EcoLabs

The Design Activism Conference

2011-09-11T10:59:00.001+01:00

Four busy days at the Design History Society's Design Activism conference in Barcelona. I have a PhD to finish off this month so I have to keep this short but I am compelled to share my good fortune by writing a few words. Convenor Guy Julier has a more thorough conference blog here. The conference provided a space to debate emergent themes in design activism: politics and design, ecology and design, the role of agency, reflection vs. action, the importance of the language we use, peak oil and the capacity of design to address social and environmental problems within capitalism and current forms of democracy.

Things started with Henk Oosterling's keynote describing a movement to a philosophy of relations. Attempts to repress ontological connectedness are destructive and a role of design is now to internalise what is currently externalised in order to better reflect the essential conditions of connectedness.

Suchitra Sheth spoke on 'Designing Modern India: Gandhi as Design Activist'. The paper examined how Gandhi 'created a complex web of visual symbols, products and institutional systems' focusing on the 'Salt March' campaign of 1930. Look out for her paper which should be available on the conference website soon.

A problem for some of the activists presents was the extravagant amounts of food and the heavy meat content in our lunches and dinners. A little thought about the politics and ecology of food is necessary. Although conferences are terminally unsustainable due to carbon intensive nature of the gathering, food is one of the easiest things to change.

The conference ended with a discussion by Cameron Tomeron, Damien White and Karen Pinkus chaired by Clive Dilnot about Tony Fry's work the current de-futuring state of design, stuck in a system of structural un-sustainability. Some of us had already assumed a role of presenting the ecological situation that is so keenly avoided in design, but this panel examined the environment crisis in its most serious and logical implications. They thrashed out the critique of liberalism and pluralism presented by Fry. Damien White discussed problems with Fry's apparent top-down approach to solutions. Design has been complicit with the creation of de-futuring conditions - can it change? Fry's notion of re-directed practice holds potential. Existing institutions cannot deliver the kinds of change we need to make - what role can design play in creating new social institutions and forms of democracy? Meanwhile, how can designers deal with the lack of agency that accompanies the racketing up of apocalyptic themes? My only regret was that I stayed out far too late the night before so I regret not being able to present a more thorough review of this session.

The final keynote speaker was Laura Kurgan whose work on maps includes 'million-dollar blocks'. Here communication design engages with complexity and the development of spatial thought. Maps are interpretative representations of data - there is no such thing as neutral data in communication design. In the process of making information from raw data we necessarily make strategic decisions on which data to highlight. This is an important theme for the blossoming field of information design.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Drinking strong coffee outside the conference at 9am on the final day I was approached by two young activists who explained they were part of the 'Fuck for Forests' group. The group raises money from sex to stop the destruction of the rainforests in Tasmania and the Amazon while simultaneously confronting the legacy of repressive sexual attitudes: 'Our bodies, sexuality and nature are under suppression. FFF wants to reclaim nature & sexuality and show a sex positive culture. We need pleasure, not power!' They set up at the entrance to the conference and there was then an interesting merging of worlds as the design historians and design activists confronted these two young FFF activists.

In fact the merging of world was a feature of the entire conference. The combination of two communities, design activists and design historians was a fertile mix. Design historians have cultivated a discursive space for their field and the potential is now for design activists to develop a community of practice. A little support is needed, but there was a real desire to bring forth some sort of outcome. Stay tuned and get in touch if you are interested.

The Design History Society's conference next year will be in Brighton on the theme of sports in material culture. From the point of view of an environmentalist living in London, few things could be as de-futuring as the Olympic Games. I hope that ecology is not a subject that is considered to be 'accomplished' by the Design History Society in their engagement with social and environmental activism at this conference. Thanks to the Design History Society for sponsoring my attendance.

Design vs the Design Industry

2011-09-01T14:16:00.001+01:00

I have just finished a new paper for the Studies in Emergent Order. The framework of emergence is extremely helpful in describing problems with design and sustainability. I am looking forward making the paper public, but for the moment all I can post is this abstract.

