The Social Design Toolkit

communities question design

SOCIAL DESIGN TOOLKIT

Change for Social Design

Terms

The Social Design Toolkit

HELLO!

WE ARE EXCITED THAT YOU DECIDED TO JOIN US IN THIS JOURNEY. BUT BEFORE WE START, HERE ARE THE DEFINITIONS TO COMMONLY USED TERMS IN THE GUIDE.

Hegemony (he·ge·mo·ny noun) the

social, cultural, ideological, or economic influence exerted by a dominant group.

Further reading: A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present

by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.

Social Design (so·cial de·sign noun) is understood as a

Neoliberalism (neo·lib·er·al·ism noun) is a political-economic theory and practice that proposes that people’s well being can be best served by private enterprise. To achieve this, the state has to be limited to setting up the structures (military, police and legal) to secure private property rights and guarantee the proper function of markets. Other than that, state should have no further interention to avoid bias.

Further reading: A Brief History of Neoliberalism

by David Harvey.

design process that contributes to improving human wellbeing and livelihood. Social designers consider that they have a professional responsibility to bring about real change in the world through good design. To do so, some create products to alleviate the needs of underserved populations like but not limited to: elderly people, poor and third world countries. As a process, some designers tie social design to the ideas behind design thinking and human-centered design. Others utilize the term to describe the process of design the social world, our perception of the man-made reality. While it has many incarnations, Social Design also includes ideas from tactical media, system design, etc.

But in reality neither social design or design thinking are precise or even particularly useful terms. They are placeholders until the field of design can come up with a few more relevant ones.

Introduction

The Social Design Toolkit

HELLO AGAIN!

INTRODUCTION

This toolkit is for community leaders who want to:

Define the Challenge: Evaluate a social designer to ensure the protection, care and support of communities vulnerable to social design.

Build New Skills: Help a social designer develop tools that embrace dissent.

Gain Knowledge: Shift a social designer’s inclination from making consumer products to answering the question of equity.

WHY A TOOLKIT The Social Design Toolkit was developed in response to social designers leading a new crusade to spark development. As Third World post-colonial countries become hot spots for design interventions, Change for Social Design believes it is important to give community leaders tools to avoid being victims of social design.

The Social Design Toolkit includes cultural probes, reading selections and a term references to help social designers better understand the unequal power dynamics they could potentially instantiate if not educated in post-colonial theory.

Social designers, confronted with an unjust world where resources are not distributed equally, are using neoliberal free-market practices to effect change. But instead they are instantiating new forms of material and ideological dominance. More often, they create entrepreneurial opportunities for themselves instead of resolving the problem. In the words of Gui Bonsiepe, a critic of design for development practices: “Design problems will only be resolved in the local context, not by outsiders coming in for a stop-over visit.�

With the Social Design Toolkit, community leaders can teach social designers how to address development and the question of equity from the perspective of freedom from bias or favoritism toward western ideals.

Introduction

MANDATE

THE RIGHT TO LIVE IN A SOCIAL DESIGN-FREE ENVIRONMENT

Take matters into your own hands! If not, your community could be vulnerable to Social Design.

We at Change for Social Design understand your frustration with Social Design’s execution of the mandate ‘Design for Social Change’. That’s why we will help you turn their lives upside-down! Social designers and their ‘fixes’ obscure the ideological and political complexity of problems in Third World post-colonial communities. This toolkit will help your social designer change his approach and grow to be an ethical being.

Social Design is the professionalization of humanitarian design. It is the idea that effective change isn’t about policy reform, but accepting the problem as it is and providing ‘fixes.’

In our opinion, some social designers affected by the professionalization of humanitarian design, never grew up.

Sure, social designers acknowledge that design can be more than aesthetics and try to define their social responsibility as a professional contribution but in terms of their methods, many of them are still stuck in the early neoliberal free-market approach. Neoliberalism seeks to keep government honest

The Social Design Toolkit

and small by limiting its role. This political ideology actually increases the role of the private sector by having government support free trade, deregulated markets, and privatization.

