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Missä kulkevat elävää materiaalia hyödyntävän biotaiteen rajat? Millaista tietoa jää tieteellisen tutkimustyön ulkopuolelle? Miten biotaide voidaan muuttaa taidelähtöisten menetelmien kautta tiedoksi ja taiteelliseksi ajatteluksi? Esimerkiksi näihin kysymyksiin etsii vastausta Lapin yliopiston taiteiden tiedekuntaan vuonna 2021 perustettu BioARTech-laboratorio, joka tutkii biotaidetta ja sen yhtymäkohtia taiteeseen ja tutkimukseen. Laboratorio tukee biotaiteen, muodin, tekstiilitaiteen, luovan tutkimuksen (art-based method, art-based research), biotekniikan ja tieteen välistä tutkimustyötä. Keskeistä BioARTech-laboratorion toteuttamissa kenttätutkimuksissa ja laboratorion taiteilija-tutkijoiden käyttämissä taidelähtöisissä menetelmissä on poikkitieteellisyys ja pyrkimys kohti kestäviä prosesseja. Biotaiteen avulla voidaan kehittää innovatiivista suunnittelua luonnon ja ei-inhimillisen kanssa sekä saada aikaan uusia suunnitteluratkaisuja, prosesseja ja muutoksia yhteistyössä lappilaisten yritysten kanssa. BioARTech-laboratorion päätutkijat ovat tekstiilialan professori Heidi Pietarinen, palvelumuotoilun professori, dekaani Satu Miettinen ja dosentti Melanie Sarantou, jotka tarkastelevat biotaidetta eri näkökulmista taidelähtöisissä tutkimuksissaan.

This article discusses a design research project in which design practitioners and researchers collaborated to develop training guidelines and a toolset for astakeholder workshop to be implemented by partner organisations of the Arts on the Margins: Arts as Social Sculpture (AMASS; 2020–2023) project. It focuses on the learning experiences of the design team, which was comprised of four people who created the online environment for the stakeholder workshop.The team members, who are also the authors of this article, were all designers and researchers with varied backgrounds and experiences. The workshopactivities were adapted from a face-to-face format to an online environment due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The objectives of the article are to explore the team dynamics, approaches to design development within digital environments. The use of collaborative autoethnography (CAE) and reflection enabled the design team to assess their design processes and learn from critical discussion. The results will present guidelines for teams developing and conducting online workshops in digital environments.

This article addresses the role of social innovation in ageing communities. Two cases are considered, namely the Life 2.0 project that focuses on generating information and communication technology services for ageing individuals and groups across Europe, while the second case is a project that was conducted with the BoAi aged care facility in China in which food services were (re)designed through insights stemming from the community. A comparative analysis will investigate how ageing communities collaboratively work with stakeholders, including designers and other professionals, to develop new services with the elderly. The comparative analysis presents insights into the role of ageing communities in service design processes and their roles as co-creators in new futures.

This article presents the design and research process of a design team of four designer-researchers, who are also the authors of this article and collaborated to develop training guidelines and a toolset for stakeholder workshops. The intention was to use the series of stakeholder workshops as a key method for developing policy recommendations about the role of arts in mitigating societal challenges. The stakeholder workshops were implemented across Europe by the partners of the European Commission H2020-funded project, Acting on the Margins: Arts as Social Sculpture (AMASS). Due to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the designer- researchers had to transfer all activities, such as face-to-face workshops and their own work processes, to a digital environment and online participation. The digital toolset and user guidelines were aimed at training the project partners to conduct stakeholder workshops and collect data for creating cultural policy roadmaps that would be context- specific for the European region where they were located. The design process for creating the digital artefacts, such as the digital toolset, user guidelines and online workshop environment, is discussed in this article, in addition to this study’s opportunities and limitations., peer-reviewed

This paper addresses the social phenomenon of ageing and emphasizes the importance of past experiences of ageing individuals when creating new solutions to deal with the issue of elderly ca...