Design as an Emergent Order and ‘Tensions’ with the Market

As the professional practice of creating new products, buildings, services, infrastructure and communication, design manifests the creative vision of individual designers for solutions to meet human needs and desires. Design is an emergent order that evolves as the skills and capacities of designers change with new technology and communications practices. New cognitive and perceptual capacities enable a greater understanding of complexity, context and system dynamics creating the potential better solutions to contemporary problems. Yet despite emergent skills, designers are not able to effectively address contemporary problems due to ‘tensions’ with the emergent order of the market. Critically, ‘design’ is not the same as the ‘design industry’. This paper will describe design as an emergent order with a specific focus on communication design and the profound conflicts between this order and the market. This conflict results in distortions of knowledge and reason with severe consequences.

** I am using the word 'tensions' because this is the word used in the call for papers. In the context of my paper it is an extreme understatement.

Ecology Games 2012 - The New Ecology Tube Map

2011-08-28T00:29:00.001+01:00

Fancy some Ecology Games in 2012?

I need to know if anyone wants a silkscreen of the Eco-literacy Tube Map. £50 full-colour in an edition of 10. Please message me. Nice days left to support the Econopoly project (see below).

We win! EcoLabs.org vs. Ecolab.com - Sanity prevails!

2011-06-20T23:25:00.001+01:00

We have just received the good news that the www.EcoLabs.org vs. www.ecolab.com case at the National Arbitration Forum has been decided in our favour. Ten pages of legal case work conclude with the statement: 'Accordingly, it is ordered that the <eco-labs.org> domain name has to REMAIN WITH Respondent.' Common sense prevails. In light of this decision, we expect that Ecolab.com, the $5bn chemical cleaning and pest extermination company, will stop harassing us. We have more important matters to address than legal battles over our name.

I am grateful to the dozens of people who contributed to the the funding appeal to help pay the lawyers bills. I also need to thank Jim Killock at the Open Rights Group for convincing me that people would care and it was possible to ask for help! There are a couple website geniuses that came to my aid when the site mysteriously went down in the middle of this whole episode. Thanks Ian Green and Phil Isaac; if you had not swooped in, the arbitration forum would not have been able to see that www.eco-labs.org is entirely legitimate and the entire case might have been ruined. Also thanks to our lawyer Rowland Buehrlen for a good defense and for subsidised legal fees. Thanks to friends and family for the their support. No corporation has the right to claim exclusive rights on any words in common use.

The Issue of 100% Male Conference Panels

2011-06-09T07:31:00.001+01:00

I was the woman who asked the exclusively male panel at Memefest's Festival of Radical Communications 'Inspiration day' why there were no women presenters. I think it's worth unpacking this topic a little with the intention of helping Memefest develop into an network with strong input from women and other marginalised voices. Diversity of representation should by now be standard practice in any international network, but is especially critical for one that aspires to represent a radical tradition.

The Memefest speakers represent excellence in design, critical thinking, engagement with social movements and activism. In their defence the group represents those active within the Memefest network that evolved organically over the past decade. Speaker choices might not be a matter of producers choosing men but rather choosing people who were active building the network. There were many women participants in the workshop (although the facilitation was also 100% male most of the week). It was suggested that perhaps the next generation will be more equal. I consider the struggles my mother endured and am aware that changes made by feminism have been the result of active intervention; not passively waiting for the next generation to resolve masculine domination. Today women are central to all radical social movements (at least all those I know) and radical female writers are well recognised. In sharp contrast, the design industry is particularly good at privileging male voices and roles out all male panels at conferences with astonishing consistency and shamelessness. What I find particularly disturbing is that this can happen under the auspices of radical communications.

When I spend a day watching a panel of men present their work, I find myself slipping into despondency pierced by outbreaks of frustration. First, I become bored with a sameness of perspective and expression. Then these events start to represent more than just the results of one organisation's decisions on composition of a panel, but all the many subtle ways in which women are undermined in systems that still privilege men and male perspectives. In communication and design industries this masculine bias is amplified as dominant cultural discourses are constructed by and reflective of the experience of masculine cultural producers.

Although Memefest has grown organically and done an admirable job in building a community of radical communicators, this issue of balance and female voices is critical. Women and 'other' marginalised voices offer deeper critiques of systems of exploitation because we have the lived experience of being on the end of oppressive discourses, structures and systems. Feminism and anti-oppressive scholars have argued that marginalised perspectives can offer clearer critiques the ways that power works. A network of radical communicators must be explicitly feminist and anti-racist; and it must also do the work that accompanies creating inclusionary processes.

