Minor Design Activism: Prompting Change from Within

Co-Design and the public realm

“…Co-Design's engagement with the public realm is rooted in an activist tradition aspiring to increase democratic participation of diverse societal groups in design activities related to public space, services, systems or policy. This is partly due to its historical relationship with the Scandinavian tradition of Participatory Design (PD) which developed in the 1970s and shared concerns and values with labour unions in emancipating workers at the workplace (Bannon and Ehn 2012, 39;Lenskjold, Olander, and Halse 2015). However, since the rise of the Post-Fordist era, Co-Design's engagement has changed due to the influence of increasing globalisation, flexibility, rapid technological developments, increasingly specialised and competitive markets and the associated transformation of social conditions (Boudry et al 2003, 43).…”

Diálogos democráticos que fazem funcionar as cidades

“…The latter refers to design performed by people in their everyday life, in which the designer takes on a more marginal role. When we look at how a diversity of authors have addressed this continuum between expert and diffuse designer roles, we see different roles emerge: catalyst (Meroni and Sangiorgi, 2011), facilitator or 'match-maker' (Björgvinsson et al, 2010), trigger of 'publics' (DiSalvo, 2009;Manzini and Rizzo, 2011), co-designer (Sanders and Stappers, 2008) and design activist (Lenskjold et al, 2015).…”

“…Many definitions of design activism place the designer in an antagonistic position to (public) institutions. However, in PD and infrastructuring contexts, a 'minor' design activism (Lenskjold et al, 2015) takes form, in which the design activist acts from within or in relation to hegemonic public institutions. The Questioning Dialogue allows the designer to think and act collectively 'from within' and 'in relation to' , which stands in contrast with more traditional approaches of design activism.…”

“…Analysis of the fieldwork showed that this role does not correspond with the romantic idea of the designer operating as an opponent of policy who intervenes and disrupts the current state of affairs. However, referring to the idea of minor design activism (Lenskjold et al, 2015), the design activist in the Traces of Coal project collaborates thoroughly, slowly and closely with the city and other institutions and operates from within existing power relations. A crucial way in which the Questioning Dialogues of the design activist took form is by publicly, yet carefully disclosing documentation of attachments and, in that sense, revealing and changing these relations via social media, in the city space (people's workspaces) and in the shopfront.…”

“…between designers and people involved in different domains in city-making. For instance, by using the typology, we were able to discuss the advantages of moments at which the design activist role overlaps with the co-designer role (Lenskjold et al, 2015). In the case study, the speculative public documentation on informal work activities in the city that challenge the status quo perceptions of the future of work could be actively used in the co-design workshops to trigger the imagination of the participants.…”