Ds21 – MEETINGS NOTES for 13/7/05

(after the 2-day Laban Workshop and following an informal discussion held at the MacDonald? Egan Building with Jan-Marc, Martin, and Naomi on 13/7/05)

• see also terms such as Synergy (see also the Keyword-Definitions-Index page) and please also keep us up to date with your ideas for SynergyTools )

please keep in touch

These notes are intended more as helpful and incisive points for discussion, rather than as democratic, inclusive or accurate representations of view. As always, these are DRAFTS. Please, therefore, send comments and suggestions. If possible, post them here (or contact John/Ann/Hannah direct)

UPDATE and OVERVIEW

(based on what we have learned from our experiences)

FINDING/REVISING COMMON TERMS OF REFERENCE

Some of the creative tensions of our workshops at the Laban Centre (30/6/05 to 1/7/05) may have resulted from a lack of clarity, or from shifts in consensus about what we intend to do and/or what we are actually doing. The following is a revised outline of the project’s perceived purpose and context. I hope you find it helpful for your particular purposes because it is intended to offer a basis for discussion, revision, and approval by everyone. More importantly, it is intended to inspire greater active involvement by everyone

The Project’s Context, Purpose, and Rationale

Here is a revised (draft) outline:

1. Arguably, the major and fundamental problems facing society over the next decade/century are mainly ethical and environmental. They represent interdependent issues such as:

• environmental depletion/loss/damage
• lack of equality of opportunity
• insufficient governance/economic flexibility/technology to optimise well-being

2. Arguably, despite a continuing need for its good practices, the discourse of eco-design has lost some of its critical momentum and popular appeal.

3. In challenging the discourse of eco-design, it is also asserted that the key idea of ‘sustainability’ has outlived its useful purpose. For example, it is commonly applied in spurious and misleading ways that are therefore counter-productive.

4. For the purposes of this project it may be preferable, therefore, to think of ‘sustainment’ in an opportunistic, non-causal, non-temporal way. In this respect we may seek to design systems that are ‘co-sustainable’.

5. This coincides with a need for far broader modes of integrative thinking and planning, in order to augment the more specialist methods and practices that are familiar to most professionals.

6. Eco-design evolved from within a small set of professional (design) discourses that – notwithstanding some important and ongoing advances - are unable to be sufficiently broad, deep, or fine-grained to achieve their mission.

7. For example, no matter how ‘lean’, ‘re-useable’, ‘recyclable’, ‘organic’, or ‘sustainably beautiful’ a given product or service is, our global net throughput of energy and materials has risen, and is continuing to rise.

8. This is because our living styles are driven by imperatives that are beyond the reach of any designer, architect, or engineer.

9. These ‘imperatives’ are powerful, pervasive, interdependent, and subtle. They derive from the prevailing economic models and assumptions, shared cultural values, deep ideological tenets, and established psychosocial behaviours, etc.

10. One way forward would be the development of an ecologically oriented mode of meta-design in which inter-disciplinary teams of designers, working with other experts, can imaginatively conceive, and effectively manage more ecologically harmonious ‘styles of living’.

11. It is important to acknowledge that our ‘living styles’ are ‘super-complex systems’ that, although they cannot be ‘designed’ in the (strong) conventional sense, may nevertheless be envisioned, attained, and co-sustained in the long term.

12. If we are to enable eco-design to function beyond its current limitations it will be necessary to develop systemic methods of envisioning, designing, auditing, and regulating synergy.

13. Ultimately, it may be necessary to develop practical tools and methods of evaluation that offer ‘synergies of synergies’ across the board.

1) A facilitator for our ICA sessions

As our first two workshops were (deliberately) fairly loosely managed I believe that we would benefit from a very good non-ds21 facilitator for our third and final ICA event in November. Ulrike Sturm would be very suitable, I believe. Ulrike joined us for session 1 at the Barbican, and the Synergy Dinner. She has expertise at both the practical design level and philosophical levels. In my view she is diplomatic, sensitive, enthusiastic, decisive, and fair-minded. Unless anyone has strong feelings about this matter I hope to invite her within a week. If you have alternative proposals, please let me know as soon as possible.