How is work created by women with different? Mapping out the territory covered by female radical communicators could be seen as an important part of the Memefest workshop's week-long project 'Mapping Socially Responsive Communications'. I believe that women communicators have unique contributions in our method, style and content due to different subjectivities. This difference is especially noticeable for radical women - as radical women will more likely challenge conventions. These differences mean that we are less likely to be featured in design magazines or conference panels. Defining difference is sketchy territory but I will hazard one comment that I think is particularily relavant. We often have a different approach to collaboration; one which accepts the value of diversity and allows voices to keep their individuality (and authorship) within a group. Perhaps this attitude comes from a historical awareness of how collectivism and universalising discourses can reproduce the perspectives (and power hierarchies) of the dominant voices.

It might sound strange to describe women's voices as excluded in an era when women are everywhere in the media. As long as women peddle the dominant ideology they are well received. Progressive networks must acknowledge women's input as vital. When there is an obvious lack of balance, conscious intervention is necessary. I am sorry that I made the panel uncomfortable on Friday, but I had to say something. Several women expressed gratitude to me. I also have to say that I resent having being forced to do so. This issue made the week quite hard work for me. It is an uncomfortable process of publicly criticising a group of men that I think are doing good projects (as individuals). I think it is important enough issue to risk the discomfort as networks and society at large will continue to perpetuate these problems until we confront the reasons why women are filtered out influential positions within industries and make determined efforts to address these problems.

I should also mention that I am have faced the same problem in other networks where I was the person at the platform. During my years with Transition Town Brixton we struggled with the fact that we had a overwhelmingly white membership in Brixton, well known for as a centre of black culture. In Climate Camp and Climate Justice Action we sought to use the privilege we held to support voices from the global south. Making concerted efforts to show solidarity across sex, race, class and location is the foundation of radical politics but always more difficult in practice than in theory. Critically, it's not about token voices, but strong critical voices. Memefest seems open making this happen and I would welcome a conversation on this topic within the Memefest community. Oliver's socially responsive communication aims to 'expose how power works'; masculine domination is one of the most subtle examples of power and should be a primary site for contestation.

The Psychology of Crisis: Mapping Strategies of Denial

2011-05-06T19:17:00.001+01:00

See the full gallery on Posterous

I am looking forward to sharing my entire 'Environmental Communication Design' chapter with you (all 18,000w), but in the meantime here is a little preview. These graphics are based on Stanley Cohen's wide reaching cross cultural sociological studies including Nazi Germany, South Africa, Israel /Palestine, Rwanda and others zones of human rights abuse, genocide and state sanctioned or institutional violence. In States of Denial Cohen describes strategies of denial on a personal level as psychological and cognitive, and on societal level as communicative and political. Although Cohen’s analysis of how disturbing information is avoided is based on violence against people, this work on denial is relevant for environmental communications (as first suggested by George Marshall) and further developed in my thesis.

Lessons from Feminists for Ecological Education

2011-05-03T12:00:00.001+01:00

I recently submitted this abstract to a conference and for some reason it was not accepted! Luckily the other abstract I submitted to this conference was accepted. Anyway, I might as well publish the abstract - here it is.

Endeavors to create conditions that will develop an awareness of context, political consciousness and the potential for social action have a long history in adult education. The remarkable shifts in women’s rights in the late twentieth century were the results of over a century’s worth of struggle by feminists, a struggle that finally became institutionalised in universities in the 1970s with the emergence of women’s studies. This radical education transformed the daily lives and political realities of thousands of women.

In a 1975 American nation-wide study of women’s education, Jack Mezirow identified ten phases often encountered during consciousness-raising process within women’s education and developed the theory and practice of transformative learning. Transformative learning has now been developed into a practice that helps learners critically examine assumptions and as well as develop social capacities to put new perspectives into practice. This pedagogy is a powerful tool with the potential to help learners cross the infamous value / action gap in environmental education.

An understanding of the connections between oppression of women and the destruction of nature has deep reaching implications for the environmental movement and design education. Feminism, with its legacy of struggle to pull half of the human race out of oppression, has a comprehensive critique of the conceptual framework sanctioning domination and exploitation. Critical strategies that informed women’s struggles for liberation can be used towards an ecological transformation in design education to create a foundation for sustainable design practice.

