By Carla Cipolla:
Dear all,
writing to give you news about the workshop, round table and DESIS
network meeting on ISSD conference in Sao Paulo. Other than Brazilian
members, also Mugendi and Andrea were there, so you can all help to
gave an overview of what were going on there.
WORKSHOP
The workshop has gathered the higher number of participants (compared
with the other paralell ones). It was a good sign of interest!!
As it was not a "closed" workshop (i.e., only for DESIS members) so it
was necessary to start up from the beggining. So, to introduce DESIS
theme, we have used the structure Francois proposed (thank you
Francois, people have asked about you!) that was able to give an
overview. It was a very short workshop (only 4 hours) so it was not
in the spirit of DESIS09, but it was really an introduction.
But not only because we went further:
- participants (non-members) have better understood the meaning and
the contents of the DESIS Network and have raised many questions,
particularly regarding how the network operates and how they could
engage:
a) regarding undergraduate students. It was raised the question about
how undergraduate students could participate on DESIS Network. One
of them have talked about to stimulate students (students association)
to collect and discuss cases, creating a kind of "spontaneous" and
"viral" iniciative, using esisting platforms in the web, etc., totally
student initiative A discussion about what he have called "other kind
of Design". He thinks that it will have a high appeal with design
students. We were very happy with his interest (and he have contacts
with students associations), let's see how it will go on.... (hope
well!)
b) regarding design offices: a design studio leader, Fernanda Martins,
have a studio in Amazon region and have participated in the workshop.
She also have asked how studios could participate and engage in the
network. She have a wonderful work with mobile phones, young people,
tourism, in the last World Social Forum. It was financed by Oi (a
mobile operator) and now (after the financial support finished), she
is working to keep the work going on. She have also other works and
we have talked a lot (work on food issues, for example). She
collaborates a lot with NGO, so we could also reach them. She thinks
that other studios could engage also.
For both cases, we will have to identify here in Brazil how to
articulate with our efforts these two profiles.
We have discussed about contents: how to identifiy what is "social
innovation" in each country.... the character of possible "enabling
solutions" and how to design them. The discussions were based on
cases from our international databank, also those being collected by
DESIS09 process in Brazil. There was a long discussion about how to
identify and classify cases as "social innovations" , the concept of
"innovation" and "social", considering also specific local levels
(neighbourhood, city, country) and also the architecture of each
case... (top-down. totally bottom-up, NGO o non-NGO, etc...etc).
Participants were really motivated to discuss that.
ROUND TABLE
The round table took place in the end of the first day. It was
composed by Mugendi, Vezzoli, Lia Krucken, Cyntia Malaguti
(DESIS-Brasil member) and me. The objective was to gather these
keynote speakers of the day and open a dialogue with the public (I was
acting as a mediator). The debate was particularly articulated to the
theme of design and social innovation (DESIS). Some points were
discussed (just inserting the ideas raised, without commenting it):
- the attention that social innovation and design does not become one
more "fashion" in design practice
- design practice that is based and promote human interpersonal
relationships and express their culture
- the (new) skills involved in this approach to design and how to
structure courses to prepare students to deal with this
- the designer that is involved himself/herself on what is being designed
- coerence (sustainable designer, non only sustainable design)
- the importance to structure a serious criteria to evaluate social
innovation cases considering also their environmental impact,
- the connection and feedback to "local communities": after you have
collected a cases does not only "disappear", i.e. to be responsible on
that
- the issue of intelectual property, communitarian property, ecc, ways
of giving recognition to original ideas (or traditional knowledge)
- the colaboration between LENs and DESIS (also told in the Vezzoli speech)
INTERNATIONAL DESIS.
also if other collegues were missing, It was a "big" DESIS meeting
gathering Colombia, Africa and Brasil. Andrea Mendoza, Mugendi
M'Rithaa and myself (with other DESIS-Brazil) members have presented
their activities.
We have discussed also how to going on in the network. Two issues was proposed:
- the same strategy: choose a conference (the one in China on which
Ezio will chair a session about social innovation?) on which to
present papers, but in this time organize a "closed" DESIS meeting,
only for members. In Brazil we have discussed relevant issues in the
open workshop, we have met each other (Andrea didn't know Mugendi
before) but we think now is time to really have our specific and
focused meeting.
- the papers would be necessarily written between DESIS members (not
individual submission) as a way to create, reinforce and/or manifest
our connections and possible/actual collaborations
DESIS AFRICA AND BRASIL
Mugendi and Stuart Warden (Mugendi's colleague) have visited Rio, and
our university. We have streghten our collaborationon DESIS issues
(also formally) and we are planned also to visit Cape Town in February
for and event DESIGN INDABA. Common issues were defined as a common
ground for our work (in extreme synthesis) pass through tourism,
mobile, food and, in paralell, entrepreneurship promotion
POSITIVE RESULT
We considered that the ISSD conference was a relevant moment to the
network as we have presented ourself in a international event,
creating also a diffusion and recognition (and interest) for our
activities.
We had the opportunity to thanks the ISSD conference organizers for
all the support given to DESIS network activities (Aguinaldo dos
Santos -DESIS member, Monica Moura e Jofre Silva)
Best wishes for you all,
Carla
