, artists and academics. This book would not have been possible without their commitment to challenging the paradigm and their belief in creating alternatives.

Alastair Fuad-Luke

Amber Hickey

Ana Malalan

Andreas Unteidig

Andrew Gryf Paterson

Anja-Lisa Hirscher

Anna Richter

Antonia Schui

Ben Becker

Ben Pohl

Bernd Kniess

Bianca Herlo

Cecilia Palmer

Christina Nägele

Christopher Laumanns

Cindy Kohtala

Claudia Garduño

Cordula Andrä

Daphne Büllesbach

David Bollier

Diana Krabbendam

Elisa Garrote-Gasch

Eric Schuldenfrei & Marisa Yiu

Florian Sametinger

Francesca WeberNewth & Isolde Nagel

Frauke Hehl

Frigga Haug

Gabi Sobliye

Gesche Joost

Harald Gruendl

Jennifer Schubert

Joel Rosenberg

John A. Harris

Katharina Moebus

Luisa Maria Schweizer

Lisa Gutermuth

Malin B채ckman

Malte Bergmann

Marcin Jakubowski

Marco Kellhammer

Martin Parker

Maya Indira Ganesh

Michel Bauwens

Otto von Busch

Sam Muirhead

Stefanie Gernert

The Public School Berlin

Thinkfarm

Tiina-Kaisa Laakso-Liukkonen

Trade School New York

Valerie A. Brown

Wendy Brawer & Samantha Riccio

Zoe Romano

contents

Introduction How to use this book Alternative worlds Map of contributions An evolving lexicon

12 16 18 20 22

THINKING Essays ’Hacking in the name of…’: Agents of Alternatives and Virtuous Vigilantes by Otto von Busch (OvB) A collective mind for a just and sustainable future by Valerie A. Brown and John A. Harris (VBJH)

Interviews Amber Hickey, A Guidebook ofAlternative Nows (GAN) Daphne Büllesbach & Luisa Maria Schweizer, European Alternatives (EA) Tiina-Kaisa Laakso-Liukkonen, Design Driven City (DDC) Case Study Tools for the Design Revolution by Institute of Design Research Vienna (IDRV)

40 46

58 66 78

94 LEARNING Essays Learning by doing - the transformative power of do-it-together (DIT) by Katharina Moebus (KM) Interview Caleb Waldorf, Fotini Lazaridou-Hatzigoga and Fiona Geuß, The Public School Berlin (PS)

108

Case Studies Aalto Lab Mexico by Claudia Garduño (ALM) Women’s Rights Campaigning: Info-Activism Toolkit by Maya Indira Ganesh and Lisa Gutermuth, Tactical Technology Collective (WRC/TTC)) Interjection Starting a Trade School by Trade School New York (TS)

SHARING Essays The Commons as a Different Way of Seeing and Being by David Bollier (DB) Are there Alternatives beyond the market? by Michel Bauwens (MB)

116 128

138

140 142 158

Interviews Maya Indira Ganesh and Gabi Sobliye, Tactical Technology Collective (TTC) Cecilia Palmer, Open Fashion & Code (OF)

172 182

Case Studies Open Green Map by Wendy E. Brawer with Samantha Riccio (GM) Pixelache Festival by Andrew Gryf Paterson (PA) Satokartta by Joel Rosenberg (SK) OpenWear - Collaborative Clothing by Zoe Romano (OW)

190 200 214 220

MAKING Essays Systems of Resilience: A dialogue on digital makers, making and their principles of conduct by Cindy Kohtala (CK) The Joyful Experiences of Making Together by Anja-Lisa Hirscher (ALH)

228 230 240

Interviews Marcin Jakubowski, Global Village Construction Set & Open Source Ecology (GVCS) Elisa Garrote-Gasch, Repair Café Berlin (RC) Case Study Make{able} - Valuable clothes designed together by Anja-Lisa Hirscher (M)

INTERVENING Essays Design activism’s teleological freedoms as a means to transform our habitus by Alastair Fuad-Luke (AFL)

258

268

278 280

Interview Diana Krabbendam, The Beach (TB)

296

Case Studies Bring Your Own Biennale by Eric Schuldenfrei and Marisa Yiu (BYOB) Neighbourhood Labs by Design Research Lab, Berlin University of the Arts (NL)

310 322

Interjection Designing with(in) a community: Sharing insights gained through practice by Malin Bäckman (MB)

WORKING Essays The 4-in-1-perspective by Frigga Haug (FH) The architect and the bee revisited: Managing, organising and agency by Martin Parker (MP)

250

338

350 352 362

Interviews Frauke Hehl and Antonia Schui, workstation ideenwerkstatt e.V. (WS) David Griedelbach and Corinna Fuchs, Thinkfarm (TF)