These types of social designers accept a situation as a given instead of questioning the role of government and private companies that create the problem in the first place.

As long as things can be ‘fixed’ with a consumer object, they are satisfied. However, when social designers experience conflict, controversy, or crises because the neoliberal freemarket approach is limited, they respond with less than favorable reactions. Most seem to throw in the towel and think their good intentions are misconstrued. Instead, they might embrace a passive nihilist state, in which they think it is better to do nothing than actually tackle the problems.

Yes, there are problems in the world, but you, the community leader, understand that to create effective change you should balance questioning complex political situations with the need for problem solving. As the proverb goes: it takes a whole village to raise a child. So now you can help a social designer grow up!

The Social Design Toolkit can help social designers shift how they address equity by building tools based on dissent instead of utilizing neoliberal free market practices.

Using the Social Design Toolkit, you can hijack the social designers’ power position and use it against them. Toolkits developed by design consultancies are marketable for their capability to generate solutions. But the process demands cultural hegemony, enforced by paternalistic ideas of how communities need to behave to achieve change. By using their methods, like a toolkit, you can make it difficult if not impossible for social designers to dismiss your claims that their work is geared toward First World profit.

Introduction

The Social Design Toolkit

HOW TO USE THE TOOLKIT

JUST ADD A SOCIAL DESIGNER

The Social Design Toolkit was created to help you, the community leader, address a social designer’s impulse toward consumer objects. With this toolkit, a social designer has nothing to lose but his assumptions!

We have divided the main three topic into Activities.

Since social designers tinker with cultural probes or techniques used to gather inspirational data about people’s lives, we have packaged the activities in the same form.

No matter how neoliberal your social designer is, this process can help reframe the question of equity. Also will help a social designer understand horizontalism.

The Activities facilitate their learning experience by breaking the topics into digestable exercises using post-it notes, skits, learning cards, and prototype building.

The activities are arranged under three main topics:

The three main topics are divided into the following steps:

Define the Challenge

Define the Challenge: Evaluate a social designer to ensure the protection, care and support of communities vulnerable to social design.

Build New Skills: Help a social designer develop tools that embrace dissent.

Gain Knowledge: Shift a social designer’s inclination to make consumer products and answer the question of equity.

Build New Skills

Is your social designer neoliberal?

How can social designers build objects for dissent?

Is your social designer ready to move beyond neoliberalism?

Social designers and dissent

Social designers and the negative impact of their neoliberal designs

Social designers and the question of equity

Gain Knowledge

Activity: Define the Challenge

The Social Design Toolkit

DEFINE THE CHALLENGE

Keep in Mind Keep a visual record of your goal

The activities under this topic will help you, the community leader evaluate a social designer. The intention is to find out how neoliberal your social designer is, then find out if the social designer is ready to move beyond neoliberal free-market practices or not. These activities are critical to challenging social designers to move beyond consumer objects and to help them get confortable.

Is your social designer neoliberal?

You can change social design, one social designer at a time!

Be aware of your shared values Openly discuss with your social designer what’s important to you and how you like to work, so there aren’t big surprises when you meet.

Remix the groups Make sure that when dividing into smaller groups, the social designer is always with two different community members.

This will encourage non-hierarchical interactions.

Is your social designer ready to move beyond neoliberalism?

Let’s begin the journey!

Continue to remind your social designer of the goal.

Hang inspirational posters on the walls and document everything on Learning Cards (provided at the end of the toolkit). They will serve as both a record of your progress and an inspiration for future work.

Next Step Is your social designer neoliberal?

Undertaking this work collaboratively ensures that your social designer does not stray from the goal: questioning consumer objects.

Beware! Some might throw in the towel and become defensive. Give your social designer a few post-it notes to help ease the stress of behavior change. In case the post-it’s fail, use the stress reduction card.