The European Commission H2020-funded project Acting on the Margin: Arts as Social Sculpture (AMASS) brings together artists and communities to explore how the arts can act as a vehicle for mitigating societal challenges. The project spans the margins of Europe, from Malta, Portugal, Czech Republic, Italy, Hungary, the UK, Sweden and Finland. Implemented between 2020 and 2023, AMASS is an arts-based action research project that aims to create concrete opportunities for people to come together and accompany artists as agents in creative projects and interpretations. This multidisciplinary project considers a wide field of disciplines. Through participatory approaches, it uses practical methods to capture, assess and harness the impact of the arts and further generate social impact through policy recommendations. A European-wide AMASS Testbed of 35 experiments is implemented, and the research outcomes and findings will be upscaled through policy recommendations. The testbed identifies, explores, collates, evaluates and analyses existing and new innovative productions, experiments, and case studies from the perspective and the physical positioning of European countries ‘on the margins’ in the underserved northern, southern, western, and eastern regions. The first AMASS Symposium was implemented on 28 and 28 May, 2021. This activity was led by AMASS Research Fellow Professor Andrea Kárpáti from the Corvinus University of Budapest. At the two-day symposium, the project partners presented the first research reports of the seven pilot studies that were implemented as part of the testbed. The reports addressed the pilot studies and their implementation. In addition, the assessment of the pilots and policy implications were presented. Up to sixty audience members participated in the symposium. This publication presents the proceedings of the symposium, which are research reports that partly fulfill the Deliverable 2.4 Research reports as journal publications of the project. The fourteen research reports from the participating countries illustrate a wide variety of artistic projects of socially engaged arts and their assessment methods. Some initial reflections on policy implications deriving from the assessment are also presented. The assessment enabled new insights into the impact of the arts in societies, through the communities with whom the AMASS partners were co-creating new and shared experiences. All reports were double peer-reviewed and edited by Andrea Kárpáti and Melanie Sarantou. The reports are organised according to the countries in which they were implemented. The order of the reports is not intended to set up ‘margins’ between the countries. On the contrary, and as the reports illustrate, there are strong similarities and comparable case studies that strikingly remind us of the complexities of margins, and that they are persistently present across Europe and its societies.

Improvisatory processes are considered synonymous with play, offering only second-best solutions to art and design problems. The role of improvisation in visual art processes is not widely discussed academically. This paper draws on a case study situated in Namibian art worlds to reflect on the role of improvisation in fluid and complex design and art processes. In Namibian contexts, improvisation is closely related to how artists and designers work instead of only being 'play', as improvisatory processes often respond to pressing demands and notions of having to do what needs to be done to sustain livelihoods. This paper documents and learns from the experiences and stories of Namibian art and design practitioners. The connective role of improvisation in design moments, allowing practitioners to negotiate multidirectional processes, often result in becoming unstuck in art and design processes. A holistic approach to improvisation, based on the understanding of lived experiences and actions within environments in which resources are utilised to solve design problems and build new experiences, is explored. Additionally, through improvisatory processes, learning is stimulated through new experiences that come about by utilizing the available resources within a given environment.

This paper examines the participation of various healthcare specialists and representatives in three design sprints aimed to co-design healthcare services through service design approaches. The design sprints were executed during the spring of 2019 in Gothenburg, Sweden; Tallinn, Estonia; and Rovaniemi, Finland, each lasting four to five days. This paper discusses the varied roles of healthcare representatives as participants in health-related design sprints and how these different participatory roles can optimise, support and catalyse design sprint processes to develop health services. The findings show that by being part of a team, healthcare representatives can learn to use design methods and design thinking, which have an impact on future development work for healthcare services. The value of the paper lies in presenting a practical framework for use in design sprints by healthcare representatives towards the development of health-related services.

Identities and notions of the in-betweenness of designers in management positions in Silicon Valley might be shaped by one another given changing sensemaking contexts. As organising becomes less bounded with shorter job tenures designers have been constructing their identities in interactions with diverse stakeholders. Tools, skills and values together with previous experiences continuously shape design manager identities. This research explored design manager in-betweenness by linking it with identity construction, critical sensemaking and social constructionism. While hybrid design managers produce profits and innovations by utilising user data, they also might steer their organisations towards more inclusive values and global responsibility. Internal struggles may follow while there is a need for open interdisciplinary reflection. A broader global understanding of the design space is suggested. Implications for education extend beyond the design field. Deeper reflection on ethics and production consequences across occupational silos enhances critical thinking, enabling collective identity cultivation in organisational sensemaking.

