Responsibly entering, engaging, and exiting public collaborations – collaborative design work with community-based organisations for sustainable transitions

The EEE-arrow (establishing, engaging, and exiting). A visual model illustrating the relational process for a collaboration. The back-ground arrow represents the ongoing transition process of the community-based organisation, the white line represents the community-based organisation and the black line the designer in a collaboration. Together they represent the processual relationship between these two actors in three phases of a collaborative project.

Collaborative design with community-based organisations for sustainable change

Why doing collaborative design with community-based organisations?

In all forms of collaborations relationships are built, and relationships require taking responsibility for them. In this reflection I am particularly interested in the relationship between the designer (design researcher) and community-based organisations (see Di Salvo et al 2013) in joint projects focusing on sustainable change. Design´s inherent potential to identify and propose change can be of great support for civil community-based organisation engaged in processes of sustainable transition. Correspondingly, such collaborations can be profoundly inspiring for designers and design researchers since they reward the design community with insights and learnings about the plural nature of sustainable transition in real-work contexts. Working closely for some time with an organisation could thus be understood as an interdependent relationship and mutual exchange between the organisation and the designer, or – as will be developed here – they engage with each other. Another important reason for designers to engage with civil organisations, is simply that there are many aspects of our society that will not, cannot, transform for sustainability unless these organisations commit to transition processes. A work they must both be acknowledged for but also supported with.

However, it is necessary to understand that such a relationship must be undertaken with responsibility on behalf of the partner, because change and transition always involves risk, especially if an organization´s transition process is facilitated by an, to the organisation, outside designer.

Participatory design with societal actors

“Responsibly establishing, engaging and exiting collaborations with community-based organisations for sustainable transition” is one outcome from one of my research engagements conducted within the framework of my doctoral research. In my research, I explore the possibilities for different actors, such as residents, civil servants in urban planning, developers, and tenant´s organisations, to participate in sustainable urban development in a Swedish context. Through participatory concepts such as infrastructuring, institutioning and organizing, I try to understand what meanings ‘sustainable transition’ has for different actors´s actions. From this understanding I work with interventions to explore how design can challenge and ‘thickening’ the understanding of sustainability by giving voice to marginalized perspectives on local controversies that inevitably arise in complex transition processes such as urban development projects.

This text has sprung as a reflection from a collaborative project conducted in 2021 with a tenant owned housing association, Brf Ida, and a larger EU-funded development project Malmö Together, run by the civil organisation Malmö Ideella. One of the fundamental challenges with the project was to better understand how participatory design can support civil actors to become more involved in the transition process of urban planning and development. Though partly outside this challenge, but intertwined with it, the never-ending challenge of collaboration, participation, and transition was always there in the background, and gave rise to many thoughts on design work in collaborations that are here reflected upon in this text.

What makes collaborative design for sustainable transition different?

Is design work with a community-based organisations committed to sustainable change different from other design collaborations with civic communities? I would say yes, for two reasons. First, a commitment to sustainable transition means taking on a dual perspective on needs, where both the needs of the community as well as needs greater than the community must be catered for. It is about a change of perspective, from just seeing, or mostly seeing the own community, to see the community as part of something greater. Thus, the transition process is not only organizational change for internal improvement of th community, but also a fostering of expanded perspectives of connections and relations. If these expanded perspectives and responsibilities are taken seriously, they will set a transition process in motion whereby the community needs to have the courage to question and challenge its own actions. Such expanded insights are complicated since they must balance between the practical implementation of sustainability in the local here-and-now, and at the same time identify and maintain continued focus on expanded connections, the there-and-then. The second reason for answering ‘yes’ to this question, is that transition processes are diffuse, on-going and never fully completed. Thus, a transition process is stretched out in time and space and goes far beyond any singular and framed ‘project’. Clear outcomes at a specific time can be hard or irrelevant to identify, instead it becomes important to develop a sense for change over time, transition. Both reasons are sensitive matters, which easily stirs up emotions, insecurity, concern, and conflict. This in turn can give rise to a strong desire to go back to where you started, to stabilize the situation, fight, or flight.

The trickiness of sustainable transition

Transition processes are therefore sensitive by nature. Design projects with civil communities are always ‘tricky’ (see Light and Akama 2019) and comes with risks. Coming as an outside designer, for a limited period of time, on the conditions to carry out a design project seeking change and transition does indeed need to challenge ingrained perceptions, but in such a way that it does not leave a mess behind for the community to sort out best they can. Another, and probably greater, risk is that the results of the project are never applied by the organisation, because the changes they would bring are perceived as too transformative, creating too much tension. In both cases, the designer has not really succeeded in creating the conditions that the transition needs. Working with community-based organisations for sustainable change encompasses much more work of engagement, than just the   ordinary participatory design tasks, such as i. eg. workshops, visualisaitions, and prototyping.

Why is the project-based perspective on such design work not sufficient?