Activity: Define the Challenge

The Social Design Toolkit

DEFINE THE CHALLENGE

IS YOUR SOCIAL DESIGNER NEOLIBERAL? Become the village! Now you can help a social designer grow by helping the social designer understand neoliberalism and change his or her making forever! First, evaluate the social designer.

Time

35 min for a team of 3, add 5 min each additional team member.

Give the social designer 5 min to talk about each project or they might consume all the meeting time in the excitement to share

Materials

A4 or US Letter size paper, pens, Learning Card and Caution Card

“You, like the values you carry, are the products of an American society of achievers and consumers, with its two-party system, its universal schooling, and its family-car affluence. You are ultimately-consciously or unconsciously– ‘salesmen’ for a delusive ballet in the ideas of democracy, equal opportunity and free enterprise among people who haven’t the possibility of profiting from these” -Ivan Illich, To Hell with Good Intentions

Previous Step Introduction: Defining the Challenge

Now Is your social designer neoliberal?

Next Step Is your social designer ready to move beyond neoliberalism?

1

Divide your group into teams of three: two community members for each social designer. The rest of the community should disband for a while. Social designers rarely spend more than a few weeks in actual communities and can easily become overwhelmed.

2 3 4 5

Hand each team a piece of paper and ask them to write the question ‘Is your social designer neoliberal?’ at the top. Hand each team a Caution Card. Ask the social designer to talk about two past projects where they were socially responsible.

On the question paper, write down all the social designer’s words that could hint towards neoliberal practices or unequal power dynamics. Explain why using the Caution Card.

Ask each person to post their paper on the wall and talk about their view of the projects. If there are repeated projects in different groups, talk about the similarities and differences as to how each group thought about them.

Circle what seem to be the most neoliberal projects. Write these on a clean sheet of paper with the heading ‘Useless Neoliberal Ideas’. Put this sheet on the wall for future reference.

Resources

CAUTION CARD

Guide your social designers so he or she always remembers what not to design.

“Traits To Identify What Makes A Social Design Neoliberal” By Cameron Tonkinwise •

Promote small group coping rather than social changing

•

Promote small group resilience through crisis rather than societal avoidance of crisis

•

Avoids systems that let people escape money, especially electronic transactions

•

Avoid systems that let people operate anonymously or collectively, preferably getting them to use a fixed digital identity

•

Aim at making people more flexible in terms of employable skills

•

Aim at making people more mobile with less attachment to particular places or products

•

Encourages participation only at lower levels of systems that nevertheless have no collectively-owned components

•

Celebrate Individual freedom, especially in the form of choice

•

Celebrate elegant design as a universal taste

•

Combining voluntary contributions with corporate ownership

•

Measuring outcomes

The Social Design Toolkit

LEARNING CARD

Record what your social designer discovers and map the progress.

What we did

activity names in the order we completed them

What we learned

key insights from the activities we did

What we’re going to do next

try another activity, clarify your goal, revisit your approach

Resources

The Social Design Toolkit

BANG bang HEAD head HERE here STRESS REDUCTION CARD

Step 1: Place page on firm surface Step 2: Follow directions in the center of the circle Step 3: Repeat step 2 as necessary, or until unconscious Step 4: If unconscious, cease stress reduction activity

Activity: Define the Challenge

The Social Design Toolkit

DEFINE THE CHALLENGE

IS YOUR SOCIAL DESIGNER READY TO MOVE BEYOND NEOLIBERALISM? To re-educate your social designer, the time has come to choose a project to work together on. But first, have your social designers fully commit to the experience and sign the pledge! Then you can let your social designers roam free!

Time

30 min + 2 min for each social designer still in the community willing to engage in the activities

Materials

A4 or US Letter size paper, pens, Learning Card and Agreement Card

“I do have deep faith in the enormous good will of the U.S. volunteer.

However, his good faith can usually be explained only by an abysmal lack of intuitive delicacy. By definition, you cannot help being ultimately vacationing salesmen for the middle-class ‘American Way of Life’ -Ivan Illich , To Hell with Good Intentions

Previous Step Is your social designer neoliberal?

