Bath School of Design

This paper explores the transition of an historical artefact from personal possession to museum exhibit. The starting point is a Victorian ewer, bowl and chamber-pot set, encountered displayed in a small Yorkshire Museum. The story of this set is the framework for an exploration of literature on how we invest personal, domestic possessions with meaning. In particular, the paper focuses on the relationship between the physical and material properties of the artefact, and its meaning.

Before starting its life in the museum, the jug, bowl and chamber pot set belonged to Mary, the secretary of the museum board. It was gifted to her by a friend four or five years ago, and she kept it in her bathroom filled with potpourri, dried flowers and soaps. When she had her bathroom replaced, there was no longer enough space to display the set. She moved it into storage in the shed, where she kept it on view to remind her that it needed a new home. Then she thought of putting it on display in the new museum toilet, on an old wooden cabinet she had in her conservatory. Her decision to move it out of her home and into the museum toilet was a creative and caring one, which triggered the washstand set’s transformation from a personal possession, into a public historical artefact.

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This paper of practice develops a method for revealing the narrative and emotions connected to a personal possession, in this case a gift. It invites participants to explore their object and associated experiences through drawing and making, and puts these processes at the centre of a constructed gift exchange. The seminar employs drawing and making as vehicles for visualizing thoughts and feelings more immediately than articulating them in words and sentences, and as reflective processes that help us to express thoughts and ideas not usually consciously examined (Gauntlett 2007).
The seminar develops existing research undertaken by the author. It expands ideas and methods generated through the Campaign for Objects in Purgatory, an ongoing artistic research project exploring emotional attachment to possessions. The Campaign sets out to discover how attachment to a possession develops and changes as it is integrated into the home, and to explore the implications of this for research on emotionally sustainable design.
Participants are invited to share with a partner the story of a gift they have received, and kept. They are asked to sketch their object, and the drawing becomes the basis for reflection and discussion. Their partner is then invited to make or modify a frame for the drawing in order to further elicit and communicate the story connected with the object. This guided creative process will be interwoven with discussion on exchange, value, possession, and design. Participants can keep their personalized frame, and the project will be documented in a booklet documenting the method and the objects created. Previous making experience is not necessary.
Julia Keyte is senior lecturer in Jewellery and Metalwork at Sheffield Hallam University. In her teaching and practice, she sees skilled making is a means of thinking; for interrogating and understanding existing objects, and for generating new ones.

This paper establishes a creative method for
engaging an audience in active reflection on their practices of keeping home possessions. Julia Keyte describes how the method incorporates elements of craft production, display, exchange, curation and audience contribution, and discusses how it develops an existing form of contemporary jewellery practice; the making of wearable memories. The method employs jewellery to reallocate the memories and feelings associated with unwanted possessions—and in this way makes a contribution to new knowledge.

This paper is a reflection on a practice led research project called the Campaign for Objects in Purgatory, which sets out to discover how meaning develops in a possession during its life in the home. It explores the implications for designers seeking to create lasting meaning in their products, particularly in the context of emotionally sustainable design. This paper attempts to unravel the role of a series of badges which I produced and distributed as part of the research.
The Campaign has developed over the last two years and has taken the form of workshops, an exhibition, a series of conference papers and a journal article. The badges discussed here were made as part of an exploratory research exhibition that took place in 2011 at Sheffield Institute of Arts gallery. Visitors to the exhibition were invited to contribute an uncherished gift, in the form of a drawing or photograph and accompanying narrative, and in return they received a campaign badge. Each badge featured a photograph of an uncherished gift submitted by someone else. By wearing it the participant gave the object a new ‘voice’ and took the Campaign beyond the boundaries of the exhibition space.
In this paper, the badges are the catalyst for a discussion about the disparity between the everyday circumstances that create meaning in possessions, and design practices of creating meaning in products.

Hardware Hopes is a qualitative research project initiated to explore the personal and emotional side of our relationships with computing devices, by inviting people to tell the stories of the devices they own (e.g. laptops, desktop computers, smartphones, tablets), and asking them to consider how they feel about them. Through analysis of the collected stories I am investigating the ways in which emotion is present, or absent, in our relationships to computing hardware.
Recent work in HCI and design establishes the case for designing longer lifespans into computing devices, to address the problem of increasing waste produced by the fast consumption cycles associated with electronic products. These researchers advocate finding new ways of relating to, and caring for, our devices. The research documented in this paper attempts to understand the emotional and material factors that affect the longevity of people’s personal relationships with computing devices. Computer obsolescence and replacement is often reported and marketed as a necessary by product of technological progress, but the reality of deciding whether a personal computing device should be kept or disposed of is personal and idiosyncratic, and messier than it may at first seem. Understanding the factors that influence whether a device is kept can tell us about the lifespan and obsolescence of computing devices.