2) Do we need to revise our active membership?

We are very sad to have lost Karen as a member, especially as it was through the personal tragedy of losing her home in a fire. (Several ds21 group members have expressed their sympathy). We have invited Karen to re-join us if ever she feels that it is possible and desirable. We have also missed Caroline’s face-to-face contributions through inescapable circumstances.

3) Is gender balance a key synergy issue?

The unavoidable absence of Karen and Caroline were not just losses of important expertise and experience – it also happens to have raised issues of our group’s gender balance, which was always biased on the male side. Ideally speaking, if the gender balance was matched to the agreed agenda…and if we all had enough time to work together as a group…we may not need to consider guidelines for meeting. Jan-Marc has expressed a view that we need – ideally – to have more women than men in order to optimise our synergy of knowledge sharing. (?) We are now inviting some new (female) members to work with us until the end of the project. Please contact me soon to make comments/suggestions, and/or for details of our plan. I will keep everyone in touch with progress.

4) Do we need guidelines for workshop discussions?

This is a controversial issue. Guidelines or rules can stifle the naturalness of a conversation. (This question is also connected to the gender balance issue.) However, on those rare occasions when things don’t work so well, we may lose valuable momentum (and synergy). Ralph Stacey (2000) (thanks, Naomi) identifies some key parameters for effective interpersonal skills within management and communication:

• Ability to self-reflect
• Ability to own one’s part in what is happening
• Ability to facilitate free-flowing conversation
• Ability to articulate what is emerging in conversations
• Ability to ‘tune in’ to what is happening in group dynamics.

I believe that everyone in our group has most of these skills. (does the group need to test itself?) This is because, generally speaking, our discussions have been enormously courteous, respectful, intelligent, good-natured, playful, reasonably inclusive, and flexible in their range and focus. However, do we need ‘fall-back’ guidelines for times when frustration, boredom, or lack of consensus threatens to erode the general feeling of goodwill and willingness to contribute? Here are some suggested possible guidelines for possible development, presented as short, numbered elements to enable us to identify possible changes or improvements. (Please let us know what you think.)

5) Discussion Guidelines (do we need any?)

Here are some suggestions (for discussion and experiment)

• Anyone wishing to speak should try to begin with a passing description of what is happening or has just happened in the discussion.
• Anyone wishing to speak should try to offer a brief overview of the relevance of what s/he will say, in respect to the current discussion.
• Anyone wishing to speak should first offer a brief overview of the purpose of what s/he will say.
• Anyone wishing to speak should first offer a brief overview of the context of what s/he will say.
• Anyone wishing to speak should listen for signs that others may be sympathetic to his/her views then try to refer to their point in making his/her own point.
• Normally, ds21 members would speak for one minute only before inviting other/s to endorse their position, and/or offer another viewpoint, and/or validate its relevance and context.
• This period can be extended if at least two other members make hand signals inviting him/her to carry on speaking indefinitely within signalled 30-second intervals.
• Wherever possible, any points of criticism should not be presented as such. Rather, they should be (re)framed in the form of positive proposal/s for possible constructive actions or framing of policy likely to support the aims of ds21.

6) Do we need to elucidate our key terms & definitions?

E.g. what is ‘meta-design’? The word ‘meta-design’ may first have been introduced by Jürgen Kleiber-Wurm in the late nineteen eighties. He was interested to break down the formal boundaries between client and designer. He also envisioned a higher level of possible intervention that design might make on behalf of very large clients such as countries. In his case he pioneered certain approaches to (corporate) identity design. By contrast, I have been using the term meta-design as a way to emphasise the need for collaborative envisioning, planning, and co-operation at a much broader, perhaps more ambitious level. (any suggestions for extending and/or refining this definition?)

(see also terms such as Synergy (see also the Keyword-Definitions-Index page) and please also keep us up to date with your ideas for SynergyTools )

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