372 382

Case Studies Anselma: The ‘everything is possible‘ public studio by Ana Malalan (A) Konzeptwerk Neue Ökonomie by Christopher Laumanns (KNÖ)

388 396

LIVING Essay University of the Neighbourhoods – Hotel as Method? by Benjamin Becker, Stefanie Gernert, Bernd Kniess, Ben Pohl, and Anna Richter (UdN) Interviews Cordula Andrä, Centre for Experimental Cultural and Social Design (ZEGG) Francesca Weber-Newth & Isolde Nagel, Community Lover’s Guide to Berlin (CLG)

406 408

430 440

Case Study Year of Open Source by Sam Muirhead (YOS)

450

PRACTICES & REFLECTIONS Stuff that works Afterthoughts Further reading Endnotes

460 462 476 478 480

introduction

You hold in your hands a book which is really a manifestation of an evolving vision to link designing with everyday ‘active-ism’ which helps materialise plausible ‘alternatives’ to the global economy and neo-liberal capitalist practices. This was driven by an underlying belief that we need to ‘re-design our realities’ to better reflect and respond to our pressing contingent challenges about our social, ecological and financial condition. Exploring ‘agents of alternatives’ demands a multidisciplinary dialogue within and between citizens, practitioners and academics who make things happen. So, you will find contributors from diverse fields: design, the arts, architecture, education, politics, economics, urban planning and city administration, social enterprise and the informal sector, including non-governmental organisations (NGOs), experts on the commons, and others. We encouraged activists, researchers, educationalists, strategists and facilitators to share their views. In this book we mix the voices of well-known contributors alongside lesser-known active local agents. We look for emergent ways of learning-by-doing, of designing, of manifesting things differently and catalysing positive change, and we present these ways of thinking and practicing so that others might fruitfully experiment with, explore and generate alternatives for themselves. Agency Our position is that everyone and everything has agency, that is, the capacity to change what happens next. A position reinforced by certain philosophers – for example, Bruno Latour’s human and non-human ‘actants’, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s ‘social material assemblages’, and Jane Bennett’s ‘vibrant matter’.1 We, and our contributors, also adopt more accepted sociological and anthropological views of agency involving the social structures, systems and rules which bind or break them. Those with agency are actors, stakeholders, shareholders, institutions, organisations, diverse communities and other social groups. We would also invoke ‘political agency’ as a healthy form of disagreement and discourse as part of our civic and human condition, not confined within formalised institutionalised practices of ‘politics’. In this sense we see the political agency of this book and its

1 See, for example, Latour, B., 2005. Reassembling the Social. An introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press; Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F., 1987. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press; and Bennett, J., 2010. Vibrant Matter. A political ecology of things. Durham, USA: Duke University Press.

contributors as a means to re-examine and explore our social relations and our relations with the wider world so that we might, individually and collectively posit or construct alternatives. The agents Who are these agents of alternatives? They exhibit some common features: they are independently minded, but share a critical awareness of our social, ecological and economic condition; they have a vision but it is adaptive to changing circumstances; they are open and transparent, showing their processes and sharing their expertise; they start their journey with the (often meagre) resources at their disposal and show perseverance; they believe their voice counts and encourage others to add their voices too; they turn rhetoric into action; and they reveal opportunities and possibilities. Most importantly, all our contributors here are ‘making things happen’, they are active not passive, caring not distant, and different not conformist. Read their voices in the essays, interviews and case studies. Alternatives Anyone, or anything, contesting the status quo, societal ‘norms’ or contemporary paradigmatic forces, is, potentially, an ‘alternativ-ist’. To be an alternativ-ist is not a new position but has an illustrious history which embraces daring individuals, collective movements, specialised groups and minorities.2 Here we define our alternatives through a series of imagined worlds –Thinking, Learning, Sharing, Making, Intervening, Working, and Living – worlds which evolved as the content for the book grew (see p.18-19). We see these worlds intertwined, joined by a series of emergent practices (p.462) and expressed through an evolving lexicon (p.22-37). These alternatives are still young, yet they are potentially catalytic and, if scaled-up, can encourage a transition towards more sustainable, equable and adaptable futures. We found professionally organised alternatives that try to bridge policy-making and grassroots activism as well as small initiatives that have spread all around the world, because their underlying ideas are so simple, accessible and welcoming to a wide range of people. There are different ways of changing society, and this book tries to have a closer look at the potential of the informal and formal worlds of change makers. Re-designing Our shared vision for this book was also underpinned with a belief that the field of design is diffusing out into wider society and is no longer just the primary concern of professionally trained designers, but is actually being practiced by other profes-

