Pushing the idea of ‘Play’ and methods of creative participation for Co-designing tactics

I ran down to the hostel lounge after gathering all the participants. We were about to go to the Jubilee Centre for the start of our workshop. The Centre will be our base for the next two weeks as the group of 20 or so international participants was about to get much bigger. In addition to our group, the room was filled with community leaders and representatives, as well as NGO workers. On different days, different stake holders would be in attendance creating a constantly dynamic environment with changing perspectives.

The day started with an introduction from Aditya Kumar, the DAG executive director. Adi’s words are loaded with profound power and strength as he wished us well on our journey for the next two weeks, but he also gave some resonating advice. Adi spoke about how Cape Town has a current unemployment statistic of 27 percent, the highest to date. The social problems and the social divides are possibly at their worst. Though policy is starting to become more progressive and taking into account incremental upgrade, these processes take 7 to 18 years to be implemented, showing a disconnection between output and policy.

It is with this contextual knowledge that Adi gave some advice for all of us:

1) EVERYONE IS AN INNOVATOR – The residents are experts in design. How do we take those existing skills, that resilience, and tactic and apply it with a new logic?

2) WE ARE ENTERING A PRIVATE SPACE – Don’t judge. Respect. Don’t patronise. Understand that we all have different strands of knowledge.

3) GET ANGRY, GET FRUSTRATED, ENGAGE! – Engage with each other critically. Be passionate and be angry. There is too much of a passive attitude. Question things.

Introductions then followed as we learnt more about Jhono and Jack’s work and organisations. Jhono and Jack are facilitators and each offer up unique experiences and knowledge. Jhono has an organisation called 1:1 whose principles are epitomised in the very name, with one to one partnerships, understandings and knowledge proliferation through socio-technical design. We were reminded how the ASF principle of knowledge sharing is so important as often we professionals work within closed and competitive environments. To achieve a holistic output at all scales, from community to global there must be a culture of knowledge sharing.

Jack presented his organisation ‘Ubuntu Growing Minds’ which focuses on activating urban areas and building capacity. His projects influence change in rural areas and focus on both a sustainable process and project. Sustainability in this context is not just the technical meaning of solar panels and so on. Sustainability is essential to ensuring the longevity of a programme and leads to self dependence and self reliance, equipping people and communities with frameworks and capacity to continue after other bodies help catalyse the potential for change.

Next, Helen Ruorke from DAG (Development action group) spoke of engagement tactics in the case of Woodstock and the importance of pushing people out of their comfort zones (including us!), and how bringing different experiences into the exercise was key and engaged stakeholders in a much more creative way. Pushing the idea of ‘play’ was vital and was a method of creative participation in what would otherwise be very rigid and formal structures. Tools and tactics for community led development are often not tangible things and can be an exercise or a game of football to engage and start conversation.

The 2015 Change by Design workshop engaged close to 120 people and these strategic engagements were part of a much longer and wider process. This workshop aims to engage close to 180 people and though some participants were worried about how much impact they could have in two weeks, DAG stressed that this workshop is simply a moment in a very long timescale. Its an opportunity that is very strategic in its timing and placement for a much wider strategy.

Following this we were presented the site profiles for Kensington, PJS Informal Settlement, and Oude Molen and Maitland Garden Village. These profiles will be explored further over the course of the next two weeks by individual focus groups through a variety of different scales and activities with members from the communities themselves.