A Methodological approach to incorporate traditional ecological knowledges (TEK) in supporting community-led participatory government for disaster preparedness and resilience
Value Mapping for the Pluriverse
Lead by: Malé Luján Escalante, Chris Mortimer
Project Partners
Resilience Development Initiative – Indonesia Padjaran University, Bandung-Indonesia Universiti Sains Malaysia : Computer Science Department, Penang, Malaysia, Thammasat University: Urban Research Unit, Bangkok,Thailand National Institute of Geological Sciences, University of the Philippines Lancaster University, UK
Value Mapping for the Pluriverse is a tool to support participatory, cross-sector, cross-disciplinary collaboration in integrating TEK into strategies and policymaking for Public Protection Disaster Relief (PPDR) agencies and communities. The tool is a table-top exercise to map past emergency response actions with an added speculative exercise of integrating traditional and indigenous knowledges into a systemic map in order to identify leverage points of anticipatory actions.
We held a series of pilot workshops across 4 countries of Southeast Asia, which started a process of follow-up collaborations in research that still continues.
Value Mapping for the Pluriverse has been adopted in other projects related with other context beyond emergency preparedness and risk management. It was tested in the context of integrating TEK in Envision the Transition, a utopian imagination methodology to support the inner work of changemakers involved in transition actions. See More here LINK TO TRANSITION
Related Publications
Luján Escalante, M. A., & Mortimer, C. (2022, August). Value-Mapping Transitions into the Pluriverse: Design Notes on Participatory Methods, Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Emergency Community Resilience within the Ring of Fire. In Proceedings of the Participatory Design Conference 2022-Volume 1 (pp. 50-62) available here
Lead by: Malé Luján Escalante, in collaboration with Supra Systems Studio and UAL:LCC Design School
The Future of Money Award has run for over a decade, exploring different facets of design, money, and speculative thinking. In 2022, it was hosted by Supra Systems Studio, in collaboration with the Design School at London College of Communication, University of the Arts London.
Every week seems to bring a new plan to reinvent money. These plans are hyped as revolutionary: they promise to liberate us from inequality, disrupt global finance, and bring down outdated institutions. These new monetary systems are designed from the ground up with fresh inbuilt logics to support their imagined use. Seductively shiny, they ask us not to look too closely at what their long-term implications are.
But the existing world of money isn’t going anywhere. State currency is still real. Bitcoin is still valued in US dollars, and folding paper cash still exists. Money is a public infrastructure and common language – it only has value because we have a shared sense of its meaning. If we want to change the world, we must start with what’s here right now, and think about how the system really works.
Instead of solving it by stacking new breakage on old, can creative practice challenge how existing financial systems work?
The Future of Money design competition invited people to use future-oriented creative methods and create a project which makes a change to an existing financial system, considering how this system operates, and why, and designing a modification to the system, its’ communication, or how it is distributed.
The Futre of Money 2022, Award Winners
Memoirs to keep
Yashwanthi Balamurugan Sumithra, Xi Zhang, Syeda Madiha Hussain, & Yini Zheng, MA Service Design, UAL:LCC
Failed Economies
Angela Rodríguez, Andrea Miranda, María Gabriela Sulbarán, Karl Gavidia, Jeiver Gavidia, Graphic Design, Universidad de los Andes, Venezuela.
Financial Transaction Markup Language
Martin Disley, Chris Elsden, Chris Speed, Institute for Design Informatics, University of Edinburgh
Fanoo Child Banking
Carmen Diaz, Zhiyu Lin, David Povilaika, & Julia Yu , BA (Hons)Design Management, UAL:LCC
Pay Delay
Omair Malik BA (Hons) User Experience, UAL:LCC.
Green Uni
Pam Chen, BA (Hons) Design for Art Direction, UAL:LCC
CBDCS for SDGS
Glenn Sæstad, MA Strategic Design, Oslo School of Architecture and Design
___, in Excess
Astrid Chung and Benedetta Scollo, BA (Hons) Design for Art Direction, UAL: LCC and Aldo Heubel, BA (Hons) Crossmedia Design at ArtEZ University of the Arts
Hidden Value in the Information Age
Haipeng Yan, Hanli Zhang, MA Data Visualization, UAL:LCC and MsC Data Science & AI for Creative Industry, UAL:CCI
Public Program
To complement the competition, we have curated a public online program of lectures and creative futures workshops,. Videos for the lectures are available in the links below. Attending the public program is not a requirement for submission, but it will help to situate your work within the design discussions.