Developing an understanding of ecology and humankind’s essential embeddedness within the ecological systems is an essential foundation for designers. Design disciplines are integral to the creation of new sustainable ways of living but without a grounding in ecological literacy designers can only continue to reproduce current unsustainable conditions. Responding to systemic conditions will require ecological literacy to become embedded in design education.

References

Bateson, G. (1972). Steps to an Ecology of Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Bourdieu, P. (2001). Masculine Domination. Cambridge: Polity.

Bourdieu. P. (2000). Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. London: Penguin.

Kahn, R. (2010). Critical Pedagogy, Ecological Literacy, and Planetary Crisis. New York: Peter Lang.

Mezirow, J. (2000). Learning to Think Like an Adult. Learning as Transformation. San Francisco: Jossey- Bass.

Mezirow, J. (2003). Transformative Learning as Discourse. Journal of Transformative Education, 1, pp58-63.

Orr, D. (1992). Ecological Literacy. Albany: State of New York Press.

Plumwood, Val., (2002) Environmental Culture. Oxon: Routledge.

Shiva, V., (1988). Reductionist Science as Epistemological Violence. In Ashis Nandy (Ed.). Science, Hegemony and Violence. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Spretnak, C. (1997). The Resurgence of the Real. New York: Addison-Wesley.

Sterling, S. (2003). Whole Systems Thinking as a Basis for Paradigm Change in Education. Phd. University of Bath.

Hopenhagen: Design Activism as an Oxymoron

2011-04-18T13:24:00.001+01:00

My abstract 'Hopenhagen: Design Activism as an Oxymoron' has just been accepted for the Design History Society conference Design Activism and Social Change in Barcelona September 2011.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Photographs by Kristian Buus

Hopenhagen was an initiative by the International Advertising Association in support of the United Nations at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP-15) in Copenhagen December 2009. The UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon UN asked for help from the international advertising industry at Davos in January 2009. Hopenhagen took the form of an international public relations campaign culminating with an installation in the public square in central Copenhagen during the COP-15 summit. Hopenhagen created a feel good façade where corporate sponsors were helping governments save the world.

Meanwhile, many of the thousands of climate activists congregated in Copenhagen for the summit found Hopenhagen so offensive that they made the campaign and installation itself an object of their protests. Hopenhagen is a classic example of corporate appropriation of people’s movements and the subsequent neutralization of the messages demanding structural change and social justice. As such, Hopenhagen embodies the conflict within the concept of design activism itself. While design functions predominately as a driver of consumption, consumerism, globalization and unsustainable behavior; activism is concerned with social injustice and environmental devastation. Activists struggle to combat the forces of globalization by forming social movements and resisting corporatisation of the commons and everyday life; designers are normally servant of corporate entities. These two forces are integrally at odds.

Corporations want to appear to be doing socially valuable design. Yet creating a campaign around the idea of stopping climate change, as part of a branded exercise within a corporate culture committed to intensive fossil fuel infrastructure, is worse than useless because it institutionalizes hypocrisy. This paper will describe how Hopenhagen 2009 damaged genuine people’s movements at Copenhagen. It will also prescribe strategies for public exhibitions to avoid the appropriation of dissent.

References

Heath, J. and Potter, A. (2005). The Rebel Sell. Chichester: Capstone

Monopoly 2.0

2011-04-18T12:11:00.001+01:00

Our economic system locks us into patterns of consumption, industrial production and economic growth (resulting in higher carbon emissions, other pollution and the exploitation of natural resources). Monopoly 2.0 attempts to draw attention to these mechanisms by focusing on the next stage of capitalist expansion; i.e. the commodification of nature. The game also explores four future scenarios, based on David Holmgren’s work on the impact of climate change and fossil fuel depletion. The industrial system is a product of a certain way of organizing social relations and our economy. There are alternatives, these alternatives could emerge but will require widespread social learning to build an understanding of problems and solutions.

A sneak preview from Ecology Games 2012

Mapping Environmental Discourses - A New Model (including 'Disaster Capitalism')

2011-03-16T15:56:00.004Z

Having just finished a sub-chapter on John Drysek's environmental discourses (from his book The Politics of the Earth - see below), I decided that a new model was needed to address certain problem. I am not going to publish the whole discussion here but I want to post the diagram and am interested to hear what other people think of this model.

