ARTISTS AND DESIGNERS AS AGENTS OF CHANGE

Sustainability: A new frontier for the arts and cultures, 2008

This paper explores the contribution of art and design in sustainability. The paper has two parts. In the first part sustainability is portrayed as a societal change process in terms of Giddens' structuration theory. This part argues that sustainability as is a process of social structuration that is the result of many actions and practices of many actors over time and space. Society constantly changes as a result of those actions, effects of the actions, feedback loops and reflection on the effects and the feedback loops. In all of these processes, reflexivity is one of the important mechanisms that create change. The conclusion of the first part is that sustainability can be seen as a process of reflection and structuration, but that many people miss the capacities and the conditions to reflect on their lives and changes their lives styles to more sustainable ones. That is why the second part focuses on ways to provide people with more and more adequate 'reflexive capital' that can help them to change their ways of living and can help the structuration process towards sustainability. The paper distinguishes 4 forms of reflexivity and reflexive capital that can be considered of key importance in contemporary society: aesthetic, hermeneutic, ontological and professional. All of these forms go beyond the technical rationality that is dominant in most policy studies and scientific analyses. As a result the contribution of science and mainstream politics in these reflective processes is limited. The paper identifies that by contrast, artists and designers play vital roles in each of the reflective processes, based on the specific characteristics and competencies that they have. The paper presents a wide variety of examples of artistic projects to illustrate this. The paper concludes that by looking at sustainability as a process of structuration in which reflexivity plays an important role, and concluding that we need reflexivity that goes beyond technical rationality, art and design are potentially important change agents in sustainability. Finally the paper indicates that in practice artists are already now more often involved in sustainability projects and are more than before playing the roles of change agents.

This paper concentrates on the roles of designers as agents of sustainable change in communities. This paper was drawn from my research, which I completed with a community of people with physical disabilities in a semi-urban area of Thailand. The main goal was to generate sustainable change in the community and enable them to attain sustainable livelihoods in their community. This research put people at the center of development. It was designed to support the participants and their community to continue improving their capabilities, so that they could reach their full potential to attain sustainable livelihoods long after the completion of research implementation. Sustainable change occurs when the community creates and implements their own ideas rather than accepting and implementing ideas, which have been created for them. To attain sustainable change, designers need to change their own mindsets and attitudes, with those of the participants. The designers are no longer providers of a solution for the participants but become agents of sustainable change with multiple roles as facilitators, enablers, innovators, and disseminators. They also need to provide the people or community, which participate in the research process, an opportunity to investigate their own situation and create a project, which would be implemented in their community. Keywords: designers, sustainable change, sustainable livelihood, Thailand

The 5 steps of Design Thinking. Created by d.school: Institute of Design, Stanford University Design Anthropology / Alberte Laursen Rothenborg methodology" loosing its creative abilities in efficiency-based corporate environments. Helen Walters, 44 journalist and former employee of Nussbaum, continues:

In the two last decades a considerable amount of research has been conducted on the Front End of Innovation. This is the stage of the product development process where the design brief is formulated. This phase is argued to be crucial to the success of the final product. While the Front End of Innovation in general has been a hot research topic, little research has been conducted on its relationship to design for sustainability. Indeed, within Design-for-Sustainability literature a strong focus can be observed on the phase after the formulation of the design brief. Many companies hire external design agencies for their product innovation. In such collaborations, goals and targets for the design project need to be clarified in the early stages of the project, including sustainability targets. The role of design agencies in design for sustainability is also under-researched. This paper discusses the potential of sustainability as a value-adding activity for design agencies. It explores how design agencies deal with sustainability issues in the Front End of Innovation. The analysis is based on in-depth interviews with five major Dutch design agencies. Findings show that a distinction can be made between incorporation of sustainability as a consequence of a client request (i.e. clientdriven sustainability) and when sustainability is incorporated into the project by the agency (i.e. agencydriven sustainability). Also, agencies appear to deal with sustainability on a decomposed level. This study has initiated an array of follow-up studies, which are sketched in the further research section.

