Stories in a Beespoon: Exploring Future Folklore through Design

Abstract

This paper explores the role and potential for design as process, artefact and experience to help frame and address societal problems. We consider this through examining a future folklore dialogical object, designed to stimulate conversation and question assumptions. Beekeeping is a particularly rich context with which to adopt this methodological approach, given the significance of global threats to insect pollination aligned with beekeeping's extensive cultural heritage. By drawing on past narratives and contemporary knowledge and practices, the Beespoon, a small copper spoon representing the amount of honey a single bee can make, was codesigned as an experience that actively engaged people with concepts of work, value and pollination. Our design process oscillated across past, present and future stories-the Beespoon as future folklore artefact and experience reflects this complexity, operating across time and value systems to provide new ways to think about how we perceive and understand bees.

‘Learning from history is something that is important for the future’: Why Australian students think history matters

“…However, other scholars do not apply historical consciousness when orienting history education towards the future (e.g. Carretero, 2018; Den Heyer, 2017; Maxwell, 2018). According to Maxwell (2018), ‘a conflict at the heart of history education prevents it from functioning effectively: History is about the past, but education is about the future’ (2018: 1).…”

“…Carretero, 2018; Den Heyer, 2017; Maxwell, 2018). According to Maxwell (2018), ‘a conflict at the heart of history education prevents it from functioning effectively: History is about the past, but education is about the future’ (2018: 1). As we will see, this dualism is not as pronounced in the Australian context.…”

“…However, the scope to meaningfully extend learning up to the present is near impossible while meeting the content-heavy expectations of senior secondary history curricula. Maxwell (2018) identifies this as an issue in the US too: ‘future-focused history education could liberate teachers from the tyranny of content coverage, allowing teachers and students alike to concentrate on deep learning of important historical knowledge that truly matters in people’s lives’ (Maxwell, 2018: 168). A similar tension is noted by Van Stratten et al (2018a), who highlight the discrepancy between the assumptions that history curriculum policy developers make about the implicit goals of history education and the actual requirements explicitly stated in official curricula.…”

Applying Design Fiction in Primary Schools to Explore Environmental Challenges

“…The work reported in this paper was part of the Telling the Bees project, which sought to explore past, current and future narratives about bees and beekeeping through the use of design (e.g. Maxwell et al 2016). To prompt discussion and debate, our future narratives were informed by the use of speculative design (Edwards et al 2016).…”

Beebots-a-lula, Where's My Honey?

“…This immersion in the world of beekeeping and folklore provided a rich context for the authors to reflect, from a design perspective, on what the future of beekeeping might be like [26]. Furthermore, in this paper we ask: How might existing scientific and tacit knowledge and beekeeping management practices be deployed as a design fiction?…”