This new diagram (made today) attempts to reflect hidden power dynamics and ideological positions. Discourses that suit business interests are legitimized at the expense of discourses that more profoundly problematise current industrial practices. To a large extent, the market determines what information is publicly available because communications often either take the form of ‘marketing’, i.e. adverts, and/or are produced by industries that are dependent on advertising. Discursive discipline maintains marginalizes critical positions. Furthermore, discourses are not always made explicit; vested interests will mask their intentions to create policy that works in their favour. The green capitalism discourse is hegemonic but as crises continue to accelerate, a more coersive type of ‘disaster capitalism’ emerges (Klein, 2008). Green capitalism does not have the critical strategies available to it to resist the rise of disaster capitalism. The model above attempts to address some of these problems

See the full gallery on Posterous

This diagram is based on John Drysek's The Politics of the Earth, Oxford University Press, 2005.

Decoding Visual Media: Representations of Nature in Popular Culture

2011-01-18T21:41:00.001Z

I am interested in how representations of Nature in the media and popular culture effect out attitudes towards nature. I would like to study this phenomenon and could use some help from you, yes you reader. I need more examples. I am going to try and crowd source visual samples. Please help me out by visiting this new blog. Read the brief descriptions of the main themes under investigation. Think about it a bit and if you can come up with some samples that reflect the themes, please send them in. I hope to make it worth you while in the end. Many thanks.

Narcissism normalized

2011-01-09T17:33:00.001Z

In 2013 narcissism will no longer be a psychiatric disorder. Is this because it is now so deeply embedded in collective psyche it's now 'normal'?

Recently a NYTimes article announced that narcissism is being deleted from the tomb for psychiatric disorders. Narcissism will not appear in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (due out in 2013, and known as DSM-5). This is a very disturbing sign, so instead of blogging about the tragic sale of the UK forests, I will briefly address this issue of mental health and value shifts.

What happens when what was once morally objectionable behaviour ( egotism, vanity, conceit, selfishness) is no longer a 'legitimate' social deviance? Is narcissism now so deeply embedded in the collective psyche that it is now 'normal'? Is this the ultimate end of the neo-liberal exhalation of the individual, celebrity culture, a century's worth of advertising and the corporatisation of everyday life?

Psychologist Erick Fromm said that just because 'millions of people share in the same form of mental pathology it does not make those people sane'. Yet when the standards of morally acceptable behavior in a society change what is recognized as both 'sanity' and 'pathology' changes with it. What is 'insane' a few decades ago can become normalized and seem sane to contemporary people.

In the book and movie 'The Corporation' Joel Bakan argues that corporations exhibit the traits of those clinically defined as psychopaths. Psychopaths may be more dangerous than narcissists, yet both are indicative of a basic trend towards callous individualism at the expense of others, self-absorption, deceitfulness and inability to experience guilt. As a social phenomenon they create cultures of elitism and disregard for the well-being of others. Certainly this is type of mentality is a disaster for the environment.

In a world controlled by corporations; where our media reflects its values, our politics reflect its interests and many of us must work for corporations and must fall into line or be fired - large scale shifts in collective values systems will almost 'naturally' occur if they are not actively resisted. This shift in values towards those that are dominant in corporate culture should concern us all, as there will be no real winners in this illusionary pseudo reality.

COP-15 | COPENHAGEN - Position statement by EcoLabs

2009-12-09T21:40:00.001Z

COP-15 | COPENHAGEN - Position statement by EcoLabs

The deal on the table in Copenhagen suffers from the same problems that made the Kyoto Protocol a failure. Global carbon emissions have increased by 40% since 1990 and we are no closer to reducing greenhouse gas emissions than we were when negotiations began fifteen years ago. Emissions continue to rise at ever faster rates (including emissions in the UK if the embedded emissions in the products we buy from abroad are included in calculations). Solutions on the table are unjust and are unlikely to reduce net emissions.

Why COP-15 will not solve the problems with climate change...

1. The climate crisis demonstrates that it’s impossible to have infinite growth on a finite planet. The Sustainable Development Commission's report Prosperity without Growth describes how 'perpetual economic growth is totally at odds with our scientific knowledge about the finite resource base and the fragile ecology on which we depend for survival'. The negotiations at Copenhagen do not address this dilemma.