If you’ve participated in the program, we’d love to hear your feedback about it here.
‘Financial Instruments’ – DMSTFCTN. In this lecture, DMSTFCTN will explore opaque financial practices and discuss their evolving artistic approaches to money and its systems. Video available here.
‘Selling Stories’ – Oliver Smith (DMSTFCTN) and Marion Lagedamont (UAL) This workshop explores the use of storytelling as a way to reframe our approaches to the future of money, revealing its infrastructures and hidden systems.
‘Counting Things That Money Doesn’t Count’ – Diana Finch, Bristol Pound, in conversation with Dr. Nigel Dodd (LSE) and Charlie Waterhouse (Extinction Rebellion) A conversation exploring the history and development of Bristol Pound and the role of communities in shaping the future of money. Video available here.
‘Dancing About Money’ – Alaistair Steele (UAL) and Dr. John Fass (UAL)What are the opportunities and pit-falls, for people and planet, of current and imminent changes in the forms money takes?
‘Participatory Futures’ – Laurie Smith, Head of Foresight Research (NESTA).As the world struggles with increased complexity and uncertainty, this lecture explores how NESTA uses contemporary methods which can allow us to collectively imagine alternative, democratic and inclusive futures. Video available here.
‘Money for Mars’ – Scott Smith (Changeist) & John Willshire (Smithery) Humans are on the edge of living in space full-time, but we have little recent concrete speculation about the new financial instruments and products that may emerge, especially considering how time, connection and needs change radically off-Earth. This workshop explores how to develop speculative financial products for New Space economies.
‘Indigenous Futures’ – Felipe ViverosThis lecture will explore some of the key ideas and guiding principles behind global projects exploring new economic paradigms, from UBI to gross national happiness in Bhutan, presenting a general overview of how these new policies are working on the ground. Video available here.
‘Failed Economies’ – University of Andes ULA & IsITEthical? ExchangeThis workshopexplores the realities of being a creative in a country where money has failed.
‘Reimagining the purpose of tax for a climate and biological emergency’ – Becky Miller This lecture introducing a speculative tax system in order to investigate the use of design artefacts in facilitating conversations with financial and climate futures. Video available here.
“When Money Talks Back” – Ruben Pater (Untold Stories)This workshop explores of the power dynamics behind the visual representations of money in many of its forms, and an invitation to use graphic design to open a line of communication allowing these representations of money to “talk back”.
Co-Lead by: Malé Luján Escalante, UAL:LCC Design School and Christine Mortimer, Management School, Lancaster University
At the core of IsITethical? there is a passion for the design methods that hold spaces for proactive discussions and circumspect reflections, sustaining collaboration of people and actors that may have competing interests and radically different worldviews.
We explored Ethics through Design Principles with postgraduate students for them to create their own co-design methods in different contexts and domains.
Following this pedagogical dimension of our work, we showcase projects of engaged research with students via knowledge exchange activities in collaboration across countries, disciplines, institutions and sectors. Beyond collaborative challenges, these projects brought stories of impact to sustain research collaborations, for the students career progressions, and for participants, including public engagements and community building.
In collaboration with UAL:LCC Design School, Trilateral, University of Applied Sciences Bonn-Rhein-Sieg, and King’s College London Gallery of Science
In collaboration with the Design School at London College of Communications, UAL , isITethical hosted a series Design Brief Award and a Companion Program of Public Lectures and Creative Workshops Exploring the role of Arts and Design in AI ethics and AI Responsible Research Innovation.
Context
AI technologies and visions of AI promise great societal and even environmental solutions, from data management and predictive analysis, to medicine and means of production, from entertainment to modes of living in this world and out of it. AI visions are populating an image of a future in which human-made agencies are solving the wicked, human made, highly complex crises of today.
However, current AI innovations across domains involve intrusions of privacy, surveillance of people, assets, and undiscriminating exploitation of human and natural resources and environments, as well as maximizing a sense of distributed, even diluted, responsibility. Ethical issues arise from gender, political and racial biases, to discrimination and profiling, from hidden exploitative labour to hidden environmental destruction.