Now Is your social designer ready to move beyond neoliberalism?

End of Section Defining the Challenge

1 2 3

Stand in a circle. Have your social designer stand in the middle of the circle.

Have the social designer say if he or she is ready to move beyond neoliberalism.

Record this on a large piece of paper. If no, kick the social designer out.

Once your social designer has spoken, establish the timeframe of the project.

Put it on the wall for the social designer to see. It will serve as a reminder that no matter how he tries to ‘shadow’ you, the social designer’s presence is disruptive.

Once you have put your goals and timeframe on the wall, give the social designer a pen, and ask him/her to sign the Agreement Card then you can hold them legally accountable for keeping their pledge.

The idea that every American has something to give, and at all times may, can and should give it, explains why it occurred to students that they could help Mexican peasants “develop” by spending a few months in their villages.”

-Ivan Illich , To Hell with Good Intentions

Now that your social designer has agreed to release the chains of neoliberal assumptions, proceed to gaining knowledge!

Next Section Introduction: Gain Knowledge

Resources

AGREEMENT CARD

Contract for ‘Is your social designer ready to move beyond neoliberalism?’

This is an Agreement between _______________, hereinafter Social Designer, and__________, hereinafter Community.

The Social Design Toolkit

LEARNING CARD

Record what your social designer discovers and map the progress.

What we did

activity names in the order we completed them

This Agreement covers the preparation of project ______________.

Social Designer will deliver to the Community on or before agreed date project _________________ to the Community. All concepts, ideas, copy, sketches, artwork, electronic files and other materials related to it will become the property of both the Social Designer and the Community under the United States Copyright Act of 1976.

Social Designer acknowledges that project ______________ is being created with the Community. Credit for the work shall read: credit to Community and Social Designer, provided that a substantial portion of the Social Designer’s work conforms with the ‘Useless Neoliberal Ideas’ paper. The Community is not under any obligation to use the project _____________ if it turns out to be neoliberal, and will determine if they should support it.

What we learned

key insights from the activities we did

Project description: Teach the Social Designer to not rely on neoliberal free-market practices to spark change. The project will consist of a learning intervention and ________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________ Please indicate acceptance of the terms by signing this Agreement.

Social Designer______________________________________________ Community__________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________ Date__________________________

What we’re going to do next

try another activity, clarify your goal, revisit your approach

Activity: Gain Knowledge

The Social Design Toolkit

GAIN KNOWLEDGE

Keep in Mind

Your social designer is learning how to reframe equity as freedom from bias or favoritism. Now that your social designer understands the problem with consumer objects and how they replicate unequal power dynamics, help him/her build tools that utilize dissent. These activities will help the social designer collaboratively shape spaces to discuss development.

Be mindful of the meta-political moment Everyone has different moments that confront his or her ethics and provide the motivational force for action. Be mindful of these different moments, as they will serve to build the course of action for the social designer.

Social designer’s disappointment Social designer’s disappointment with development is viewed through ‘lack’. Social designer’s disappointment arises from the realization that Third World post-colonial communities ‘lack’ what First World industrialized-countries have e.g. safe and quick access to water.

Make sure you’re having fun Social designers and the negative impact of their neoliberal designs

Social designers and the question of equity

Even if you get serious in the activity you’re doing, remember to laugh and enjoy the process. Your social designers are growing!

To help your social designer reframe the question of equity, define what development is to you. Guide the shift from consumer objects to addressing government systems.

Let’s continue the journey!

You can change social design, one social designer at a time!

Next Step Social designers and the negative impact of their neoliberal designs

Remember! It is easy to lose sight of the goal so monitor the mood of the room.