This paper explores the role of improvisation in design thinking for product design processes and design research methods. Improvisation is often at the core of practice-based and participatory design, permitting flexibility. The role of improvisation in the performing arts has received considerable academic attention, however its role in design processes has been neglected, because improvisation is often viewed as the second-best solution to design problems. This paper presents a framework for improvisation by surveying existing scholarship. Additionally, field study data collected between 2011 and 2016, primarily in Namibia and Australia, will be used to illustrate how improvisation is applied by practitioners during their art and design activities. The connective function of improvisation allows designers to negotiate, take risks, unmake and remake formations. This function enables the fluidity of design, to move from one moment in a process to the next, allowing designers to negotiate ways of work during uncertainty.

This article proposes a design perspective on strategizing by presenting a Model of Positive Strategic Sensemaking for Meaningfulness. Theory elaboration is used drawing from three related disciplinary fields; strategizing, sensemaking and design. It is proposed that positive and human-centred design facilitation enhances strategizing as an ongoing embodied and material activity where meaning changes in strategy and vision may emerge. By viewing strategizing as a socially constructed evolving phenomenon the model adopts sensemaking and critical theory perspectives where the consequences of decisions for human beings and environment guide further activities. Designers as co-strategist may support or challenge an existing strategic direction resulting in incremental or more radical meaning changes among those affected by, and affecting, the emergence of strategies.

The research investigates the role of service design and improvisation as decolonising practice. It is based on case study research with a focus group consisting of Namibian artists, designers, artisans and arts organisations who participated in artistic and cultural exchange activities of the Art South-South Trust (ASST), a start-up Namibian not for profit (NFP) organisation. The goal of ASST was to increase visibility of the focus group members, enable global exposure and create an arena for multi-vocality. The paper creates a practical framework for decolonising practices in Namibian arts and design by drawing on reflective practice to analyse the activities of ASST alongside interview data collected from Namibian and Australian partner organisations and participants in the program. Critical thinking is used to evaluate the impact of realised activities and processes both in situ in Namibia and in exchange in Australia. This paper explores practices that can enable decolonising processes in Namibian arts and design spheres

Complexity is a key characteristic of many participatory and community-oriented design activities. Designers’ varied roles are being transformed as they have to manage the complexities and entanglements associated with global societal, technological and environmental change. As design turns towards a social mode of operation and application, this session ‘Transforming Complexities through Design in Collaborative Community-based Processes’ seeks to open a discourse on the role of design in managing the complexities that affect communities and individuals, alongside their attendant processes and practices. A range of approaches, skills and competencies currently demonstrated across instances and experiences of complexity, and across a range of contexts for collaborative and community-oriented design, are mapped through the contributions in this track.

The purpose of the present chapter is to add to the body of knowledge about what aesthetic learning encounters might be and become by investigating local events of learning in a Swedish higher educ ...

The article explores the processes designer-makers and communities should engage in before using service design approaches to produce creative tourism experiences. These processes can yield insights into the inner processes and interactions with external environments of creative individuals and communities. Case studies from Finnish Lapland and Namibia show the importance of identity construction, creativity and storytelling for context mapping. The article presents a practical and flexible mapping tool that has been derived from these case studies. This tool can be expanded and applied by designer-makers for practical mapping activities. The findings indicate that creative tourism involving designer-makers can provide new tourism opportunities that not only generate deeply relevant experiences for tourists but also sustainable livelihoods for local designer-makers.

This paper addresses the fields of social and service design in development contexts, practice-based and constructive design research. A framework for social design for services will be explored through the survey of existing literature, specifically by drawing on eight doctoral theses that were produced by the World Design research group. The work of World Design researcher-designers was guided by a strong ethos of social and service design for development in marginalised communities. The paper also draws on a case study in Namibia and South Africa titled ‘My Dream World’. This case study presents a good example of how the social design for services framework functions in practice during experimentation and research in the field. The social design for services framework transfers the World Design group’s research results into practical action, providing a tool for the facilitation of design and research processes for sustainable development in marginal contexts.