2 Parker, M., Fournier, V. and Reedy, P., 2007. The Dictionary of Alternatives: Utopianism and Organisation. London: Zed Books.

sionals, professional amateurs and citizen designers. We share and update Victor Papanek’s view that ‘all people are designers’,3 and Joseph Beuys’ political position making all citizens ‘artists’ that shape the ‘social sculpture’ of our society.4 And, we believe that a sustainable way of designing is to work with what is existent in a ‘locale’5 – a diverse array of human, social, public, commercial and natural capitals. In this sense ‘re-designing’ makes more sense than ‘designing’, because it involves re-configuring the potential of what already exists. This might, of course, involve bringing in new ingredients and smartly combining them to create fresh potentialities. The initiatives, projects and ideas collated in this book are representative for a growing global ‘zeitgeist’ (spirit of the time) around openness and sharing. This means making ideas accessible to everyone so that they can be adapted to diverse local conditions. Most of them are open source so individual authorship becomes less important and the positive impacts and potentialities of sharing are emphasised. They bring different communities and places around the world together in a dynamic self-organised and, often, surprising way. To summarise, it is our hope that this book will stimulate you, the reader, to become an agent of alternatives too…

3 Papanek’s original quote was ‘All men are designers’, p.17 in Papanek, V., 1974. Design for the Real World. Human Ecology and Social Change. St. Albans, UK: Paladin. 4 See, for example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_sculpture and http://www.social-sculpture.org 5 ‘Locale’ has an etymological root in ‘locus’, Latin for place, and is a French word defining local. More importantly, locale, is a combination of unique ingredients or characteristics which differentiate what it means to be local. Locale is a scalable phenomenon that, like the famous Charles and Ray Eames’ film Powers of Ten, can be felt at many scales from one square metre to a hectare or more. It is also a meeting place of various communities, it is the location of specific human ecologies. So each locale has a unique combination of communities of place, communities of practice, communities of interest and communities of circumstance and other types of communities. Source: Fuad-Luke, A., 2012. Locale. Window874, available at http://window874.com/2012/05/29/locale

Editors' notes: We added editors' footnotes to interview and case study texts where we thought it would assist the reader. In the essays these are marked as such, to distinguish them from the original contributor's footnotes.

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

The founding principle of this book is that the diverse content provided by the contributors would drive an emergent structure. We came together in November 2013 in Helsinki to analyse the content we’d already received and to develop the language for the book (Figure 1.). We believed, and still believe, that genuine empowerment happens by locating ourselves within an alternative framework, by seeing positive disruptions to the status quo, by repositioning what designing can do, and by focusing on Our Commons (we use ‘our’ not ‘the’ to emphasise that the default ownership is ‘us’ and ‘we’, not ‘them’) and how we can share in better ways for the common good.

Figure 1. Some emergent keywords from the editors’ conversation in November 2013. © AoA.

In February 2014 the editors came together in Berlin to further explore and understand the content we had already received and do an initial mapping of its relations (Figure 2.). These two meetings led us to create an active vocabulary and initiated a conversation about whether we could analyse and synthesise the content into a more constructive and practical arrangement that would inspire. We understood that people were acting and taking action around different focal areas — we called these areas ‘alternative worlds’ (see next page). They are/were developing [design] practices that help encourage a transition from the existing situation to a preferred situation (to borrow from the words of Herbert Simon1). We analysed these prac-

Figure 2. The editors having a ‘eureka’ moment with Cathérine Kuebel in Berlin, February 2014. © AoA.

tices and have presented them as ‘Stuff that works’ (p.462). These practices range from those based upon eminent common sense to ingenious ways of encouraging transformation. We hope you will recognise some, and add your own. We also observed that people were talking and writing about their ‘worlds’ and ‘practices’ with new language, so we created an ‘evolving lexicon’ (pp.22-37). We hope that these collated ‘insights’, ‘practices’, ‘emergent words’ and, of course, the detailed content from our contributors, will stimulate you, the reader, to reflect and re-think your own position. We hope that flipping between this synthesis of the content and the actual content will provide its own stimulus. In short, we hope that this extra joining of information at a ‘meta’ level, might provide some magic ingredients to generate, nourish and sustain alternatives. Map of contributions Each contribution in this book was assigned to a ‘primary’ world with other worlds as ‘secondary’ influences to see how the different projects, initiatives and philosophies interweave and cluster. The outcome is a ‘map of contributions’ (pp.20-21) which allows a different way of navigating through the book and making sense of its contents. It serves as an addition to the traditional list of contents and invites you, the reader, to experience the book in many different ways: non-linearly, according to chapter, interest, theme, format and so on. Enjoy the journey.