Activity: Gain Knowledge

The Social Design Toolkit

GAIN KNOWLEDGE

SOCIAL DESIGNERS AND THE NEGATIVE IMPACT OF THEIR NEOLIBERAL DESIGNS Explain to your social designers the problem with neoliberal practices. Use examples to help the social designer realize the question of equity should not be addressed with consumer objects. Social designers instantiate new forms of material and ideological dominance instead of helping communities.

Time

1

Divide your group into teams of three: two community members for each social designer. Hand each team a piece of paper and a Project Example Card. Have them unpack the project using the Caution and Hegemony Cards.

Give each social designer 10 minutes to create a skit that illustrates the negative impacts of their work. Use props to build the skit e.g. a designer wishes to solve problems related to water access. They make a water filter and finance it using the economic exchange of carbon credits. The social designer sells the carbon credits to companies with carbon caps and allows them to keep polluting.

2

45 min for a team of 3, + 5 min each additional team

Materials

A4 or US Letter size paper, pens, Learning Card, Project Example Card, Caution Card and Hegemony Card

“A failed product, particularly one in which users have invested effort, money, and personal pride, can lead to dire consequences such as the loss of money that might be used for a child’s school fees.”

-Krista Donaldson, Why to be Wary of “Design for Developing Countries

Previous Step Gain Knowledge

Now Social designers and the negative impact of their neoliberal design

Next Step Social designer and the question of equity

3 4

Have each team perform their skit.

After each performance, have the social designers elaborate on the consequences illustrated. Explain in details the cases of cultural hegemony and material dominance. Write the answers on the sheet of paper.

After every team has presented, explain the term equity and how the question of social equity is addressed. Quickly recapitulate how neoliberalism negatively impacts you and present the formula provided below to start the next phase.

PHILOSOPHY > DISAPPOINTMENT > DEVELOPMENT > QUESTION OF EQUITY > NEED TO ADDRESS LACK > CONSUMER PRODUCTS

Resources

PROJECT EXAMPLE CARD LifeStraw

What it does Designed by the firm Vestergaard Frandsen, LifeStraw is able to remove waterborne diseases, such as typhoid and dysentery.

Directed mainly towards populations in Africa, LifeStraw provides Third World post-colonial communities with one vital necessity: clean drinkable water.

The Social Design Toolkit

LEARNING CARD

Record what your social designer discovers and map the progress.

What we did

activity names in the order we completed them

The controversy The cost of LifeStraw is too high the populations it wishes to serve in Third World post-colonial countries. In a retail environment, it sells in the range of US $20-$25. In the case of Uganda, this translates into 52,000-65,000 Ugandan Shillings. Following the Ugandan National Household Survey of 2009/2010, a male-headed household in rural Northern Uganda makes 117,200 shillings a month, which translates into US $45.

Perhaps because of this financial reality, Vestergaard Frandsen has instead launched a campaign to provide free LifeStraw filters to four million people in Kenya. What looks like a gesture of generosity is actually another entrepreneurial strategy - one that perpetuates unequal donor-recipient power dynamics. In the article “Fighting Water-Borne Disease In Africa, And Making Millions In the Process” Lisa Katayama explains that by donating LifeStraw, Vestergaard Frandsen is actually generating a lot of money through carbon credits that can then be sold for a premium to companies with carbon caps. Katayama explains that Kenyans burn wood to boil water to eliminate waterborne diseases. By using LifeStraw instead, Kenya is able to lowers its carbon emissions. Since Vestergaard Frandsen provides the means to reduce the emissions, they earn carbon credits for each donated LifeStraw.

What we learned

key insights from the activities we did

What we’re going to do next

try another activity, clarify your goal, revisit your approach

Resources

CAUTION CARD

Guide your Social Designers so he or she always remember what not to design.

The Social Design Toolkit

HEGEMONY CARD

Guide your social designer so he or she can identify cultural imperialism.

“Traits To Identify What Makes A Social Design Neoliberal” By Cameron Tonkinwise

Excerpts: “To Hell with Good Intentions”

by Ivan Illich

•

Promote small group coping rather than social changing

In his 1968 address, Illich explains that volunteers going to Third World post-colonial countries are exerting ideological dominance by ‘seducing’ the ‘underdeveloped’ to accept U.S. ideals.

