Designing for a just transition
We’ve just launched Design for Planet, which is an incredibly exciting campaign to support and galvanise the 1.69m strong design community to design our way out of the climate crisis. But designing for the planet does not mean that people are not important. Far from it. In order to design for a just transition, we need to design inclusively.
In the past 18 months we have been rattled by the inequalities of society laid bare by Covid and the climate crisis, which disproportionately affected Black and minority ethnic groups. Felt deeply across a lifetime for some, these were brought to a wider collective awareness through the Black Lives Matter movement propelled by violence and police brutality in the US.
In the week after the launch, and with us about to enter a celebration of Black History Month, I wanted to reflect on some of the ways that we, at Design Council, need to continue our focus on equity, inclusion and diversity. This might seem obvious to some, but can never be restated enough. We also haven’t always got it right, and I’m sharing this here too, to show that it isn’t a simple ride, and it is a learning path for many.
I’ll follow the structure that we’ve set out in our EDI statement (Design that works for all): clear commitments on how we can address societal inequalities as individuals, as an organisation, as a platform for the design industry and in our programmes.
Ourselves as an organisation
As an organisation, we’ve focused a lot on our own culture. We started by working with Ameena M. McConnell, Curator, Inclusion Strategist, Founder of 8PUS DRUM (‘Octopus Drum’), who helped us work on our initial EDI statement and make it a bit more human and transformative, really engaging with what it meant as individuals, as well as an organisation. We’ve also done work to understand that the best teams are made up from a diverse group of people (see Matthew Syed’s Rebel Ideas), and that we have to understand our own differences and blindspots. And we’re about to work with Nishita Dewan, whose brilliant TedX is the Magic of Unlikely Alliances. The Black Lives Matter movement prompted many to rightly reflect on their own practices, either willingly or not, and has exposed some poor practices of some design agencies. Earlier this year there were some pretty alarming allegations about racist and sexist abuse in some larger design and innovation firms. There can be no place for this. We need to show that this is not acceptable and is not the way. This stifles innovation and is brutally unfair, and stops us from having an inclusive industry. The next point I’ll make…
The design industry
We all know the stats about how white, male and based around the south-east the design industry is (from our Design Economy 2018 figures). One of our big roles at Design Council HAS to be to change that. Design shapes the world and it absolutely needs to reflect the society it shapes. Some of the things we’ve been doing here are:
- Making every effort to always show a diversity of designers, from different gender, race, ethnicity, regional, ability, class and practice backgrounds. Our Black Creatives series (three digital events covering racial injustice, inclusive design and the built environment) was really popular. Recordings are at the links above. We refreshed our Design Council Expert network specifically to make it more representative (increasing the proportion of those outside London from 43% to 57%), and it’s been wonderful to welcome in different perspectives, especially as we’re also shifting how we work with them as more of a community of knowledge as well as convening them to provide advice or training on specific projects. Our forthcoming Design for Planet festival has been explicitly curated to make sure we showcase a diversity of design and designers — the line-up is here, and we’re pretty awed at the incredible visionaries who are part of it. As part of the Design for Planet festival, we’re asking demographic questions to understand our audience better, and make sure we’re reaching the right people. And being careful (working with experts) to design the questions in the right way, especially around gender.
- We’ve also been working on our next edition of the Design Economy, which is our pioneering research into the value and make-up of the design industry. This is where the very challenging statistics about diversity are from. This year, as well as measuring the environmental, social as well as economic value of design for the first time, we’re doing some more experimental research to show a greater granularity of demographic diversity. We’re also adopting a deliberative approach to the research, involving a greater diversity of people from across the design economy in deciding what values and aspects of the design economy we should measure.
- Rather than just a pdf research report, we are creating an online platform of stories, toolkits and resources. More like evidence as a service. But this has not been without challenge! In an effort to experiment with a new platform ReadyMag, it’s taken time to create a mobile version and we’ve had issues with accessibility standards — which we have strived to improve with plenty of lessons learned, about getting to and beyond WCAG 2.1 standards. In focusing on the academic methodology (which we obviously need to get right for its credibility), we haven’t always made it the simplest to understand. These are things we’re reflecting on and learning, but also sharing to show that it takes thinking, trying and testing time to get these right. For our Design for Planet microsite, we’ve added AccesiBe, which is a website plug-in that allows users to make accessibility adjustments (in terms of readability, layout, colour and web-reading).
- What comes out again and again is bigger structural inequalities which impacts equal access to design education across demographics and across regions. These need to change if we are to provide pathways to create a diverse design industry that is reflective of our society. We’ve been incredibly fortunate to have Professor Dori Tunstall as one of our Design Economy Ambassadors, who leads Black OCAD which is an incredible way of creating alternative non-academic pathways into design education for black communities meaning that different ways of knowing are valued and shared. Read more about her approach here.
- I’m also delighted that another of our Design Economy Ambassadors is Andy Haldane, who is the new CEO of the RSA and has just been asked to lead the Government’s Levelling Up Taskforce, so I’m certain he’ll be pushing us to see how design in communities outside London and the South-East can be supported.
- Showing how design can come from different places, and not just ‘traditional, western’ design is so important to diversifying the industry. Our recent programme, Design, Differently, funded by Local Trust and The National Lottery Community Fund, worked with 20 community organisers to uncover how they were using design during the pandemic, and connected them with designers who could help them further. Always with the emphasis on mutual learning from each other.
- Many of our new Design Council Experts are embracing this approach, and it is at the core of our new Systemic Design Framework (where welcoming and including difference is a principle) and System Shifting Design report, which takes this one step further.
Returning to Dori, this quote from her recent piece on the decolonising design makes me smile. “Our students are doing more of that work because they feel they don’t have to emulate the work of a Swiss typographer from the 1800s. Instead, they can base typefaces on the handwritten note in Tagalog language from their grandmother’s recipe book.”
Design to reduce social inequality
When it comes to designing for society, there are bigger challenges still. Not only the inequalities that have been laid bare by covid in terms of health, race or economic equity, but the inequalities more linked to the ‘design’ of places, products and services that in effect mediate these. For example, inequalities that impact the amount of time, agency and confidence to engage in local planning issues; inequalities that mean that consumer goods quite often get designed for those with money, and not for those without.
Inclusive design is a core principle running through all our work, and many of our programmes are explicitly designed to reduce inequalities. For example our work with Impact on Urban Health to create interventions to improve health for low-income employees in Lambeth & Southwark, or Ideas to Action, our programme with Sport England to support social entrepreneurs to create digital designs to increase physical activity for people from older, disabled or minority ethic communities. We spend a lot of time advising on this, for example as part of the excellent Design Age Institute, led by Rama Gheerawo and Colum Lowe, or making sure inclusive design is part of Design Review for new developments across many local authorities.
Reflections
Some reflections from all of this work, which might be useful in guiding yours. And equally, we would love to hear about how you are putting equity at the heart of your design practice.
- When recruiting, going out to different representative organisations is one step, but it needs to feel genuine. We invested a lot of time into our Black Creatives series and were delighted by feedback and interest from younger Black designers about working with us.
- There is a tension between designing at pace, experimenting with something new and untested and designing inclusively. And I know that designing in sprints can help as you’re testing and iterating, but it’s that space in between. We didn’t get it right — it was too long between iterations. We have learned lessons and gained expertise. Thank you especially Makayla Lewis who helped bring this to our attention, and held us accountable to getting it fixed.
- It needs to start with yourself. Internal culture is so important — creating a diversity of ways of knowing and being, and an awareness of that. And so is recruitment. Making sure you are recruiting for difference, and an acceptance of difference.
