Tetley Feast Essay

Practising Socially Engaged Design within Education: An Analysis of the Tetley Feast In his seminal work Design for the Real World, Victor Papanek, stated that ‘design has become the most powerful tool with which man shapes his tools and environment (and, by extension, society and himself)’ (1984, pIX). Several decades later Katherine McCoy, another highly regarded designer and educator, suggested there is a need for graphic designers to ‘become more involved in community, environmental and political issues at a local level’ (2001, p148). This is an admirable idea but it seems that, in this age where capitalism rules, it is arguably impossible to make a living as a designer who only creates socially engaged work. Even Papanek only suggested we give ‘10% of our crops of ideas and talents to 75% of mankind in need’ (1984, p68). What if there was a way, as designers or practitioners, in which we could focus all our energy and talent on socially engaged design?

Rick Poynor claims socially engaged design is often proposed by students who have yet to try it or by educators who probably never will, with few managing to pull it off in the real world (2001, p148-9). If this is true why not encourage more social design within education where the commercial pressures are not so apparent? There are now some design schools and programmes such as the Greenside Design Centre and Leeds College of Art’s BA (Hons) Visual Communications which are trying to incorporate this way of working into their curricula. This essay will examine the Tetley Feast in an attempt to discover the opportunities and limitations of such a student-led socially engaged project.

Before examining the project itself, it is necessary to clarify exactly what is meant by socially engaged design. It is generally seen to be work that has a positive effect on society and which potentially provokes change. Richard Buchanan states ‘design offers a way of thinking about the world that is significant for addressing many of the problems that human beings face in contemporary culture’(2001, p35). It also means thinking much more about your audience’s needs, incorporating ‘other interest as well as self interest’ into your practice (Robertson, 2006, p189).

Some feel socially engaged practitioners would focus more on the content than the form of the work, Rick Poynor believes most designers are ‘obsessed with how cool a piece of work looks rather than with what it is actually saying’ (2001, p139), in other words designing for designers rather than their audience or client’s needs. By contrast socially engaged design aims to address the urgent need to ‘put people first’ meeting their ‘real and physical needs’(Seymour, 2001, p11). These points of view all contribute to a consensus view that socially engaged design is a way of using our practice to better the world in some way.

The aim of the Tetley Feast was to create a positive impact on the communities that participated in the project. The project was based on the hope of ‘designing for the other 99%’ (Juul-Sørensen, 2014) as it set out to create work that was inclusive and which would in some way improve the lives of people living in one of the most deprived areas of Leeds.

These community groups who took part would not usually have the funds or the networks to work with designers, film makers or photographers. The project allowed them the opportunity to communicate their work and ideas in the way many commercial organisations are able to do.

Many of the students had no prior knowledge or awareness of South Leeds or of its need for regeneration. By introducing them to an area of the city they may never have visited before, students may well be encouraged to return to do more work of this kind, or at least take into account the ‘moral responsibility’ (Papanek, 1984, pIX) they have as designers and practitioners. One of the key aspects of introducing practitioners to the notion of social design is encouraging them to consider the impact of their work and the potential they have to provoke change. The project also created a strong bridge between South Leeds and the programme as a whole, which lead to a second large participatory project involving BA VisCom and similar community groups during the Spring of 2015.

There are many clear benefits to such a student led project compared with using professional designers. Most obviously, there was no requirement to provide wages for the practitioners, which had the additional effect of allowing the students to schedule their time as they felt appropriate, thinking more about their audience’s needs rather than their own. This was also the only project the students were working on at the time, allowing them to put all their time and energy into the project unlike many practitioners who would most likely be working on several different projects and would also have time constraints due to budgets. Considering the short length of the project the students and participants produced outcomes that were very meaningful to the communities they were representing. It is questionable whether the same result would have occurred if professional practitioners, who would have other projects on their plate, had been employed to do this project.

There are other reasons why this project created such meaningful outcomes. The students were not introduced as professionals, which seemed to make the meetings with the community groups less formal. Both parties were quite inexperienced in negotiating a design brief, so there was considerable sympathy on both sides. This meant that the communication between the two groups flowed more easily, especially for the community groups, who in some cases included a lot of people with learning difficulties. The students also got to know the community groups very quickly.

This was very useful as they could then create work that would really represent the characters and atmosphere of each group which might not have happened in such an organic way had a professional been employed.

According to Micheal Beirut ‘almost all design schools today stress form over content’(2006, p235). By contrast, BA VisCom makes the point throughout all its modules that content is equally important. This unique ethos encouraged students to focus on the meaning of the work more than many professional designers might have done. The students were also generally younger than most, designers which may also have brought a much fresher, more youthful approach to the Tetley Feast.