•

Promote small group resilience through crisis rather than societal avoidance of crisis

•

Avoids systems that let people escape money, especially electronic transactions

•

Avoid systems that let people operate anonymously or collectively, preferably getting them to use a fixed digital identity

•

Aim at making people more flexible in terms of employable skills

•

Aim at making people more mobile with less attachment to particular places or products

•

Encourages participation only at lower levels of systems that nevertheless have no collectively-owned components

•

Celebrate Individual freedom, especially in the form of choice

•

Celebrate elegant design as a universal taste

“Next to money and guns, the third largest North American export is the U.S. idealist, who turns up in every theater of the world: the teacher, the volunteer, the missionary, the community organizer, the economic developer, and the vacationing do-gooders. Ideally, these people define their role as service. Actually, they frequently wind up alleviating the damage done by money and weapons, or “seducing” the “underdeveloped” to the benefits of the world of affluence and achievement.”

“In fact, you cannot even meet the majority which you pretend to serve in Latin America - even if you could speak their language, which most of you cannot. You can only dialogue with those like you - Latin American imitations of the North American middle class.”

“There exists the argument that some returned volunteers have gained insight into the damage they have done to others - and thus become more mature people. Yet it is less frequently stated that most of them are ridiculously proud of their “summer sacrifices.”

Social designers reinforce cultural hegemony when they create toolkits to ‘teach’ Third World post-colonial communities how to ‘solve’ their problems. They fight to develop a minority that can emulate their design ideals.

Activity: Gain Knowledge

The Social Design Toolkit

GAIN KNOWLEDGE

SOCIAL DESIGNER AND THE QUESTION OF EQUITY Now that your social designer understands the problem with neoliberal practices, confront him/her with the question of equity. Social designers, who see an unjust world where resources are not distributed equally, seek to use the free market to effect change. This is immature. Teach him/her how to define the question of equity from the perspective of freedom from bias or favoritism towards western ideals.

Time

45 min for a team of 3, + 5 min each additional team

Materials

A4 or US Letter size paper, pens, Learning Card

PHILOSOPHY > DISAPPOINTMENT > DEVELOPMENT > QUESTION OF EQUITY> NEED TO ADDRESS LACK > CONSUMER PRODUCTS

TO PHILOSOPHY > DISAPPOINTMENT > DEVELOPMENT > QUESTION OF EQUITY > SPACE FOR COMMUNITIES TO SHAPE DEVELOPMENT > OBJECTS THAT EMBRACE DISSENT

Previous Step Social designers and the negative impact of their neoliberal design

Now Social designer and the question of equity

End of Section Gain Knowledge

1 2 3 4

Give each group member a piece of paper.

Ask them to define social responsibility and development, in one sentence.

After everyone has written down their definitions, pin or tape all the answers up.

Have your social designer walk around the room and compare their answer to that of the community members. Discuss how disappointment with development has lead social designers to view the situation through the lens of ‘lack’.

Ask the social designer to write about one resource (material or symbolic) identified in the community. It can be a relationship or a set of skills. Draw a circle around it.

Ask everyone to write a resource within his or her community. Draw a larger circle around these.

Use the resources to reframe the question of equity as freedom from favoritism towards consumer objects. Teach social designers how your community views development and their expertise.

Now that your social designer has reframed equity, proceed to build new skills and objects using dissent!

Next Section Introduction: Build New Skills

Resources

POST-IT CARD

A little extra to make your social designer feel right at home.

The Social Design Toolkit

LEARNING CARD

Record what your social designer discovers and map the progress.