There is a big “ethical turn” in tech innovation. The media is following cases related to social networks, autonomous systems, facial recognition, bio cams and sensors, health apps, track and trace, and algorithmic political manipulation. Responsible Research and Innovation and Ethical Frameworks for AI have many disciplines busy, from Computer Sciences to Social Sciences, there are international digital lawyers and human rights activists, philosophers and anthropologists, policy makers and tech CEO’s struggling to address AI ethical tensions proactively.
Ethics are hard to understand, ethical conversations are complex and slow to engage with, ethical frameworks are perceived as obstacles to innovation, tick-box administrative paperwork, a challenge to bypass.
The collaborative unit brief invites thinking about how designerly and creative methods can be applied to an ethics that is accessible, cares about context, that is participatory and creative. Arts & Design has had a huge role in imagining, designing, and developing AI technologies. This brief is not about the technical solutions, it is about the role of Arts & Design in supporting human and more-than-human centered, ethical and responsible innovation of AI.
“Hello, AI Robot” is a collaborative reading tool that invites children and parents to learn and explore together the basic principles of artificial intelligence and machine learning through interactive activities and puzzles.
Beyond just the technical aspects of AI and robotics, “Hello, AI Robot” also addresses important ethical issues. The book prompts discussions around transparency of AI-related principles, trust toward AI robots and autonomy of using AI and robotics, encouraging children to think critically about the impact of technology on their daily lives.
The Emotion Matrix, project details…
The Emotion Matrix project is an immersive exhibition showcasing the possible future in 2050, where AI brain chip implant technology has been widely adopted. The exhibition is centered around the product of Emo+ Chip, which could be implanted into people’s brain to make emotion adjustment. We explore the possibilities this technology could bring to the future and the ethical issues that could arise around its development.
Monday Mornings, project details…
Monday Morning is a board game which aims to get everyone to experience the ethical dilemmas around the introduction of AI to the workplace. The players explore a future office, and are confronted with ethical dilemmas triggered by current benign, malevolent or misinformed application of digital technology. In its second phase, the game introduces scenarios inspired by speculations of future technologies.
The mechanics of the game are inspired by the award- winning horror board game “Betrayal at the House on the Hill”, while the player choices and future scenarios are inspired by Deceptive Design framework, EU Responsible AI framework, and sci-fi films, books and video games.
FACEIT, project details…
FACEIT focuses on the ethics in Al diagnosis of facial skin diseases. It’s for the patients engaged in peer support groups held by the British Association of Dermatologists (BAD), to open up conversations of concerns about ethical issues in Al diagnosis in a creative and engaging way, as well as providing emotional support.
This acts as a scaffolding to help patients primarily and also their family, friends and carers to form and articulate their unique understanding, concerns and expectancy about data processing in Al diagnosis.
The Transition Living Lab – Design framework has been instrumental in shaping Emplace Youth Initiative’s approach to youth empowerment and refugee integration. Through our co-facilitation involvement with the Refugee Transition Network team and partner institutions in 2023, we were introduced to the Transition Design framework, which focuses on shifting mindsets and identifying intervention points within systems over time.
Together with our partner institutions, we applied this framework through hands-on workshops recently in 2024. We have created spaces where refugee youth are encouraged to envision and design systems of environmental justice, rooted in their cultural values and traditional knowledge. These workshops have been transformative, not only equipping participants with creative and designerly competencies but also boosting their self-confidence and sense of belonging. Many attendees including members of Emplace reported positive feedback in feeling reconnected to their sense of self and purpose, breaking out of isolation, and fostering meaningful friendships through this workshop.
The Transition Living Lab model, with its focus on experiential learning and co-design, has allowed participants to see themselves as agents of change, capable of envisioning new futures and leading systemic transformations. By shifting the narrative from a deficit-based view to a strength-based approach, our workshop encouraged and highlighted the invaluable contributions that displaced youth bring to their communities. This collaborative environment deepened their understanding of local challenges as well as nurtured leadership and innovation that can empower them to shape their own futures.
Ali Reza Yawari – Emplace Co-Founder and Executive Director Muna Baroud: Emplace Co-Founder and Programme Coordinator
Transition Living Lab was honoured by receiving the UAL People’s Award for excellence in their knowledge exchange work in the category ‘Equity and Diversity’.
This reassured us in our endeavours and was a cause for celebration, especially for our refugee participants.