1 Simon, H., 1996 (1969). The Sciences of the Artificial. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

alternative worlds

We believe that alternatives are best created and designed together by thinking differently and making those thoughts tangible by taking action. The diversity of contributions in this book highlights that there are many intertwined worlds with which we can engage. We offer working definitions of these worlds, without asserting them to be either final or complete, hoping that you will add your own. We believe that by combining these worlds in different ways, we can ‘re-design our realities’.

Thinking – the diverse acts and practices of discursive activities, free association, ideation, inquiring, intuiting, philosophising, reasoning, reflecting, ruminating and synthesising individually and/or collectively as a means to nourish our human, social and other capitals.

Learning – the activities of acquiring, giving and exchanging skills, knowledge and experiences by teaching oneself and others, and learning from each other to encourage healthy social discussion, evolution of new wisdoms and activation of hidden capabilities.

Sharing – acts, actions or reciprocal relations between individuals, groups and communities to enjoy and enrich something together (time, objects, experiences, etc.) based on respectful mutuality, interdependency, openness and generosity.

Making – the act of bringing a form, process, service or experience to life, while realising individual and/or collective creative human potential and capital.

Intervening – introducing activities and/or artefacts to engage, by consensus or disruption, to stimulate dialogue and actions towards a common purpose as a means to better our world.

Working – modes of being active, of acting, operating, functioning, organising and practicing to achieve something, to earn or make a livelihood, to be a valued contributor to society, its individual members and to oneself.

Living – human activities of alive-ness, being-ness, existences, livelihoods and other ways of being that affect our individual and collective condition, our thriving and flourishing, and our natural, spatial, physical, mental, spiritual and other dimensions of being in the world.

Thinking

Map of Contributions The initials represent the contributors listed in the contents on p.8 with their respective page numbers.

Learning

KM 96

IDRV 86

TS 138 WRC 128 DB 142

ALM 116

MB 158

PS 108

SK 214 GM 190

ALH 240 OW 220

TTC 172

GVCS 250

Sharing

RC 258 M 268 CK 230

BYOB 310

Making

hinking

VBJH 46

Living

FH 352

GAN 58 UdN 408

TF 382 CLG 440

OvB 40

KNÖ 396 ZEGG 430

DDC 78 AFL 280

MP 362

NL 322

EA 66

YOS 450 A 388

OF 182

WS 372

PA 200

Working

TB 296

MB 338

Intervening

228

Making The act of bringing a form, process, service or experience to life, while realising individual and/or collective creative human potential and capital.

229

Anja-Lisa Hirscher is a designer and activist with a background in graphics and illustration. She was born in the southern German AllgĂ¤u, loves the great outdoors, horse riding and the mountains. She graduated from the MA programme Creative Sustainability at Aalto University, Finland, and is now engaged with her PhD on exploring the potential of fashion activism and alternative economies within the fashion system. Besides that, she is working as a freelance designer and organiser of the project Make{able} â&#x20AC;&#x201C; participatory clothing design workshops to encourage sustainable fashion consumption.

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Essay

The Joyful Experiences of Making Together by Anja-Lisa Hirscher

There is an inherent pleasure in making … the sheer enjoyment of making something exist that didn't exist before, of using one’s own agency, dexterity, feelings and judgment to mould, form, touch, hold and craft physical materials, apart from anticipating the fact of its eventual beauty, uniqueness or usefulness. E. Dissanaykae1

This essay is about the potential of joyful making, exploring, learning and creating together to engage and activate users to rethink their consumption patterns, encourage their agency and create greater well-being by consuming less. It is inspired by a project I founded in spring 2012: Make{able}-Valuable clothes designed together.2 The project developed over the span of one and a half years into an open collaboration between different designers, empowering citizens on how to construct garments. Make{able} is a practice and model based upon learning and participation in workshops to enable stronger user-involvement in the design process. The project uses participatory design workshops and half-way garments3 as ‘tools’ to facilitate and encourage consumer involvement. Participatory design allows a relocation of the roles between designer and consumer through collaborative making. It investigates opportunities to create new product value through open and participatory clothing design and fosters new ways of learning, knowing and gaining awareness.4 Make{able} emerged from the idea of creating a stronger person-product attachment through making an object (in this case a garment). According to researcher Ruth Mugge, the greatest personproduct attachment can be achieved through the actual making process.5

1 Dissanaykae E. cited in Gauntlett, D., 2011. Making is Connecting – The social meaning of creativity, from DIY and knitting to YouTube and Web 2.0. Cambridge: Polity Press. p.60. 2 Make{able}, http://makeable4u.wordpress.com 3 A half-way garment is intentionally unfinished by the designer and thus leaves an open space for the end user to customise and finalise. 4 More information related to this idea can be found e.g. in Fletcher, K. & Grose L., 2012. Fashion & Sustainability – Design for Change. Laurence King Publishing: London, and Fuad-Luke, A., 2009. Design Activism. London: Earthscan 5 Mugge, R., 2007. Product attachment. Ph.D., Delft University of Technology.