What we did

activity names in the order we completed them

What we learned

key insights from the activities we did

What we’re going to do next

try another activity, clarify your goal, revisit your approach

Activity: Build New Skills

The Social Design Toolkit

BUILD NEW SKILLS

Keep in Mind

Teach your social designers that to practice equity as freedom from bias or favoritism, they should participate and promote non-hierarchical organization of small groups that integrate manual and intellectual work. The Activities under this topic will help your social designer build tools that utilize dissent to create spaces for conversation regarding systemic change and shaping how development could look to the community leader.

Intellectual work and manual work Intellectual work refers to the systematic vision of the policies, state processes and local socio-political history of a particular community. Manual work is the practice of object making that embraces dissent in an attempt to reveal and shape those state processes and policies. Use these to create a conversation space that is so direly needed!

Dissent and “horizontalidad” (horizontalism) Social designers that use dissent based on equity as freedom from bias or favoritism should find inspiration in ‘horizontalidad’ or non-hierarchical creation.

How can social designers build objects for dissent

Social designers and dissent

Let’s continue the journey!

You can change social design, one social designer at a time!

Next Step Social designers and dissent

Mix and Match Resources There is rarely one single way to best express your ideas to others. You and your social designer can create multiple objects to research systems and together propose solutions.

Remember! Some consider that institutions and norms of democracy give rise to democratic conversations and not the other way around.

Guide the social designer. Encourage objects that promote public dissent and question Western notions of development. Let’s promote a common end.

Activity: Build New Skills

The Social Design Toolkit

SOCIAL DESIGNERS AND DISSENT Explain to your social designer that their presence is not apolitical. Neoliberal free-market practices tip the balance toward First World profit. Doing nothing leaves communities at the mercy of outside interests. To achieve equity, social designers need to understand dissent and horizontalism. Help the social designer organize him or herself non-hierarchically to inquire about development and Western ideals as a group.

Time

30 min for the activity + 2 min for each member to share their work

Materials

A4 or US Letter size paper, pens, Horizontalism Card, and Learning Card

“Politics, I argue, cannot be confined to the activity of government that maintains order, pacification and security while constantly aiming at consensus. On the contrary, politics is the manifestation of dissensus, the cultivation of an anarchic multiplicity that calls into question the authority and legitimacy of the state.”

-Simon Critchley, Infinetly Demanding: Ethics of Commitment, Politics of Resistance

Previous Step Build New Skills

Now Social designers and dissent

Gather the whole group and hand out the Horizontalidad Card. Have each member read one sentence and pass it on. Anyone can decide when to stop reading. With the entire group together, decide how to rotate the responsibility for: • Tracking decisions made and next steps • Updating the timeline as the group changes or accomplishes milestones

1

BUILD NEW SKILLS

Next Step How can social designers build objects for dissent

2 3

Afterwards discuss what members have done to reach the goals agreed to on the Agreement Card. This should be a free-form conversation, where each group member shares his or her opinion.

Remember, the previously defined goals may change. Decide as a group how to proceed on a day-by-day basis.

Answer the following questions together: What challenges have emerged that the group didn’t expect? How can the group occupy, resist and produce through making? Write the new questions on a piece of paper.

“For anarchists pluralism means the presence of different methods that are continually being confronted frankly and clearly. It also means the existence of different, constantly verifiable tendencies, all of which are based on antiauthoritarianism, i.e. freedom and equality, the substitution of the State with free agreement, self-management, federation, direct action, the integration of manual and intellectual work and solidarity.”

-Alfredo M. Bonanno, Fictitious Movement and Real Movement

Resources

HORIZONTALISM CARD

Use this card to explain ‘horizontalidad’ to your social designers.

Quote from “Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina” by Marin Sitrin Neka, from the Unemployed Workers Movement of Solano in 2004 “My personal perspective has to do with the idea of freedom, this idea of discovering that we have collective knowledge that brings us together, that give us strength, that bring us to processes of discovery. This is beyond revolutionary theories, theories that we all know and have heard so often, theories that are often converted into tools of oppression and submission. The practice of “horizontalidad” can give the possibility of breaking with this and creating something that gives us the security that we can self-organize, and do it well, and do so far away from those that try and tell us politics must be done in a particular way.”

