EDEN

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Final Bachelor Project

Project squad: Transforming Practices

February 2022 – June 2022

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The newest wave of climate and social justice activism is dedicated to building more just spaces, while at the same time battling negative eco-emotions and the reproduction of oppressive structures. Having a clear understanding of what you hope the world will turn into and working towards this vision, provides support for those involved in justice work. Already expressing your ends through your means, aids the building of prefigurative counterpowers as an alternative to the status quo. EDEN is a workshop which helps communities to talk about their values and evaluate to what extent they embody them. This workshop is performed within a community in which I am active, providing the opportunity to evaluate my role.

The workshop invites participants to talk about their values through the metaphor of ingredients representing them. After having discussed them, they envision a utopia according to them and design something that would exist within this world out of an object which would have disappeared. These prototypes are then used as a medium for reflection on the embodiment of their futures and values.

The value exploration helped the community to become aware of each other’s values and make them explicit. There are indications that the envisioning of a utopia helped participants understand what they would and would not like to see in the world, but more research is necessary to confirm this. The embodiment discussion that followed helps the specifications of questions movements might ask themselves, but there is uncertainty on the necessity of the envisioning exercise beforehand. Either way, continuous reflection on the embodiment of values and dedication to unlearning oppressive internalized structures is imperative. More research is necessary to understand if this workshop impacts the overall wellbeing of activists. Understanding the extent to which the movement become a more prefigurative counterpower is difficult and needs more perspectives, from the inside, the outside as well as just history. There is however a sense of appreciation for the dedication to align means and ends.

The workshop being performed in my community allowed me to integrate organizational practices and extract deep insights from participants. The context of an academic project changed the dynamics, but also allowed for stimulating disruption of usual practices, inspiring different conversations and activities to take place. The entire project is greatly situated, bringing about the weakness of insights unable to being generalized. On the other hand, its strength is the explicitly situated and profound knowledge and the contributions to the field of participatory design. The process towards the project was not according to my values, but the workshop itself was in many ways prefigurative.

This project takes some first steps of interest, but there is still much to be explored for designers dedicated to “building the new world in the c(A)se of the old”. You can find more information on my project in my report. Click on the buttons below to download the zine describing the workshop. There is a version for reading and for printing. The value bowl labels are under the third button.