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So far, twelve workshops have been run by Make{able} in different locations in the greater Helsinki area, with approximately 140 participants in total. Each workshop had around ten to fifteen participants. All agreed that they really enjoyed the workshops and the process of making. Through this project I am in the unique position to explore the role of the consumer, but also to analyse the processes from a design-perspective through interviews with the designers who help with the makNew relationships ing in the workshops. This project made clear to me between designer, wearer that among consumers, there is a strong interest and the garment can be in participating in the design and making process enabled through this as well as in learning practical skills and gaining a deeper understanding of the garment construcjoint making process tion. The discussions with participants brought to light that there is an emerging curiosity for the stories captured in the garments. Consumers are demanding more transparent, qualitative and ethical production processes – while others look to become a ‘do-it-yourself’ (DIY) maker. From the design perspective it was interesting to see that even sewing beginners were very enthusiastic and brave in creating and making once they got started. The designers also went through positive and enriching experiences when changing from the role of a designer to one of an adviser/facilitator when conceptualizing the outcomes with the final wearer. New relationships between designer, wearer and the garment can be enabled through this joint making process. The role of the designer changes, from only designing the product towards three main stages, before, during and after a participatory workshop. This point is well articulated in the quote below by Tjasa Avsec, one of Make{able}’s regular fashion designers: “Before the workshop you have to design simple products which can be sewn by total beginners in a few hours, but are still effective, appealing and interesting. That is the design part, which importantly affects the result of the workshop as it gives the framework and enables its success. During the workshop, your role changes from being a designer to being an adviser. You suggest the best possible way to make the customer’s idea come true, based on your designer’s and maker’s experiences. I think it is important to listen to the consumer and encourage their feeling of success. That is, they themselves designed and produced the product, you have only guided them on their way. After the workshop it seems it doesn’t matter who spends hours on brainstorming and designing the concept of the product and the basic shape; it is the customers' experience which matters. It is a contradicting observation, as on the other hand, the customers may value the designer’s work more by understanding the process.”

The designers felt they could learn from the users and gain a deeper understanding of how they perceive clothes and other products. Together, very unique and diverse results were created, which the designers could not have imagined before.

242

One of the designers pointed out that it really is all about â&#x20AC;&#x153;learning togetherâ&#x20AC;?. In some way the designer becomes a student and a teacher/adviser at the same time, as new ways of designing and making are explored. This illustrates, that consumers and designers equally enjoy the experience of collaborative making. Therefore I question: Can these positive joint experiences of designers and users open up alternative modes of acquiring goods where consumers are more actively involved, at a slower pace, and with more personal attachment? And, if so, can these experiences influence other consumption habits in our everyday life?

Open exploring and learning generates joyful making To approach these questions, we first have to elaborate: What, in the first place, makes people join such workshops and invest time in making? How can we make people change form passive consumption to active participation?

Results from the Make{able} workshops with half-way tunic and half-way shorts. ÂŠ Anja-Lisa Hirscher.

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Every act of consumption requires a certain degree of active participation. For example, when purchasing ready-made food, one has to at least heat it up in the microwave. So, how can we slowly guide people to more active participation without them feeling forced into a new way of acquiring products? I think that participatory design and open design have the ability to educate, inform and make processes transparent. However, to change the patterns of action towards increased sustainability, we need to address the factors which restrict people from participation. In the case of making a garment with Make{able} these restrictions were: time, skills and facilities.6 Are projects such as Make{able} able to trigger an actito change the patterns vation call in our daily routines? Would people be willof action towards ing to spend time and money in a making-experience? increased sustainability, What would this experience need to offer? In my opinwe need to address the ion, it needs to offer joyful enriching moments that factors which restrict illustrate alternatives to the passive mode of minimal involvement in production which characterises today’s people from participation consumerism. People need to feel comfortable in this environment in order to be encouraged to learn and become involved, without feeling obliged to. I imagine that a ‘smooth slide’ into a new behaviours and ways of enjoying a slower pace of making and enjoying goods can happen when encouraging people to gain new experiences. This is where design, designers, makers, activists, facilitators and other agents of change have the power to enable this soft push towards more active and aware citizens, with a variety of tools and methods. We received positive feedback about the facilitated making process, the assistance by the designers and the open atmosphere for learning and exploring together. These offer great potential to overcome any restrictions. Now we are able to give suggestions on how to guide people step-by-step towards joyful making experiences. It is for example very important to facilitate fun workshop processes and enable desirable outcomes. Furthermore, the workshop is a platform for social interaction – from helping each other with threading a sewing machine to joint design decision-making. The physical object being made enables them to discuss and connect with others more directly.7 It is great to observe how participants are encouraged by one another to become active and move from being a learner to being a teacher/ adviser/ designer themselves. The free and open workshop platform inspires the exchange of skills and knowledge through low involvement barriers, and offers the chance to learn through making and interacting with others. It provides a great environment for creative explorations where participants can express their ideas in a tangible outcome, supported by others.