The Social Design Toolkit

LEARNING CARD

Record what your social designer discovers and map the progress.

What we did

activity names in the order we completed them

What we learned

key insights from the activities we did

Example of Horizontalism (Uganda)Savings and Credit Co-operative or SACCO is owned, governed, and managed by its members who share a common bond: belonging to the same social group, and live or work in the same community. These members agree to save their money together and make loans to each other. There is no payment or profit to outside interests or internal owners. The members are the owners. They decide how their money will be used.

(Bolivia) “Mujeres Creando” is an organization led by women that seek to express rebellion against patriarchal systems and create change using creativity. “Mujeres Creando” holds creative workshops were they encourage women to reshape gender roles. They call themselves ‘female street agitators’ instead of artists to stress their populist and feminist principles.

What we’re going to do next

try another activity, clarify your goal, revisit your approach

Activity: Build New Skills

The Social Design Toolkit

BUILD NEW SKILLS

HOW CAN SOCIAL DESIGNERS BUILD OBJECTS FOR DISSENT This exercise will help your social designer to embrace dissent as his or her object making strategy. Remind him/her that conversation is a hallmark of participation. It can’t only be about participating. Conversation leads to the articulation of common ends.

Time

45 min for a team of 3, add 5 min each additional team

Materials

A4 or US Letter size paper, and pens

“Horizontalidad requires the use of direct democracy and implies non-hierarchy and anti-authoritarian creation rather than reaction.

It is a break with vertical ways of organizing and relating, but a break that is also an opening” -Marin Sitrina Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina

Previous Step Social designers and dissent

Now How can social designers build objects for dissent

End of Section Build New Skills

Divide your group into teams of three: two community members for each social designer. Ask each team to select a resource for the activity ‘Social designers and the question of equity’. The group will be making a storyboard. Use the following questions as guide to the process: • Who are the main characters?

• What specific challenge is being solved?

• What steps do they go through?

1 2

Give each team a large piece of paper.

Find antonyms for key concepts the opposition uses and see if they can serve as inspiration along with the resources.

Try to use them in a sentence.

Using the same paper, have each team draw four squares on the paper. Have the teams illustrate each frame: • First: introduce the community characters • Second: show the situation to work on • Third: illustrate the object to be made to express dissent • Fourth: show how each character can take on one aspect of your idea

3 4

Have each group share their storyboards and pin them up on the wall. Have a discussion about what works. Write on a new piece of paper what works and what is missing. Proceed to build the ideas out of found materials.

CONGRATULATIONS YOU HAVE REACHED THE END!

Process Completed

The Social Design Toolkit

CONGRATULATIONS!

Define the Challenge: Evaluate a social designer to ensure the protection, care and support of communities vulnerable to social design.

Build New Skills: Help a social designer develop tools that embrace dissent.

Gain Knowledge: Shift a social designer’s inclination from making consumer products to answering the question of equity.

Your social designer survived the process

(a moment of silence for those that quit half-way)

About Change for Social Design

The Social Design Toolkit

ABOUT

CHANGE FOR SOCIAL DESIGN

Change for Social Design is a consortium of designers and design educators working to question neoliberal design approaches in the developing world. Our team provides instruction, consultation and varieties of advice concerning systemic problems and social design’s role in instantiating new dominance.

Change for Social Design was founded in response from the ever-growing use of neoliberal market discourse and consumer objects to spark development in third-world postcolonial context.

GOODBYE!

The Social Design Toolkit is intended to be shareable via a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike CC BY-NC-SA License.

This license lets others build upon this toolkit non-commercially and license their new creations under the identical terms.

Change for Social Design www.changeforsocialdesign.com

The Social Design Toolkit references the Collective Action Toolkit from Frog. For more information please visit: http://www.frogdesign.com/cat

Change for Social Design www.changeforsocialdesign.com