People & Planet: Circular Design in Action
An introduction by Professor Rebecca Earley to the People and Planet: Creating Change seminar, University of the Arts London, 7 August 2020
On March 23 2020 Boris Johnson told the country that people ‘must’ stay at home and certain businesses must close. University of the Arts London duly closed its doors to students. We all went home, and we stayed home. This date marked the beginning of an extraordinary period of time, where students working on the final year of their design degrees found themselves working in isolation, for many, many weeks. This was by no means an easy thing to do.
Art school is all about the culture — walking through studios splattered in paint, drinking tea with friends, and talking endlessly. Spending hours looking in the library, or talking to a tutor you bump into in the corridor. Impromptu walks along the Thames to clear your mind and creative blocks, with a trusted classmate. A drink in the pub after the long week of workshops. All these things that sound so simple, silly even maybe, they help us build the framework of innovation and the creative process. The external factors of people and place help us scaffold our inner journeys.
For some, completing a degree during lockdown was perhaps easier than for others. I think for everyone, in one way or another, it was an extreme challenge. This experience, I believe, will stand the graduates in good stead. As our world is changing. And we need to be ready to meet the extreme challenges that global warming is going to produce. As a designer and a design researcher, I have been thinking about these challenges for some years. They have become an inherent part of my practice. They form the basis of all my work and domestic decisions. Lockdown heightened the need to see design practice as the place for creating solutions, and for making the design process the holistic and all-encompassing, compassionate activity that it must become known for. As designers, we are not here to make more stuff for existing capitalist systems; we are here to make new systems that make the old ones redundant, enabling people and planet to flourish for generations to come.
In this introduction I want to present to you the way I see circular design through the lenses of materials, models and mindsets. Circular design can offer us ways to envisage and realise new systems to meet the needs of people without compromising the health of the planet.
MATERIALS
Designing with Waste Streams. Find a waste stream, and use it to produce new value. Bring the power of creative thinking to see the problem as an opportunity for a new beginning. Whether it is food waste, agricultural waste or construction industry waste, take what you find and make good. Consider how your decision-making changes as a designer when you are working with a waste stream. Note these changes. Help other people use waste in their locality too. Designing with waste streams may well mean a whole new set of rules and processes that can be adapted to suit local contexts.
Designing for Waste Streams means understanding that whatever you are making now will produce waste and will eventually become waste. So, you need to decide what kind of waste this will be. Will it be biological, or technical? Will it compost and add to the earth’s natural regenerative cycles, or will it be part of a recycling system that mechanically or chemically reprocesses the material parts back into new resources? As a designer you are essentially specifying for the future. You need to understand and support these future waste streams so that they can be healthy contributing factors to change.
MODELS
Develop Design-Driven Innovation Approaches. We need to challenge the way things are currently done and be part of the change process from an early stage, in whatever field this is situated in. In other words, design can help. It is not a process that happens at the end, it can help at the beginning of addressing problems in every field. Some might call this design thinking. It can take the form of facilitating others to recognise and define problems, as well as supporting them to find suitable solutions. It can also, and I think most importantly, raise questions and highlight problems that would otherwise go unnoticed. Design new models for working with others, so the questions become the ones that will create real change.
MINDSETS
Design to Enable Collaboration, Communication, Systems and Behaviour Change. As a designer, you have the power to reach people in ways that are unique to your practice. You are not only making things, you are making things happen. In designing for change, you need to build new and complex collaborations, and support and maintain them in an ongoing fashion, as you bring people along with you on the journey. Communication is absolutely key. It has the potential to change the way people act and interact, the way they see the world and the problems, and solutions, that lie ahead. As a designer, you may well be the glue that makes things work. It’s not only about having ideas, it’s about getting the ideas adopted and providing the broader context for change. Everything is connected. Design can be the everything.
Conclusion
This is not an easy journey to undertake. There are easier ways to work as a designer. This route will not be for all. But if you take the design for change path, you will be part of creating a future fit for people and planet. You will need help. Find your tribe. Have empathy — see yourself as both a designer and consumer. Sign up for lifelong learning; none of have the answers yet.
So, for now, let us enjoy seeing the problems and solutions these fantastic UAL graduates have explored. Let’s see how they have worked to change business as usual. Let’s see how they want to change the future…
Find Out More
This text was the introduction to a public seminar which lasted 60 minutes; you can watch it on You Tube.
View the People and Planet collection, curated by the UAL Climate Emergency Network, here.
Session Moderator: Cathryn Anneka Hall: PhD student, Centre for Circular Design, and Associate Lecturer, Chelsea College of Arts
Cathryn’s practice-based PhD is exploring the potential for design to drive a more circular materials economy, focusing on design for mechanical textile recycling. Specialising in wool and acrylic recycling from knitwear, Cathryn’s background as a knitwear designer in the fact-fashion industry has heavily influenced her research and includes testing recycled materials on an industrial scale. Cathryn currently works as an associate lecturer at Chelsea College of Arts, teaching across BA, MA and Graduate Diploma Textile Design courses. Instagram: @anneka.textiles
SILVICIOUS: MA Fashion Futures, London College of Fashion
Silvia Martínez Cerezo is a multidisciplinary artist interested in creating space for conversation and critical reflection around fashion. Silvia likes to tell stories by creating ‘things’ that are visually disruptive while having minimal environmental impact. Silvia’s goal is to raise awareness on fashion sustainability and conscious consumption, looking for innovative and engaging ways of making people think forward. Instagram: @_silvicious
Sara Howard: BA Ceramic Design, Central Saint Martins
Sara Howard is a ceramic designer and materials researcher whose practice is focussed on reducing the environmental impacts of industrial mass production. In Sara’s final project ‘Circular Ceramics’ which includes a tableware collection and book, Sara has designed an industrial symbiosis around the ceramics industry, whereby the waste by-products from one manufacturer becomes the raw material in another minimising the consumption of finite raw materials and diverting waste away from landfill. Instagram: @sara__howard
Ellie Wintour: MA Theatre Design, Wimbledon College of Arts
Ellie Wintour is an emerging Theatre Designer, who is currently undertaking an MA at Wimbledon College of Art. She is particularly interested in the role of theatre in understanding the climate crisis, and how theatre might be able to trouble dominant narratives around ecology through new methods such as eco-scenography. She studied her BA in English Literature at the University in York. Instagram: @elliewintour
Bridget Johnson: BA Fine Art, Chelsea College of Arts
Bridget Johnson has just finished a Fine Art BA at Chelsea College of Art. She has a research-based practice that focuses on institutions role within the climate crisis. Her work culminates in conversations and performed texts based upon her research. Instagram: @unabridged_
UAL Graduate Showcase and Event Programme: This event is taking place as part of UAL Graduate Showcase, offering a first look at the most exciting new names in art, design, fashion, communications and performance. UAL Graduate Showcase, created with IBM, will unveil graduating students’ work across our six world-class Colleges — all under one virtual ‘roof’ for the first time ever. The Showcase will open to the public at 6.30 PM on Tuesday 28 July and will host a programme of public events until Friday 7 August.