6 Through interviews and questionnaires with the participants of Makeable workshops, the factors preventing consumers becoming involved in the making process were identified as: time, skills and facilities required. 7 Gauntlett, D., 2011. Making is Connecting – The social meaning of creativity, from DIY and knitting to YouTube and Web 2.0. Cambridge: Polity Press. p.3.

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I believe that this joyful making experience enables a vibrant creative energy and a positively experienced alternative which can create the basis for a change in the consumer mindset. When actively making an object, the individual has the chance to reflect on his or her thoughts and experiences, and manifest them into a tangible output.8 The experience is far more about the process than the final outcome. During the process, emotions such as ‘excitement and frustration, but most especially a feeling of joy’9 can be witnessed. The opportunity to create personal narratives within the objects is likely to strengthen the attachment and provide new solutions for reduced consumption.10 The entire emotional and learning experience will not only be captured in the garment, but might also trigger a new awareness towards consumption and its impacts on our daily life. It is difficult to distinguish what changes attitudes and behaviour as every individual responds to different triggers, but joyful experiences can be one of them.

Enabling, Experiencing, Learning, Knowing The current economic system is driven by a constant striving for economic growth. It is formed around a growing consumption which needs to be fed by the citizens.

8 Ibid. 9 Gauntlett, D., 2011. Making is Connecting – The social meaning of creativity, from DIY and knitting to YouTube and Web 2.0. Cambridge: Polity Press. p.76. 10 See for example: Fuad-Luke, A. 2009. Design Activism. London: Earthscan; Mugge, R., 2007. Product attachment. PhD., Delft University of Technology.

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In doing so they are forced into a rather passive consumer mindset. Products are designed in a way to make it easy for people to stay in a passive and ignorant position.11 This is a major problem for any aspects regarding sustainable behavior – what are potential approaches for tackling this passivity and unawareness? One possibility is to address and improve the individual’s knowledge and skill-set by enabling solutions which foster new forms of sustainable well-being. Sustainable well-being is a context-based well-being, which refers to the whole human life environment, such as physical and social interactions and the ‘possibility to act in this context’. 12 This could be facilitated by moving from a product-based well-being towards enabling solutions to satisfy human needs.13 This change however, requires certain capabilities of taking action as a wellaware individual, not a passive consumer. Amartya Sen expresses capability as a kind of freedom to have alternatives to choose from.14 Freedom of choice is important for a person’s quality of life and one's well-being. Citizens need to be enabled to regain practical skills and deeper knowledge about the products and processes which are embedded in a malfunctioning system of planned obsolescence15 and unnecessary over-consumption. There needs to be a motivating aspect or experience to change one's behaviour without forfeiting personal well-being and happiness. David Gauntlett describes the potential of enabling change and action through experienced joy and power while making. ‘The idea that a person should be enabled to ‘express their meaning in action’ has the feeling of rough reality, and movement; and the line which makes a particular link between joy and creativity (people feel joy, as opposed to mere pleasure, to the extent that their activities are creative) is warm, memorable, and powerful.’16

The question is: What can design contribute to make this learning process a joyful experience? How can we encourage new forms of well-being, moving away from a passive, convenience-driven consumer culture, towards more active participation and an aware citizen-culture? In the 1970s, in his book Deschooling Society, Ivan Illich talked about alternative libraries which would contain all kinds of ‘educational objects’. These libraries would

11 Vezzoli, C., Manzini, E., 2008. Design for Environmental Sustainability. London: Springer-Verlag. p.26. 12 Ibid., p.24. 13 Manzini, E. 2006. Design, ethics and sustainability. Guidelines for a transition phase. In: Design, Ethics and Humanism. See also, Cumulus Working Papers, Cumulus conference, Nantes, France, 15-17 June 2006. Helsinki: University of Art and Design Helsinki. pp.9-15. 14 Sen, A., 1999. Development as Freedom. Oxford University Press: UK. p.75. 15 Planned obsolescence: An artificial shortening of a products life-cycle to encourage faster replacement. See e.g.: Burns, B., 2010, ‘Re-evaluating Obsolescence and Planning for it.’ in Cooper, T. ed. 2010. Longer Lasting Products: Alternatives to the Throwaway Society, MPG Books Group: UK, pp.39-61. 16 Gauntlett, D., 2011, Making is Connecting – The social meaning of creativity, from DIY and knitting to YouTube and Web 2.0. Cambridge: Polity Press. p.174.