Hardware Hopes is a qualitative research project initiated to explore the personal and emotional side of our relationships with computing devices, by inviting people to tell the stories of the devices they own (e.g. laptops, desktop computers, smartphones, tablets), and asking them to consider how they feel about them. Through analysis of the collected stories I am investigating the ways in which emotion is present, or absent, in our relationships to computing hardware. Recent work in HCI and design establishes the case for designing longer lifespans into computing devices, to address the problem of increasing waste produced by the fast consumption cycles associated with electronic products. These researchers advocate finding new ways of relating to, and caring for, our devices. The research documented in this paper attempts to understand the emotional and material factors that affect the longevity of people’s personal relationships with computing devices. Computer obsolescence and ...

An ‘object in purgatory’ is a gift you have received and don't want, but nonetheless feel compelled to keep. My Objects in Purgatory exhibition (2011) invited visitors to contribute their uncherished gifts, and relate the stories associated with them. Their contributions were exhibited, and in return they received a handmade brooch featuring an image of another visitor’s uncherished gift. This paper describes how public display gave the gifts material agency—opening up a new shared space for reflection on the usually taboo subject of unwanted gifts. The use of display in the exhibition and in the brooches provided rich layers of performance, provocation and interpretation. The paper also establishes the Objects in Purgatory exhibition as a method that combines a form of artistic production—the participatory exhibition—with a form of exchange. The method engages the audience in active reflection on their practices of keeping home possessions, and develops an existing form of cont...

Thinking Keeping is a creative, practice-based enquiry into the irreversible act of 'breaking in' to a sealed package. Breaking open a product's packaging structures the user's first experiences of owning the product, and reinforces perceptions of the product's newness, perfection and desirability. It is a pivotal stage in the emotional lifetime of a product. Through creative methods we are subverting the experience of 'breaking the seal', by applying it to products that have already been owned and used. Our enquiry raises questions about the potential of packaging to overcome barriers to reuse, to help construct meaningful lasting relationships with products, and to challenge the desire for newness. We intend to expose contradictions in how consumers value, keep and destroy packaging. The research brings a new angle to research relating design to practices of keeping things and sustainable consumption (e.g. Chapman 2005, Fisher and Shipton 2010, Schiffer...

Gregory Bateson said that we are ‘governed by epistemologies that we know to be wrong’ back in 1972. In the same book Bateson wrote: 'the organism that destroys its environment destroys itself.’ Almost forty years later global ecological systems are in steep decline and converging crises make a deep evaluation of the underlying premises of our philosophical traditions an urgent imperative. This paper will suggest that the roots of the economic crisis are epistemological and that to correct this error whole systems thinking and ecological literacy will become increasing important in business management as well as in other disciplines. It will also suggest that the economic crisis opened new political space and has provided an opportunity for intervention. If we are brave enough to examine of the roots of our problems there is possibility for renewal.

Designers and educators have a unique role to play in the creation of sustainable futures due to our ability to help people envision new realities, develop new cognitive skills for dealing with complexity and create the social capacity to act on the basis of new knowledge. This paper will describe the theory and practice of transformative learning. Transformative learning aims to build the agency to put new knowledge into practice. Beyond the mere dissemination of information, transformative learning engages participants in dialogical and experiential learning processes with the aim of creating deep learning. Due to the fact that problems with regards to sustainability are both complex and deeply entrenched into our culture, these transformative learning processes are essential for the pedagogy associated with sustainability and ecological literacy. This paper introduces transformative learning and offers a short case study of a ‘Teach-in’ for ecological literacy in design education.

Hopenhagen was an initiative by the International Advertising Association (IAA) in support of the United Nations at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP-15) in Copenhagen December 2009. The international public relations campaign culminated with an installation in the public square in central Copenhagen during the climate summit. Meanwhile, many of thousands of climate activists congregated in Copenhagen found Hopenhagen itself so offensive that they made the campaign and installation itself a target of their protests. Hopenhagen is a classic example of corporate appropriation of people’s movements and the subsequent neutralization of the messages demanding structural change and social justice. As such Hopenhagen embodies the conflict within the concept of design activism itself. This paper will describe how Hopenhagen 2009 damaged genuine people’s movements at Copenhagen. It will also prescribe strategies for public exhibitions and information campaigns for more democratic communication processes. Critically it is wrong to assume that the tactics used in the advertising industry can be used to build a climate movement. The mistake started as soon as the UN asked the IAA for help.

