Co-designing sociodigital futures with communities at the margins: working in the thick present?
Presented by visting Professor Helen Manchester, University of Bristol
This presentation will reflect on what we are learning about working on futures and co-design with minoritised communities in the Centre for Sociodigital Futures (CenSoF) and our research in the UKRI funded project Connecting through Culture as we Age.
Our work in CenSoF is exploring the productive tensions at the intersection of Sociodigital Futures research, participatory methods/design and the role of excluded or neglected voices in futures making. We are interested in how some futures (and some presents) are already being foreclosed and how this might be disrupted. In this presentation I explore some of the emerging questions in this work including:
- How can we surface, notice and make visible everyday anticipatory practices in relation to sociodigital futures?
- What kinds of strategies and tactics exist or might exist in navigating sociodigital futures?
- What if… working on sociodigital futures is perpetuating a neoliberal foci on ‘futures’ over everyday presents and giving a false sense of agency to communities?
In moving forward with this work we are exploring the kinds of participatory futuring methods and approaches we might use to intervene in sociodigital futures making. Drawing on previous co-design projects and methods, and bringing them into dialogue with methods for futures making, this presentation will explore the importance of rooting participatory futuring in the situated, everyday lives of minoritized communities, attending to the more-than-human materialities and the social, political, historical and cultural forces that shape these lives. Drawing on the radically deconstructive and reconstructive commitments of posthuman feminism, and through examples, I’ll outline the threads that we have noticed as important methodologically in co-designing sociodigital futures. These threads explore our attempts to design in the ‘thick present’, ground design in more-than-human everyday lives, and negotiate care-full (re)arrangements in the collective doing of participatory futuring methods/design.
Event Details
- Date:
- 2 December 2024 at 12:30 pm – 2:00 pm
- Categories:
- Research methods
Description
Presented by visting Professor Helen Manchester, University of Bristol
This presentation will reflect on what we are learning about working on futures and co-design with minoritised communities in the Centre for Sociodigital Futures (CenSoF) and our research in the UKRI funded project Connecting through Culture as we Age.
Our work in CenSoF is exploring the productive tensions at the intersection of Sociodigital Futures research, participatory methods/design and the role of excluded or neglected voices in futures making. We are interested in how some futures (and some presents) are already being foreclosed and how this might be disrupted. In this presentation I explore some of the emerging questions in this work including:
- How can we surface, notice and make visible everyday anticipatory practices in relation to sociodigital futures?
- What kinds of strategies and tactics exist or might exist in navigating sociodigital futures?
- What if… working on sociodigital futures is perpetuating a neoliberal foci on ‘futures’ over everyday presents and giving a false sense of agency to communities?
In moving forward with this work we are exploring the kinds of participatory futuring methods and approaches we might use to intervene in sociodigital futures making. Drawing on previous co-design projects and methods, and bringing them into dialogue with methods for futures making, this presentation will explore the importance of rooting participatory futuring in the situated, everyday lives of minoritized communities, attending to the more-than-human materialities and the social, political, historical and cultural forces that shape these lives. Drawing on the radically deconstructive and reconstructive commitments of posthuman feminism, and through examples, I’ll outline the threads that we have noticed as important methodologically in co-designing sociodigital futures. These threads explore our attempts to design in the ‘thick present’, ground design in more-than-human everyday lives, and negotiate care-full (re)arrangements in the collective doing of participatory futuring methods/design.