Though much design-work with civil communities come in the form of ‘a project’, the perspective of the framed project might not be the best lens to understand, and acknowledge, the integrated work effort conducted for this form of engagement – both in the actual organisation, as well as the ambitions of transformative change for sustainability. Reflecting on my own experiences of collaborative work with community-based organisations, I thus propose a processual and relational understanding of such work, where the time-framed project with all its design tasks, is only one part of ‘a greater whole’. For clarity, the focus for this argumentation lies on community-based organisations that have not been put together solely to fulfil the purpose of ‘a project’, but have existed before, and will exist after, the ‘project’. This condition is important to clarify, as it is the starting point for this type of design work and thus is a prerequisite for this discussion. From this position this research proposes a shift in focus from the framed ‘project’, towards a design work characterized by a care and action-oriented perspective of responsibly establishing, engaging with, and finally exiting a collaborative design relationship.

Engagements change the perspective on collaborative design-work beyond ‘the project’

What is an engagement?

In my research work I make a distinction between an engagement with a community-based organisation and the collaborative project conducted with the same organisation. I make this distinction to include and acknowledge all parts of the design work, especially the once that falls outside the more recognized design work done within the project. The terminology of engagements comes from participatory design, and I her draw on Seravalli´s (2014) descriptions about her engagements with community-based organisations. Seravalli describes how she, as a junior researcher, initially was very focused on her own role and part in a collaborative project, as design researcher and designer. Over time, she realized that there were several ‘events’ happening outside the framed design project that created meaning both to her research work and to the transition process of the community. These ‘events’ could be anything, something someone said in a meeting, something happening accidentally in the lives of her collaborators, an email, the matter of resources available in a specific situation, etc. Being attentive to such events and incorporate them into her design work were as important, if sometimes not more important, than the planned design interventions in her projects. Thus, a design engagement means work that goes far beyond what happens ‘inside’ the design project.

This notion on ‘engagement’ have sensitized me, in my work, to the relational aspect of a collaboration and all the important, but often invisible small events and efforts that happens ‘around’ or ‘along-side’ the visible design work. It is a perspective that has shifted my own focus from the framed design project.

The Establishing-Engaging-Exiting Arrow (EEE-Arrow)

To illustrate my reasoning I have tried to visualize the process of engagement, and I call it the EEE-arrow, standing for establishing, engaging, and exiting an engagement. As visual models always are, this illustration is a simplification of what is really going on, but I use it as a model for illustrating what I try to simultaneously express through text.

In my work with community-based organisations engaged with sustainable transition and participation in urban development, it has become clear that the transition process started at a much earlier stage than when I started my collaboration with them. In the background I have placed a large arrow which represents the ongoing transition process for sustainability the organisation already has embarked on. This process is often a more distributed, overarching process, covering several related issues. At some point in the transition process of the organisation, something led up to the event where the initiative for collaborating with a designer, me, is taken, either from them or of from me. Without this pre-interest in transition and willingness to change, a collaboration would never have been initiated. In the model this is illustrated with a white, dotted line representing the organisation, and a black, dashed line representing me meets. This initial event is the starting point for a potential engagement. As an inspiration for my visual model, I have used the well-known Damien Newman’s (2010) illustration “Process of design squiggle” (see for example Almqvist 2017 article). Newman has made a simple illustration of the complexity of a design process, with a fuzzy initial state of a design process, which at state of conceptualization reach a clear direction and focus. A similar process can be noticed in a collaboration.

So, to be able to collaborate and collaboratively conduct a project together, an engagement must first be established. This initial phase of establishing is often as fuzzy as the initial phase of Newman´s illustration. At a point an agreement is reach on the collaboration and the project (this agreement can be clear and well defined, or not) and the actual engagement for the project can begin. This is often bumpy ride, too, however, if successfully established, less bumpy than the establishing phase. When the project is over, the engagement can continue into another project or not, but at some point, the engagement between the designer and the organisation will reach its end, and it becomes time to exit. Also, this phase needs attention and care. What parts of the collaboration will live on after this divide? What change will live on after this divide? How will the continuous transition process go on?

Below I will account for a few learnings from my own experiences of going through these three phases with a community-based organisation.

Learnings from experiences of establishing, engaging, and exiting.

Establishing an engagement

Engagement do not grow from one, initial contact, not even establishment. Instead, I argue that as well as engagement must be established, establishment is a design work in itself. Establishing can be quick or slow, over a short or a long time, but entails communication, negotiation, clarifications, discussion, illustrations, and meetings. This is an initial collaborative process with its own twists and turns, and which deserves careful attention. As a designer I try to pay close attention to the inner processes of the organizations, as a community. I also try to understand and acknowledge their already on-going transition work. Equally important is to clarifying expectations on both parts, and on the project, as well as how and in what way a collaboration with a designer might be helpful to this work. On the other hand, transparency on the normative aspects of sustainability is equally important, since working with a normative and political concept which sustainability is quickly can lead to misunderstandings and later, during the process, to conflicts. There are several design methods that can facilitate such an establishing process, such as workshops, design games or mapping. It is not until this process has reached a clear point of agreement on ‘what, why, how, when and who’ for the collaboration, an engagement is established, and a collaborative project can start.