The 2012 Imperative was a transformative learning project launched with a 'Teach-in' which took place on 12 October 2009 in at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London. The teach-in had the ambitious objective of embedding ecological and sustainability literacy in design education by 2012. This short case study will describe the 2012 Imperative Teach-in and report on progress towards the project's goals.

How can design participate in the great task of building a sustainable system? The primary tool in this transition is systems thinking. Design can facilitate change by learning to work with systems. Concepts such as design science, ecological literacy, footprinting and transformation design help. Yet a sustainable system is not something designers can deliver to communities. Communities are complex systems composed of people that need to engage with change to make change happen. The Transition movement engages communities in the collaborative design of a ‘Local Energy Descent Plan’. The movement is a vision of UK permaculture teacher Rob Hopkins, and is now being enthusiastically adopted by communities worldwide. This paper explores new tools and concepts in design and the Transition movement.

In this paper ‘design’ refers to the professional practice of creating new products, buildings, services and communication. Design can be understood as an emergent order that evolves as new cognitive and perceptual capacities enable a greater understanding of complexity, context and system dynamics. In turn, these emergent capacities create greater potential for social and technological innovation. This paper will argue that despite emergent skills, designers are not able to effectively address contemporary problems in regards to sustainability due to ‘tensions’ with the emergent order of the market. Critically, ‘design’ is not the same as the ‘design industry’. The design industry operates according to highly reductive feedback generated by capitalism that systemically ignores signals from the ecological and social systems. These tensions result in severe distortions of knowledge and reason thereby eliminating prospects for long-term prosperity.

One of the major premises of this thesis is that fragmentary thinking is an obstacle to sustainability and reductive attitudes towards knowledge cannot address problems associated with complex ecological systems, or social and economic systems for that matter. Responding to this dilemma, this project uses a whole systems approach facilitated by visual communication. Ecological literacy (EL) is a powerful concept developed by sustainability educators that has the potential to create an integrated foundation for understanding environmental problems and potential solutions. Unfortunately, ecological literacy has largely failed to spread across disciplinary boundaries in the two decades since the concept was first conceived. To address this problem this project will create learning processes for ecological literacy facilitated by visual communications with a focus on audiences in the design industry and design education. This research serves to synthesise different traditions while producing new visual displays and transformative learning processes. It aims to help learners develop new cognitive and social capacities including the agency to put new ideas and values into practice.

Three posters map climate communication by means of a timeline, an actor’s network and a strategy map. The Climate Timeline visualizes the historical processes and events that have lead to the growth of various ways of communicating climate change. The Network of Actors illustrates relationships between actors participating in climate communication in Canada, United States and the United Kingdom. The Strategy Map will display various rhetorical devices, methods and types of actions. Together the posters offer an overview of how climate change is communicated in the public realm by contextualizing events, actors and strategies within five discourses: climate science, climate justice, ecological modernization, neoliberalism and climate contrarianism.

Responsible design in an era of scarcity and risk associated with environmental problems must be ecologically informed. Ecological literacy is necessary in order to both understand the nature of environmental problems and to respond effectively by designing sustainable ways of living. Embedding ecological literacy into design education is happening at the most progressive institutions – and yet for many others, sustainability education is still virtually absent from the curriculum. Progress is slow despite the fact that natural scientists warn that risks will escalate if we do not take dramatic action. Ecological literacy is a severe challenge as it disrupts educational cultures and challenges basic assumptions about what constitutes good design. While sustainability can seem profoundly difficult, ecological learning is the basis for sustainable design and thus it is a basic imperative in design education. Design education needs to expand its scope of inquiry to include a range of disciplines in order to address complex environmental problems. This paper will present an introduction to ecological literacy for design education, describe six ecological principles including associated concepts in systems design, and explain why critical thinking is necessary to make the work of transforming structurally unsustainable systems possible.

The United Nations’ green economy programme radically re-imagines the commons as a space where ecosystems services will be quantified, marketised and traded. This paper will examine issues with this version of the green economy for environmental communicators. It will review the etymology of the concept, examine contested ideas on what a green economy would entail and situate these proposals in relation to different economic approaches to the environment. It will suggest strategies for communicating the contested nature of the proposals and exposing obfuscations. This paper will argue that in stark opposition to green economics with its focus on participation and democratic processes, the UN’s GEP will close deliberations on the commons by privatizing ‘ecosystem services’ – thereby taking environmental decision-making out of a political sphere and into the marketplace.