The Renaissance of Participatory Design
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The Soweto Project – led by Marjetica Potrč – highlights the power of community in design.
Written by Ryan Cheng.
Soweto is a township in the city of Johannesburg, South Africa (the name is an abbreviation for South Western Township). It has a population of 1.3 million people and is the home of the late President Nelson Mandela.
Once the country’s largest black township, today Soweto finds itself deeply divided by wealth inequality. This is evident in neighbourhoods only some 10 minutes apart. In Diepkloof, grand mansions line the streets, while down the road in Klipspruit, shantytowns crowd together, mirroring the housing shortage that grips the less fortunate.
This struggle is not new to Sowetans, leaving many wondering how to reunite a once tight-knit community.
In 2014, Marjetica Potrč and a group of students from her Design for the Living World class (at the University of Fine Arts/HFBK, Hamburg, Germany) were invited by the umbrella art project Nine Urban Biotopes (9UB) to spend two to three months in Soweto developing a community-based participatory project, which they aptly called ‘The Soweto Project’.
Participatory design is a distinct approach to placemaking that focuses on the processes and procedures of design.
As Marjetica practises it, there are four key steps:
– Listening to and talking with the local residents before making any definite plan,
– Involving the community in the decision-making and design processes,
– Involving the community in the construction process,
– Transferring responsibility for the developed project to the community in order to leave behind a sustainable project that benefits the population in the long term.
Participatory design seeks to bring all stakeholders into the heart of the design process. This is a way for designers to better understand, meet and oftentimes pre-empt the community’s needs.
‘The interesting thing is that in this process, the role of art, architecture or design changes,’ Marjetica says. ‘And of course, the roles of the artist, designer and architect change as well. So if you’re working on participatory projects, you’re not so much an author as a co-author or co-worker and, of course, a mediator.
‘I always make the point that mediation is not only about mediating the relationship between local residents and the government. It is also important to mediate between everyone who is involved in the process. It is important to help them formulate their ideas about the future.
‘I have learned that we as designers, artists or architects act as catalysts for others. This way, through our collaboration, it’s possible for the local residents to develop an idea about the future they want to live in.”
Marjetica notes that participatory design is going through a period of renaissance. Social participation, she explains, was very much alive and well after the Second World War. But from 1968 to 2008, it was gradually dismantled in the public sphere.
‘What we encounter today in Europe, for instance, is the decline of the social state and concurrently, the rise of challenges such as climate change. Governments, that is to say, the state, are unable to resolve these challenges by themselves. So participatory projects are coming back.
‘They need empowered citizens, more politically engaged citizens. We always talk about the desire for a more resilient society. But to attain a resilient society there needs to be a shift from the neoliberal social and economic agreement, because we live in the age of the Anthropocene.’
During the long-term residency of ‘The Soweto Project’, local residents and students turned land that had been used as a dumping ground into a community-organized public space called Ubuntu Park.
Working together, they built a stage and braai (BBQ) stands, and installed tables and benches for communal use. For the grand opening of Ubuntu Park, they organised the Soweto Street Festival to celebrate the diversity and uniqueness of the local community.
‘In a participatory project, it’s very important that you don’t impose yourself on the discourse or the community. You have to listen without prejudice or preconceptions.
‘It’s very important to get the community engaged and on board to design a project together. So the prevailing wisdom is never do anything for them but instead work with them.”
For Marjetica, working closely with the local residents in a way that allowed them to assume responsibility for the project was the key to success. In fact, Nine Urban Biotopes, the umbrella project that oversaw The Soweto Project, was chosen by the European Commission as one of the ‘success stories’ in the Creative Europe Programme.
‘The most important step in the participatory design process is the fourth one: transferring responsibility for the developed project to the community. Success is achieved when the designer or artist involved becomes irrelevant. This is the point when the community assumes ownership, which allows the project to become sustainable for a long time.
‘In The Soweto Project, we understood that this had happened when suddenly the residents themselves started organising the meetings. That was when we realised: they own the project now.’
Ubuntu is a Nguni Bantu term meaning ‘humanity’.
It can also be translated as ‘I am because we are’ or ‘humanity towards others’. The Soweto Project and the resultant Ubuntu Park is a living symbol of this message, highlighting the power of design in creating change.
‘Social design has a social impact,’ Marjetica says. ‘It can be a force for improving people’s lives and strengthening communities. For me, it is very important that people work together to realise and articulate not only their relationships but also their desires for the places they live in, now and in the future.’
Ubuntu Park is a place that has been transformed by people for people, a public space organised and maintained by the community. This, more than anything, is a sign of the project’s success.
This article was written in part from an interview between Marjetica Potrč and Local Peoples founder, Giuseppe Demaio.
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