CROSSING THE GREAT DIVIDE, By Ian Grout, Glasgow School of Art

Hobart / Tasmania / 2009 © Ian Grout / September 2013DESIS / Lincoln
Crossing a Great Divide
The Changing Nature of Life, Work and Education

Introduction:
• Exploring the educational and professional
potential of a more holistic attitude for
design, designing and designers; in particular
those of empathy, humility and respect
• An ongoing activity seeking to propose
progressive and sustainable educational models
with and for professional design activity
within a society in transformation
• Championing the value of an expanded lived
experience as a key element in proposing
roles for future design activity
© Ian Grout / September 2013DESIS / Lincoln

Two Project Case Studies

For the Greater Good

Introduction: In the Autumn of 2012 we
undertook a third Design for Social Enterprise
Project.
• 5 weeks, 18 students, 6 Social Enterprises:
1) Galgael
2) Prince & Princes of Wales Hospice
3) Impact Arts
4) The Bike Station
5) Kibble
6) The Coach house Trust

Context: By being embedded in a social
enterprise students work in concert with
Social Enterprises to explore the nature of
their business and to co-propose detailed
design opportunities for their further
development.
Objectives:
• To broaden, develop and refine design
practice and in particular the empathic and
creative point of view of the young designer
• To understand the requirements of and to
enact design activity within a Social
Enterprise and construct design outcomes
specifically for the benefit of an audience
with broad social needs

Objectives:
• To work closely with a wide range of
stakeholders and users and to co-enact design
outputs in concert with them
• To enable the communication of a wide range
of design outputs to a broad audience of
stakeholders operating within the field of
Social Enterprise and/or associated with it

Value: In these projects much has been learnt
about the nature and rhythm of working between
Social Enterprises and Education:
• Significant time must be spent embedded in
the organisation to understand, what it does
and what it may do differently
• Educational timeframes do not necessarily
work with those of Social Enterprises
• There is, relatively, still quite a
traditional view of design held in Social
Enterprises
• Whilst engaging in socially important work
Social Enterprises tend to be mired in day to
day survival

Affordance: In the longer term development of
working with Social Enterprises it would be
worth considering:
• Setting tighter (deliverable objectives) if
projects are short term
• Creating long term projects and
relationships – drip feed / multi year/
• Creating breathing spaces with Social
Enterprises to afford opportunities for future
development
• Co–authoring futuring strategies to the
mutual benefit of both creative education and
Social Enterprise and creating the time to
properly do so

Get Go Glasgow & The Audi Design Foundation

Introduction: In 2010, GSA won The Audi Design
Foundation Competition, Sustain our Nation for
the design of a social enterprise.
Context: In engaging with the community of
Wyndford (North Glasgow) Masters students
identified that, in order to create something
truly sustainable, the community had to be a
fundamental part of the process and that trust
had to be reciprocal between designer and
community.

Value: In this project much has been learnt
about the role of the designer in developing
social enterprise alongside communities:
• Community champions are essential
• Trust is imperative
• Consistent engagement over the long term
must become the norm
• Presumption and assumption have no place in
these designers vocabulary
• Empathy, humility and respect are traits to
be cherished when working with people in their
own communities
• Co-Designing has limits

Affordance: In the longer term relationship
with the Wyndford (3 further years from
winning the competition) we are learning how
to engage better as designers and also the
extended roles of responsibility inherent in
social engaged design.

Overall, these kinds of projects have value
in evolving the idea of how one might create
extended value for design, designing and
designers.
They are by no means perfect, nothing ever
is, but one could propose that that is also
the nature of living in the flow of life.
You live; you learn.
it may be said that these activities have
extended current best practice in their
approach and also been of use to those that
use them.
Reflection:

Reflection
• A highly developed antennae for the changes
in our economy, ecology and society
• A willingness to challenge and transform
traditional design roles
• An ability to generate a rich field of
opportunities for the development of design
within our changing society
• A strong belief in and skills for working
across disciplines
• A desire and ability to use design in a more
holistic and co-participative framework
Young designers are being seen to develop:

There is a sense in the previous projects (and
others) that, by co-design, we maybe designing
designers out and that would be inevitable if
design were not to further revalue itself.
We also have begun to understand that the
activity of designing in this way is not
likely to be of sustained future value.
Seeing the Wood for the Trees

What we were left with was a sense that we
were still designing too closely within the
context we are trying to transform.
In response to this we designed and then
started, a Master Degree in Design and
Citizenship constructed as a permissive space
in which to be better able to explore the
future issues facing a society in
transformation and designs role in that
transformation.

MDes Design and Citizenship

Introduction: The programme started in 2012
and 2 weeks ago our first students graduated.
Design and Citizenship shares a platform with
Service and Environmental Design.
It’s a one-year taught postgraduate programme
offering students the opportunity to confront
directly their current professional experience
and to explore social, ecological and economic
contexts and their impact upon future lived
experience.

Context: Design and Citizenship seeks to
explore the relationship between design
practice and contemporary society by
indentifying ways in which design may respond
to present social, environmental and economic
issues and create opportunities to inform
future living.
The programme asks the design practitioner to
step beyond their traditional professional
roles and to consider the broader application
of design practices, methods and tools as a
means of formulating and articulating
purposeful meaning for living in a world
undergoing profound social change.

Value: We intend graduates to embrace
challenges within areas as diverse as public
policy, private sector enterprise, citizen or
social advocacy, public sector service
provision, social enterprise and/or the
voluntary sector.
We believe the designer as citizen will become
a reflective professional who is as
intellectually adept at formulating a new
design opportunities as he or she is at
creating an innovative response to such
opportunities.

Reflection and Projection: A year in and this
is evident:
• A fundamental reconstruction of design
practice and education well is overdue
• Looking just to current modes of designing
is limiting progression
• Economy is a change tsunami
• Philosophy and purpose are key elements
• Economy, ecology and society linked to the
lived experience is the terrain
• Resilience, Conviviality and Co-operative
Reciprocity are key qualities

Resilience
Conviviality
Co-operative
Reciprocity
Understanding the
Lived Experience
Designing in the
Flow of Living
The Designer as Citizen:
Context Qualities

“The great thing about the dilemma we’re in is
that we get to re-imagine every single thing we
do . . there isn’t a single thing that doesn’t
require a complete remake.
Paul Hawken / The Ecologist / September 2007
There are two ways of looking at that. One is:
Oh my gosh, what a big burden. The other way,
which I prefer,is: What a great time to be born!
What a great time to be alive!
Because this generation gets to essentially
completely change this world”
(Hawken)

Ian Grout
Subject Leader
Mdes Design & Citizenship
GSA Scotland
0044 141 353 4716
0044 790 063 0275
i.grout@gsa.ac.uk
© Ian Grout / September 2013DESIS / Lincoln The Art of Looking Sideways

CROSSING THE GREAT DIVIDE, By Ian Grout, Glasgow School of Art

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