2. The climate talks put corporate profits before the needs of people and the atmosphere. The market based solutions being pushed in the UN Climate talks lead to land grabbing and more inequity. False solutions like carbon trading will not solve the climate crisis.

3. We need systems change not climate change. We need a deeper analysis of the problems and more support for communities developing solutions.

EcoLabs recommends:

1. Government policy must start to reflect the recommendations of Prosperity without Growth (published by the government's own think tank on sustainable development).

2. Progressive policy measures such as Contraction and Convergence or those described in Kyoto2 must become part of a new framework.

3. Local communities in transition are in need a much greater level of support and cooperation. £10m has been found for 20 communities in the UK to pioneer the Low Carbon Communities Challenge. Lets put this in context; the refurbishment of Brixton Central Square costs £9.5m. Is £10m, the amount it cost to give Brixton a new square, an adequate amount to help one - let alone twenty communities stop catastrophic climate change? What about the thousands of communities that are not part of the chosen fortunate twenty? The level of support so far is truly pathetic in light of the scale of the problem.

4. A massive communication and social learning project is necessary. The UK advertising industry spends over £7B a year and most of this is advertising is based around promoting consumption. The design industry is an important leverage point in the transformation of our economic and social systems towards sustainability. The design industry must quickly become ecologically literate to be enabled to design a transition to true sustainability. Communication designers can help inform the necessary shifts.

If we can't look to government to solve climate change we must take the lead in pioneering solutions and alternative ways of living well within planetary limits. Fortunately, thanks to the hard work of thousands of environmental activists there is a global movement of initiatives all working to build a resilient low carbon future. When governments start to support people, not profitable carbon trading schemes - we will have the beginnings of an effective climate treaty.

www.climateradio.org | www.pirc.info | www.thecornerhouse.org.uk | www.climatecamp.org.uk

Teach-In Proposal

2008-07-16T15:14:00.005+01:00

Teach-IN: A tool for embedding ecological literacy in design education

Design education must move quickly to respond to urgent environmental pressures. Climate change is a problem that will require a response from all sectors of society. Design must embrace its unique ability to facilitate change by engaging with the emergent concept of ecological literacy, communicate key concepts and help initiate a wide-reaching social learning process. This paper examines the model of the ‘teach-in’ as a tool for embedding ecological literacy into design education.

Ecological literacy is an understanding of ecological systems and an awareness of how society operates within natural imperatives. Ecological literacy creates a conceptual basis for integrated thinking about sustainability. Informed by ecological systems new foot-printing and life cycle analysis tools can assess the environmental impact of a system, design, process or product. The One Planet Living™ model developed by the WWF offers a clear vision of living within the planet’s carrying capacity. Meanwhile Cradle to Cradle design processes create methodologies for a zero waste economy. These new tools and processes have the capacity to transform unsustainable systems into systems for One Planet Living™. Designers have an important role to play in making these tools, processes & principles meaningful to diverse audiences and integrating these concepts into the public arena. We have the capacity to create systems that will allow us to live within the ecological limits of the earth’s ecosystem. Design education must work to quickly to build sustainable products and processes into our system. It must also disseminate the ‘know how’ and information for the transition to sustainable One Planet Living™. Equally important, the design industry must help to generate the will and the desire to make this transition happen by making sustainability the attractive option.

This paper proposes a massive social learning project within design education based on the example of the ‘2010 Imperative: A Global Emergency Teach-in ’. The teach-in was held in February 20, 2007 at the New York Academy of Science, and organized by Architecture 2030 (led by architect Edward Mazria). The website claims that the event reached a quarter million people from 47 different countries with the interactive webcast. The webcast featured presentations by climate scientist Dr. James E. Hansen, Edward Mazria, and Arup architect Chris Luebkeman who spoke to an auditorium full of students at the Academy. The event was broadcast live to other groups of students and also professionals in hundreds of architectural institutions. On this day ‘The 2030 Challenge ’ and the ‘2010 Imperative ’ were issued as specific strategies to transform education for the built environment. These strategies were designed to immediately mobilize the architectural design industry to stabilize emissions in the building sector, and then to set about to reverse emissions to acceptable levels over the next ten years. The paper will study the effectiveness of the 2010 Imperative teach-in as an example of social innovation that engaged thousands architecture students with the threat of climate change.