Engagements around a collaborative project

Though projects often are the focal point for a collaboration, there is still a lot of design-work that must take place ‘around’ the project, to create a scaffolding structure for it and the collaboration as well as the relation, i.eg. ‘engaging’. Such work often contains all forms of information exchange, general support, friendship, social meetings, networking, resolving internal conflicts, celebrations, unexpected events etc. Often it is difficult to draw strict boundaries of what is ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ a project. The inner life of the organization is often an important factor of how an engagement progress. Many community-based organisation are based on voluntary work, relying on commitment and the willingness to ‘invest’ their time in the organisation and the project. The time of the members are always a resource in negotiation with both professional and private life, which has impact on the project as well as the engagement. Engaging in this aspect means to develop a capacity to see and care for in different ways how to adjust the project and collaboration to all aspects of life. This requires care for how, when and where meetings are hold, flexibility to attendance, openness to bring children, practical issues such as food and drinks, accessibility, communication, etc.

It also requires skills in navigating a project in constantly changing conditions. The focus on transition and how to challenge preconceived notions, must be maintained. I call this a form of integrity that the designer must be able to maintain throughout the project. This can be a real challenge, though these ambitions easily get backgrounded when more every day and/or practical, problems must be addressed throughout the ongoing process.

Exiting an engagement responsibly

The end of a collaborative project is not necessarily the same as an end of an engagement, and not seldomly engagements continues long after a project is completed. Designers working with change and transition must be aware that they are setting processes in motion that they can be considered responsible for even after the formal commitments of a project have been completed. An engagement may lead to new projects, but not necessarily have to. However, designers often (must) move on to new projects and new engagements, thus it eventually become impossible to maintain all relational engagements. Eventually, at some point there will be an end to an engagement. Symbolically the exiting often contains of an ‘event’ that represent a sort of ‘end-point’: a final presentation, a good-bye party, a release or exhibition of the outcome of the project, etcetera. But if we considered these as ‘end-points’, they are just the visual part of the separation. These end-points are part of the exiting phase and have been planned for in advance and often requires a lot of work after. The process of exiting often takes longer time than expected and thus need to start at an earlier stage than maybe imagined. Conceptually I suggest the exiting phase not as an ‘end-point’, instead a phase to be thought of as a processual phase that the designers need to prepare for, as part of an engagement. To ensure the durability of the efforts and learnings of the collaboration, there is a need of handing over work and/or responsibilities, here it becomes important not just finding the right individuals, but also to have time for provide them the resources they will need, maybe even training them. It is also important to account for how ideas and initiatives that has emerged from the engagement becomes anchored in the organisation. When and how will they be followed up? By whom? To anchoring new ideas and initiatives it often becomes important to provide various forms of support for some time.

Documenting actions before, during, and after the project to recognize the full engagement

Participatory design for sustainable transition in urban development

The arguments put forward in this text is based on experiences and reflections-in-action (Schön, 2003 [1995]) throughout a collaborative design engagement with a community-based organisation, but combining this experience with experiences from other collaborative projects with civil organisations. During the project the process has been documented in an autoethnographic manner through a visual timeline, reflecting on the process of collaborative actions, my actions, and the actions of the organisation, as well as events and other influences on the process, not only the design work. During the engagement, a collaborative reflection in the beginning and end of each meeting was conducted which was documented in text. The reasoning is based on my own experiences, and my collaborators experiences, as well as on other design researchers´ ethical considerations and reflections over their collaborative design work with civil communities as documented in research papers.

This text is the initial reflection-on-action (ibid) for a planned paper, where the theoretical framework is elaborated on. Theoretically, the reasoning will be connected to participatory design research on engagements with publics and civil organisations, constructivist organizational theory as a lens for organizing, and feminist ethics of care. This initial reflection-on-action is written with design students in mind, interested in collaborations with civil organisation. 

References:

Almqvist, F. (2017). The fuzzy front-end and the forgotten back-end: User involvement in later development phases. The Design Journal, 20(sup1), S2524-S2533.

Czarniawska, B. (2014). A theory of organizing. Edward Elgar Publishing.

DiSalvo, C., Clement, A., & Pipek, V. (2012). Participatory design for, with, and by communities. International handbook of participatory design, 182-209.

Light, A., & Akama, Y. (2019). The nature of ‘obligation’in doing design with communities: Participation, politics and care. Tricky Design: The Ethics of Things, 131.

Newman, Damien. (2010). The process of design squiggle.

Robertson, T., & Wagner, I. (2012). Ethics: Engagement, representation and politics-in-action. In Routledge international handbook of participatory design (pp. 64-85). Routledge.

Schön, D.A. (2003[1995]). The reflective practitioner: how professionals think in action. (Repr.[= New ed.]). Aldershot: Arena.

Seravalli, A. (2014). Making Commons: attempts at composing prospects in the opening of production (Doctoral dissertation, Malmö University).