Category: reflections

 Chung Yin Rachel Leung, UAL:LCC MA Service Design

I am always passionate about designing for and with vulnerable or marginalized groups. I am grateful for the opportunity with the Transition Living Lab to co-create a training program for the displaced people. It has been an inspiring journey for me to explore how service design approaches complex social needs through the Systemic Design Framework. Designing with care for vulnerable groups with appropriate topic, language and materials has been an invaluable reflection on the role of service design, and its strengths and limitations.

This experience has fueled me to embark on my final major project with the Ealing Council addressing the challenges faced by rough sleepers with No Recourse Public Funds around Havelock Estate in Southall. The project aims to explore upskilling through volunteering opportunities for rough sleepers so that they can work on their personal development and mitigate the challenges they are facing. The service idea is going to be tested with Hope for Southall Street Homeless and the Bixley Community Garden Southall. I anticipate the idea can be transferred to newly accommodated individuals or people with addiction who need support in establishing healthy routine. A handbook on how service designers can approach complex social needs will also be delivered.

Contact: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachelgooda/

Sakshi Mathur, UAL:LCC MA Service Design

Working on Transition Living Lab for me was an exploration in Pluriversal Design. The project we worked on demanded an acceptance of many worlds, realities, ways of being and knowing to be taken into consideration as a core thought upon which the foundation for our workshops were laid.

For me this way of thought became the rabbit hole that is now shaping my understanding and perception of the world around me; the past present and future of it. Facilitating the Dance for pluriverse workshop where we used dance to express the ethos of a community, was one of the many cascading moments that began re-shaping my way of knowing and knowledge, beyond my frustrations with the colonized worldview I grew up with.

The thought lead me to unravelling the influence colonization (and therefore universalisation) had had on knowledge from the colonized (and other universalized) regions. The theory of pluriversality defined my exploration of decolonial thought within the context of knowledge, more specifically traditional ecological knowledge for my MA Service Design, Final Major project at UAL.

My methodology was based on recognition, realisation and contextualisation as steps towards decolonization. My approach has involved questioning my definition of decolonisation, what is accepted as knowledge, the ways of communicating knowledge across cultures and generations, and lastly the idea of knowledge ownership through the lens of analysing language and terminologies.

To understand and express the effects if colonisation on traditional ecological knowledge, I am focusing on a small community of honey collector from the ecological rich and volatile Bali Island in the Sundarbans (The largest mangrove forest in the world). The cultural practices in harmony with their environment and colonial influence made them the ideal subculture to help navigate the complex structure of their knowledge development, its communication, and interpretation by them as well as the universalized researchers.

Transition Living Lab was my first learning to approaching communities through pluriversal thinking, and it has now made pluriversal living my definition of decolonial action.