There were of course also negative aspects to the project. The students, especially the first years were not fully prepared to go straight into a project like this. For many of the first years this was only the second time they had created a film, and the first time they had worked on a documentary.

It could be argued they were not given enough preparation in the necessary technical skills, such as using the video cameras, audio recording and editing. They also would have benefitted from more preparation for interviewing as this is central to the documentary making process.

I was in the first year during the Tetley Feast and our group experienced many difficulties with sound recording because we were not taught how and when to use the right recording devices during the filming. This meant the finished film looked unprofessional even though the content was really good as some of the interviews were hard to hear. If the message isn’t clear then it won’t have

very much impact. This suggests that form is also very important and any designer needs to focus equally on form and content within their work. Kali Nikitas, a well respected graphic designer, feels that ‘form is an integral part of our work and to deny that is ridiculous and shortsighted’ (2006, p222).

The briefs for the second years were incredibly open. It was pretty much up to the students and the community groups to come up with a brief on their own for the project. Again the students were not particularly prepared for such an open brief and many found it hard to negotiate with the community groups and come up with a project that suited both parties. This led to many of the groups taking on much more than they could handle during the time of the project. As a result the aesthetic quality of the work was not quite as good as it could have been if the students had a more focused approach.

The above issues suggest that the students were perhaps a little too inexperienced to work in this way and needed to learn more technical and professional skills before embarking on a project such as the Tetley Feast. This is perhaps why there are more MA design courses, rather than BA courses, that focus on sustainable and socially engaged design, as students need to learn formal and technical skills before focusing so directly on content.

There were also some problems with the organization of the final celebratory event. Unfortunately The Tetley made the decision at the last minute to move the event space from the bottom to the top floor of their building in order to make room for a more commercially attractive booking. This made our event less easily accessible for some of the more elderly members of the South Leeds community and had the effect of suggesting the Tetley did not place significant value on the Tetley Feast. As a result many of the students feeling under appreciated and uncomfortable during the event.

Despite these issues I believe the Tetley Feast was, overall, a brilliant project. It raised the student’s awareness of the communities of inner city South Leeds, a very deprived area of the city which most students never visit. It also created a very strong link between Leeds College of Art and a host of dynamic community organisations. As a result of the success of the Tetley Feast, BA VisCom has created another socially engaged project for 2014-15, once again including the South Leeds communities but without a collaboration with The Tetley. This time it is called the ‘WITH project’ and the approach is a lot more focused. Each group knows exactly what they are going to create in terms of the finished product, so there is a lot less complex negotiation between the students and the community groups. The first years are doing documentaries again but have had more tutorials and inductions on technical and interview skills. The programme is learning from the experience of the Tetley Feast, developing a way of introducing the principals of socially engaged design into an undergraduate programme, with clear benefits to both the students and the community groups with whom they work.

References Beirut, M. Drentell, W. and Heller, S. (eds) (2006) Looking Closer 5: Critical Writings on Graphic Design, New York: Allworth Press

Buchanan, R. (2001) Human dignity and Human Rights: Thoughts on the Principles of HumanCentered Design, Design Issues, 17 (3), p35-39 Collins, David.(2014.) Tetley Feast Feb 2014 | Viscom Projects. [online] Accessed from:http:// viscomprojects.co.uk/tetley-feast-feb-2014/ (Accessed on: 18/2/15) Greenside Design Center (2015) Greenside Design Center College of Design Website, [online] Available from: http://designcenter.co.za/ (Accessed: 10/1/15) McCoy, K. Poynor R. (2001) First Things Next, In: Poynor, R. (2001) Obey The Giant: Life In The Image World, London: August Media Ltd Nikitas, K. VanderLans, R. (2006) Visitations Revisited, In: Beirut, M. Drentell, W. and Heller, S. (eds) (2006) Looking Closer 5: Critical Writings on Graphic Design, New York: Allworth Press, p221-224 Papenek, V. (1984) Design For the Real World: Human Ecology and Social Change (Second Edition), London: Thames and Hudson Poynor, R. (2001) Obey The Giant: Life In The Image World, London: August Media Ltd The Guardian (2014) 'Designers Design For The 1% “ It's Time To Start Designing For The 99%' [online] Accessed from: http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/designers-designone-percent-sustainable-future (Accessed on: 19/3/15) YouTube (2015) Tetley Feast [online] Accessed from: https://www.youtube.com/channel/ UC2fcdjvnX6KoQvAvSWWSGWg (Accessed on: 18/2/15)