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offer information through so called ‘learning webs, that allow an active choice in what to learn and how to learn it instead of force-feeding the same knowledge to everyone.17 Illich highlighted ‘the loss of joyfulness in everyday experiences’ through such big standardized systems.18 So, how can we bring back the joyfulness in our everyday life? We need to reconceptualise learning as a part of our daily experience. To enable a real transformation of fashion consumption the population needs to gain new knowledge. Active communication and education ‘does not always manifest itself in traditional visual or two-dimensional forms […]’20 and also a learning process can often best be achieved outside of the standard classroom. New tools like prototypes, hands-on workshops, do-it-yourself/do-it-together (DIY/DIT) blogs and so on, are just a few opportunities for designers and other ‘agents of alternatives’ to facilitate a learning process. We can only reach a broader target audience if we look for alternative ways of building knowledge and skills, as different triggers appeal to different audiences. This implies that we need to offer different and new forms of learning and gaining knowledge. For example, knowledge which is built through experience by making something, like a piece of clothing, can be recognized as one of the ‘four ways of knowing’21 in the field of co-operative inquiry. These four ways of knowing are the following: 1) experiential, 2) presentational, 3) propositional and 4) practical. This strategy expresses how we perceive things through ‘extended epistemology’, epistemology meaning a theory of how you know, and extended because it reaches beyond the primarily theoretical knowledge of academia’.22 It is said that the greatest value is generated if they are congruent: ‘if our knowing is grounded in our experience, expressed through our stories and images, understood through theories which make sense to us, and expressed in worthwhile action in our lives’.23 The final level of practical knowing is expressed in the knowledge of how to do something, representing the acquisition of a skill or competence. These four ways of knowing can also be seen as a pathway to softly ‘slide’ people from a rather unaware passive mindset, towards greater knowledge and awareness. Therefore, we need to imagine and explore different methods and tools, to help people regain their capabilities or learn new ones, step-by-step. Illich also talks about ‘convivial tools’, which are those ‘that give each person who uses them the greatest opportunity to enrich the environment with the fruits of his or her vision. Industrial tools deny this possibility to those who use them and they allow their designers to determine the meaning and expectation of others’.24

17 Illich, I., 1971. Deschooling Society. Republished 2001. London: Marion Boyars. 18 Ivan Illich in Gauntlett, D. 2011: Making is Connecting – The social meaning of creativity, from DIY and knitting to YouTube and Web 2.0. Cambridge: Polity Press. p. 166. 19 Fletcher, K., Grose, L., 2012. Fashion & Sustainability – Design for Change. Laurence King Publishing: London 20 ibid. p.158. 21 Reason, P., 1998, A participatory World. Resurgence & Ecologist. Issue 186, p.4. 22 Ibid., p.4 23 Ibid., p.4 24 Illich, I., 1973. Tools for Conviviality. Republished 2001, London: Marion Boyars, p.21.

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What if designers foster an open process of designing to enrich everyday experiences through a joyful making experience with others? Isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t it an exciting, maybe challenging opportunity to seek for innovative concepts to enable new joyful forms Assemble the BackPack 1.1) make a clean edge to all main pieces & the bottom using a for everyone? As mentioned before, designof learning, experiencing andby knowing zick-zack stich around them 2) create the upper ers tubeenjoyed and insertthe thecollaborative plastic stripes making experience as much as the other participants in the theback workshops. 3) make the straps for 4) attach straps on the back, on top of the bag (makes it stronger) 5) attach the straps with clips to the inside on the upper tube Part of the free downloadable Make{able} instructions: How to make a roll-top backpack,25

by Anja-Lisa Hirscher, licensed under Creative Commons.

3) 1cm

Tube for the plastic stripe: Fold the fabric twice on the top, sew it on the lower fold so you leave a tube of about 1cm to later insert the plastic stripe.

filling material

5) Attach the straps: Place them on the upper part of the where you attached the pocket. Then sew them by folding over 5 cm and sew a rectangle and an X as below.

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fold to the middle

Make the straps for the back Take the 2 fabric pieces plus some filling, iron the first fold, then fold them to the middle and sew 2 seams. Fold a triangular ending (there should be no filling) sew it once across, then attach the leather part with an X as shown in step 5)

If you have an outer bag, seam it first and then attach it on the front with a straight stitch.

