Metadesigning spaces of engagement & exchangeCo-designing ‘seeds’ to revitalise a multi-cultural shopping centre in Oslo.

more on: http://www.socialdesignresponse.com/

HEI: Oslo National Academy of the Arts (KHiO) - MA Design Main Partners: Veivet senter; Bydel Bjerke, Oslo Kommune; Goldsmiths, University of London, Regents University London; Solution Office; Kulturhagen; Place: Veitvet, Oslo.

Keywords: Community building; Public spaces; Social enterprise

The context (situation/ challenge):

Owners of Veitvet shopping centre, located in Groruddalen, a

suburb of Oslo, Norway, in partnership with the local authorities,

Bydel Bjerke, were seeking ways to revitalise the centre and

reframe its purpose and function as a ‘cultural hub’ for the local

residents. Students from the MA Design programme at KHiO

embarked on a four-week ‘socially responsive design’ project in

collaboration with local stakeholders. The aim of the project was to

develop ‘pop-up’ creative social enterprises within the centre.

Project Response:

The project set out to explore, map and synergise emotional, cultural,

social, economic and ecological diversities existing within a multi-

cultural shopping and community centre in Veitvet, Oslo. The project

made use of a range of metadesign tools to facilitate collaborative

and participatory processes with students and the local community.

The designers response was to engage disparate user groups in a

range of creative activities to develop the centre’s connectivity,

communications and identity and to put the shop owners and local

community at the centre of it’s revitalisation strategy.

LOCAL RESIDENTS

KULTURHAGEN, RESIDENT DESIGNERS/ ARTISTS

VEITVET SHOP OWNERS

METADESIGN FACILITATORS

BYDEL BJERKE, LOCAL AUTHORITY

VEITVET CENTRE USERS

OSLO KOMMUNE, OSLO CITY COUNCIL

VEITVET CENTRE OWNERS

KHIO MA STUDENTS

Project stakeholders

MA Design students, KHiO, Olso:

The collaboration with Veitvet provided a context for the student’s

‘Socially Responsive Design’ project brief. They were able to survey,

map and create a series of interventions within the shopping centre

using a range of prototyping, visualisation and communication

strategies. They also brought an outsiders perspective to the

revitalisation process. The students were able to experience the

value of engaging in participatory processes first hand. The students

identified how the revitalisation process had been held up by a lack

of involvement towards the end by the owners.

Veivet Senter owners:

Competition and changing needs in the area have challenged the

owners who have partnered up with the local authorities, Bydel

Bjerke, to seek ways reframe the centre’s purpose and function as

a ‘cultural hub’ for the local residents, alongside offering

commercial and public services. The owners of the centre

recognised the positive contribution that creative practitioners can

make in the transition towards a future vision for the centre.

The Veivet senter owners provided resources both in terms of on-

site studios and funding for prototypes.

Metadesigners Research Group:

The metadesign facilitators were able to get the students working

effectively in groups at the start of the project and to encourage

them to hold back from solving Veitvet’s problems, so as to fully

embrace the complexity of the people and place and to engage

more deeply with the issues and aspirations. The metadesigners

offered faclitation skills, collaborative tools and a process for this

to happen. The project provided a test-bed for the further

development of metadesign tools and processes.

Bydel Bjerke, and Oslo Kommune

The project manager, Trude Mette Johansen from the local

authority and a resident herself, identified a need to make other

residents aware that changes were in motion at Veitvet. They

were very keen to gather fresh input from the students and to

include their pop-up interventions into the centre’s main hall for

maximum exposure. She and her team provided a favourable

situation for the students to carry out their research by facilitating

contacts with the various stakeholders and providing resources.

Kulturhagen:

A one-year project (2011-12) initiated by Veitvet senter where a

range of designers, architects and artists were allocated free office

spaces in the centre in return for three days a month of work

towards the centre’s development and re-branding. Prior to the

student’s interventions, the creative practitioners working at

Kulturhagen experimented with using a grass roots and

participative approach to re-imagining Veitvet. This includes

setting up a community driven ‘open library’ and holding a local

photography competition entitled ‘My Veitvet’.

Shop-owners and users of the centre:

The residents want the center rehabilitated. They believe that it is

important for the area's reputation. They want the centre to move

away from being a mere shopping centre to a ‘sentrum’ a

meeting place for the community. The shop keepers had no union

to organise their efforts and the locals have a diverse range of

ideas for activities that already take place and could take place in

the centre in the future.

The metadesign process had four key stages: contextualising,

mapping, possibility seeking and seeding future visions. The students

collaborated in multi-disciplinary teams throughout the project and

worked co-creatively. We define this process as moving from ‘me’ to

‘we’, where teams develop their identity through cycles of individual

and collective action and reflection.

INDIVIDUAL

TEAM

PARTNERS

LOCAL COMMUNITY

GLOBAL COMMUNITY

REFLECTION

ACTION

ME

WE

Tools & methods: we applied six different metadesign tools

throughout the one-week process. Cultural Props: is used to

introduce all of the stakeholders to each other; Collective Story-

telling and Values Quest: guides the design students from an

individual design perspective to becoming part of a team; Holistic

Mapping: aims to engage with the local context and the emerging

complexity; Bisociating Diversities: moves into rapid prototyping

and idea generation; Future Scenarios: is about seeding

collective visions and the design of collaborative interventions.

Role of Design Design strengthened the communications between different local groups within the Veitvet centre, through creating small-scale interventions that encouraged participation and conversation. The students were introduced to metadesign tools and process which they in turn facilitated, adapted and tested with the local residents and shopping centre users. Here, ‘design as planning’ is replaced with ‘design as seeding’ (Ascott cited in Giaccardi, 2005) and ‘design as problem solving’ gives way to ‘design as possibility seeking’ (Mizuuchi, 2006) to envision a more creative and sustainable social environment.

Project output and impact: The aim was never to provide final

solutions but to co-design ‘toolkits’ to facilitate engagement and

exchange that would be further developed by the centre’s

stakeholders. In terms of social innovation, three different proposals

were handed over to Bydel Bjerke: One focused on a joint venture for

local shops to self-organise; another focused on getting users of the

centre to engage in volunteering; and the last focused on a grow-kit

for the local kindergarden. The impact of the toolkits at Veivet is

difficult to evaluate, however the local authority worker said that the

toolkits developed by the students provided new insights into ways of

working with participation and that interventions had spurred more

engagement amongst the centre’s users.

Learning outcomes: Students: Learnt how to focus on a process-driven, possibility-seeking approach, rather than problem solving and therefore to work with emergence. Also working in multi-disciplinary teams they developed transferable skills and methods for collaborative and participatory design. The value of contagious optimism!

KHiO: Gained access to holistic & creative methodologies facilitated through a Metadesign process. Communicating ideas to a range of stakeholders Veivet Senter: How to focus more on bottom-up approaches and that yet with simple means, change can happen.

Successes and Shortcomings/ Barriers and EnablersThe students learnt how to design with a local community and understood the value and creative reward that comes out of this way of working. The union for shop keepers was a key positive outcome that emerged out of their collaborations. The spirit of the project, the energy and the shared learning resonated after the event. The project was only a four week experiment and could have gone further. The Veitvet owners were a barrier as they were not very explicit about their agenda. Whilst they didn’t attend the final presentations the student’s identified that the community were committed to the centre’s future – through empowering the community change could happenKey enablers: • Our relationship with the local authority. • Veitvet was a sympathetic test-bed as the centre had already invited creative people in to re-imagine its future.• There was a small amount of funding to develop an intervention which provided an initial incentive for the students.