Embedding ecological literacy in the architectural industry was a central strategy in the 2010 Imperative Teach-in. The project websites states:

To successfully impact global warming and world resource depletion, it is imperative that ecological literacy become a central tenet of design education. Yet today, the interdependent relationship between ecology and design is virtually absent in many professional curricula. To meet the immediate and future challenges facing our professions, a major transformation of the academic design community must begin today. To accomplish this, The 2010 Imperative calls upon this community to adopt the following: Beginning in 2007, add to all design studio problems that: “the design engage the environment in a way that dramatically reduces or eliminates the need for fossil fuel.” By 2010, achieve complete ecological literacy in design education. By 2010, achieve a carbon-neutral design school campus.

This focus on ecological literacy is equally important in other design disciplines. Ecological literacy is a powerful concept that demands that we consider ecological systems and an awareness of how society operates within natural imperatives as an educational staple. This is a concept for patterning thoughts, organizing information and eventually behaviour. It is a cognitive faculty that our educational systems have tragically failed to instil. American educator David Orr describes this failure as a;

sin of omission and commission. Not only are we failing to teach the basics about how the earth works, but we are in fact teaching a large amount of stuff that is simply wrong. By failing to include ecological perspectives in any number of subjects, students are taught that ecology is unimportant (Orr 1992, 85).

Educators must address this lack of ecological literacy with urgency. Design education has a responsibility to address the shortcomings in its current methodology as designers could be of great value to the transition - if they decide to chart new territory. Educators must build awareness and methodologies in design to address social and environmental problems holistically - rather than the ‘patchwork solutions on a larger pattern of disorder’ (Orr 2002, 11) that dominates so much of the industry presently. This paper will explore in more depth how ecological literacy is fundamental to support ‘a rapid transition to a more restrained and elegant condition called sustainability’ (Orr 2002, 79).

The teach-in model has been proven to work, and has already been copied by a much larger teach-in. The ‘Focus the Nation ’ event on January 31 2008 was broadcast to 1,700 institutions and universities in America (according to their website). The teach-in is an effective model for dissemination of critical information in response to the climate crisis. This paper will explore its use in the past and propose that a similar project be conducted by the Cumulus group. The process is initiated by first building a network though a web 2.0 site and then by staging an event that will be broadcast live on-line to groups at all participating colleges and institutions, thereby creating a massive collective learning experience. The event itself will have three parts: 1) First, the main event is the live internet broadcast panel discussion featuring scientists, academics and cultural leaders who present a lecture and discussion on climate change and systemic change. 2) The following day each institution turns its full attention to the issue; faculty, students & staff focus on how each design discipline can work towards a transformation of our system and a pathway to lowering carbon emissions. The project would encourage each institution to run a program of events over the course of the day focusing on how to initiate projects to bring emissions down - locally and globally. 3) Finally, the event will follow the example of the 2010 Imperative by broadening the stated goals (listed earlier as the 2030 Challenge and the 2010 Imperative) to include all design disciplines represented by college members.

We are at the precipice of an unprecedented ecological crisis. This is not conjecture, not a random theory, but quite shockingly now the consensus opinion of the world’s leading scientists (IPCC Report). As weather systems are already starting to seriously lose their stability, it is fundamental that educational establishments show some leadership. We must harness the skills and vision within the disciplines to address global environmental challenges. Scientists have delivered and ultimatum: we must change the trajectory of carbon emissions within the decade to avoid run away climate change. Designers have a vital role to play in navigating this transition, but they must start to engage with this information. We must examine how our industry can be used to address this societal level challenge. We have no time to waste – and this paper will propose that a teach-in with a focus on embedding ecological literacy in design education is a necessary step to engage the design industry with the current situation.

References
IPCC. 2007. Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Orr, David. 1992. Ecological Literacy. Albany: State of New York Press.
Orr, David. 2002. The Nature of Design. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Proposition proposal
Design and Research - A Cumulus conference
20-23 November 2008
Saint-Etienne, France
www.citedudesign.com

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License

Should Change be Radical? - Feedback, comments, etc.

2008-03-16T11:50:00.005Z

Comment on 'Should Change be Radical?'

EcoLabs blog launch

2008-02-02T20:42:00.001Z

Comments on any issues relating to the EcoLabs site? Please use this space...