Iron a fold of 1cm

fold to the middle

Attach the clips: Place them on the upper part of your backpack, where the plastic tube ends. They need to face each other on the front of the backpack.

Making & Activating Making together can be seen as a tool to create knowledge, activate and raise awareness. The question is: Can we transfer this positive experience of active participation into other areas of our everyday life? I believe so, because by enabling users with more skills and a deeper product understanding, they gain the capability of well-informed decision-making, and have more independence from what is offered by the industry. Inevitably, this results in a greater freedom of choice and more awareness when it comes to making everyday decisions.26 As we create objects with our own skills, we are able to gain a new awareness about the influence we have on these objects, but also on our everyda.y life decisions. Therefore, ‘crafting can be reclamation of the power of life’27 Through the newly gained skills and knowledge, interaction with everyday objects and decisions can be changed as well. We, however, have to Making and sharing are work on reprogramming ourselves everyday a able to contribute to little bit towards taking more conscious decisions, experienced through making, sharing and learna feeling of well-being ing with others. Making and sharing are able to through connectedness contribute to a feeling of well-being through connectedness, and having an impact on the object. The object is created in the way that I as a maker choose it to be, I can manifest my knowledge, skills and vision into it. This experienced freedom through the capability of making an object, may enable us to take a step forward to gaining well-being by consuming less but experiencing more.

Conclusion Building an educated society where each individual is able to actively influence a subtle shift or emphasis in power structures by the application of their knowledge and skills needs to be developed step by step. With innovative concepts of individual and collective knowledge sharing by making – may it be a small project such as Make{able} – we can all aim to offer alternatives to the mainstream, and thus create new moments of awareness and learning through alternative channels. I am certain that through joyful experiences of joint learning and making, we can bring back a partly forgotten pleasure in creating things with our own hands, at our own speed and with the skills and knowledge we developed. These experiences hopefully nourish further changes in people’s mindset and behaviour. Therefore, I believe that from small projects we can learn and develop real viable alternatives for active citizens to learn and make changes happen together.

25 Download the full instructions here: www.makeable4u.wordpress.com/patterns. 26 McCann A. cited in Gauntlett, D., 2011. Making is Connecting – The social meaning of creativity, from DIY and knitting to YouTube and Web 2.0. Cambridge: Polity Press. p. 59. 27 Ibid., p.59.

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Agents of Alternatives explores the visions, actions, tools and impacts of ‘alternativ-ists’ who are applying creative practices to forge plausible, alternative ways of working and living. It presents an integrated framework for navigating a collection of essays, interviews and case studies from well-known international contributors and local activists. These originate from diverse fields, including design, the arts, architecture, education, politics, economics, urban planning and city administration, social enterprises, non-governmental organisations, and experts on the Commons. They show how to engage with the locale, communities and distributed diasporas. Through their voices and actions they enable professionals, amateurs and citizens to understand the rich possibilities of creating and designing together in open, participatory and imaginative ways. This book is an essential reference for anyone who wishes to become part of positive societal change. We hope it inspires teachers, students, activists, alternative life-stylers, and citizens who wish to re-design our realities. Featuring the following projects and organisations in interviews and case studies: Aalto Lab Mexico, A Guidebook of Alternative Nows, Anselma, A year of living Open Source, Bring Your Own Biennale, Community Lover’s Guide to the Universe, Design Driven City, European Alternatives, Global Village Construction Set, Institute of Design Research Vienna, Konzeptwerk Neue Ökonomie, Kuutio, Make{able}, Neighbourhood Labs, Fashion & Code, Open Green Map, OpenWear, Pixelache Festival, Repair Café, Satokartta, Tactical Technology Collective, The Beach Amsterdam, The Public School, Thinkfarm, Trade School, workstation ideenwerkstatt e.V., and ZEGG Centre for Experimental Cultural and Social Design. With essays by: Cindy Kohtala, David Bollier, Frigga Haug, Michel Bauwens, Martin Parker, Otto von Busch, University of the Neighbourhoods, Valerie A. Brown & John A. Harris and the editors. Editors: Alastair Fuad-Luke is a sustainable design facilitator, educator, writer and activist and currently Professor of Emerging Design Practices, Aalto ARTS, Aalto University, Finland. Anja-Lisa Hirscher MA is a graphic designer, researcher and activist for open and participatory fashion and clothing design, working in Germany and Finland. Katharina Moebus MA is an interdisciplinary designer, organizer, researcher and activist with a focus on socio-political issues, based in Berlin. Agents of Alternatives, Berlin, Germany. www.agentsofalternatives.com ISBN: 978-3-00-049379-9 paperback