Interconnected Learnings
#insights post
*2024 started with a bang* and what better day to share than on International Womens Day! #IWD2024
Last few months have presented great opportunities for reflection and interconnected learnings across design, policy, research, advisory towards ‘better’ processes, places, spaces and products with well-being at heart. Sharing some of these below:
💥Fantastic to be invited to provide early-stage insight to the Global Design Forum and help shape the London Design Festival 2024.
Discussed the need to see demonstrable examples of Regenerative thinking through; design process + delivery + product as part of wider systemic intersections from a global selection of voices. Discussed the value of building post event networks to offer meaningful connections with audience, speakers and GDF over time.
💥Excellent to see my mentee Sharon Thandi’s ‘Tiny Spaces - Huge Impact, The Pocket Park Scheme’ be well-received and her efforts recognised. Delivered as part of the Future of London Leadership Mentoring Programme within the theme of ‘Retrofit - Making the Most’ to a cross-sector industry audience.
Her work shed light on the ecological health and climate need for connection to nature giving meaningful consideration on the overarching issue of maintenance, funding and providing a call to action around funding models, maintenance systems and community co-participation.
💥Lovely to be invited to review the WSA Masters of Architecture Value Unit projects from concept to development. The proposals are set around a collaborative and asset-based ethos - valuing what already exists in a place to build on existing strengths rather seek ‘problems to solve’.
From the WSA Value 2023-24 Briefing Pack. ‘This is our sixth Value Unit - the 11th year of Community Gateway - committing to what Adrienne Maree Brown terms an ‘inch wide mile deep’ strategy. Value Unit theses respond to questions, challenges and opportunities raised by partners and prevailing cultural, economic and political contexts. We build on each other’s work, creating what one resident terms a ‘growing catalogue of community knowledge.’ Our ethos is collaborative and ‘asset-based’ – valuing what already exists in a place. We identify and build on
existing strengths, rather than seeking ‘problems’ to ‘’solve.’
💥Great to be invited/attend a series of intersecting discussions on how to visualise cities, enable collaboration for a circular economy, design for climate needs and showcase what ‘good’ design could look like. Interwoven ideas:
✨On Understanding Place - Place must be understood as a place issue with deeper layers and cultural influences, rather than a traffic problem, a crime problem, a poverty problem etc. It’s not regenerative if it’s not based in place and culture.
✨On Data Accessibility - Data collection methods should also become visualisation methods by which to bring people along and make visible, that which is invisible for everyone to learn together.
✨On Questioning Data - Showing complexities and contradictions of place using maps can provide greater context to a situation.
✨On Understanding Complexities - Need for reconnection, systems thinking and complexity approaches in alignment with communities.
✨On Prevention and world view integration - Co-create with the people who have lived in their eco-systems for thousands of years - go deeper than the symptoms. Shift from a solutioneering mindset to one that sees the world through its manifesting potential, reflect on our scaffolding and world view.
✨On Funding - Good Ideas take time and discussion - plan for this as part of funding. These then need to be quickly tested and iterated - plan for this as part of funding. The design needs to consider its afterlife and reconnecting back into the wider system - plan for this as part of funding.
✨On The Present - Our agency to make a difference is not anywhere but in the present.
✨On Design - Design to support the community, design to support life - always consider any major decision through three questions: Does it serve myself, does it serve my community, does it serve all life.
Visualising Cities - Darjan Hill, Joost Grootens, Michael Brenner, Adam Paul Susaneck
Enabling Collaboration For A Circular Economy (Learning from case studies)- SI Network, Dilyana Mihaylova
Radical Desirability - How To Design For Climate Needs - IDEO, Bryan Walker, Coe Letta Stafford, Natalia Vasquez,
Design As A Regenerative Practice & Design For A Better World - Towards humanity-centred design (Humanity - that which impacts all life). RCA Design for Good, Don Norman Sean Carney Nick De Leon, Dr. Daniel Christian Wahl, Dr Richard Atkinson, Dr Delfina Fantini van Ditmar
💥Happy to be building collaborative projects & proposals that put these insights into practice - more on these soon:
Shaping the eco-system of good processes & behaviours -
Understanding today’s Idea of ‘Work’ - Towards An Interdisciplinary Skills Based Approach
Revealing Places/Spaces - Towards Belonging, Healing and Nature-Led Integration
Unravelling Connections - Towards Integrating and Revealing Global Lived-Experience