Education and New Developments 2019, 2019

Design for sustainability is not necessarily a new subject. Research and studies about it rapidly increase, given the current conditions of the planet and the way lifestyles, production and consumption continually move towards unsustainability. The concept, which was initially treated as a design specialty with ecological concerns, has today a broad theoretical and practical scope, recognizing the important role of users, communities, and society in general. Thus, designers are increasingly expected to have more than technical skills. Existing methods and tools taught at universities, and applied to design practice, are currently challenged by the global changes that affect the planet, by transforming the role and responsibility of designers in building a more sustainable and inclusive material reality. With this scenario, universities play an important role on training professionals rather than just researchers, highlighting the need for teaching methods and processes focusing on p...

Design as Agent of Change, seeks to understand a phenomenon in the field of design as it gets involved with the paradigm of sustainability. By comprehending the systemic causes that drive this transformation and the conflict existing between unsustainable way of living and sustainability, we find a good opportunity for design to get involved in the transition for a sustainable future. The revision made, also allow us to realize that this task will also require changes in the design discipline and by using as reference the four agencies to create a culture of sustainability by design that Tony Fry proposes, we show some examples of initiatives that are triggering this change. As we revised the attributes that can make designers a promising agent and understand the process that allows a subject to become an Agent from the sociological perspective. A question still remains un answered, How can Design could become an Agent of Change? So a proposal of three stages of formation of the agency in design is presented, with the aim not only to provide an overview of the phenomenon but as an opportunity to trigger a dialogue about experiences and reflections, so we reflect about the importance and challenges for Design as Agent of Change.

[email protected] / www.seeproject.org This SEE Policy Booklet is an output of the SEE project, a network of eleven design organisations in Europe, examining how to integrate design into regional, national and European policies. This is the second of four Policy Booklets to be released between 2009 and 2011. The SEE project is co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund through the INTERREG IVC programme.

Journal of Product Innovation Management, 2011

This essay discusses an evolving business model, the sustainability-driven business model, that designers are especially well suited to implement and promote. Designers have a responsibility to connect and coordinate human needs and dreams with new opportunities and inspirations from science, technology, and business in order for products and their usage to be culturally relevant, economically productive, politically beneficial, and ecologically sustainable.

DRS2016: Future-Focused Thinking, 2016

Discern- International Journal of Design for Social Change, Sustainable Innovation and Entrepreneurship, 2020

Keywords: Circular Economy, Design-led innovation, Service design, Citizen designer, Sustainable innovation, Democratisation of design, Co-creation Several global reports have concluded that natural resource extraction at its current levels is unsustainable and will lead to the rapid erosion of the environment and tax global economic growth. One of the alternative paradigms to conserve those resources is the Circular Economy, a system driven by innovation that extends the utility of products as long as possible through a series of strategies that re-use resources. Design can act as a bridging tool and a catalyst for the innovation demanded by the Circular Economy because of its flexibility as a problem-solving discipline. The intermediary role of design can adapt to the complex requirements of Circular Economy stakeholders who want to shift their way of doing business to a more sustainable model, despite formidable policies, economic, cultural and political obstacles. The author explores the evolution and utility of design from a discipline that shapes objects to one that constructs and facilitates complex systems of interactions among collaborators, which in the Circular Economy includes consumers, manufacturers, logistics companies, governments, business and science entrepreneurs. Several examples of design’s role in this facilitative process are presented that showcase the power of design to drive social and cultural transformations and re-cast industrial and business processes. Sustainable innovation is the centrepiece of the Circular Economy and design has a significant role to play in its adoption, particularly from a human-centred perspective that can address formidable constraints to its implementation. Open Access paper, available here: https://www.designforsocialchange.org/journal/index.php/DISCERN-J/article/view/10