Many Ways of Living
project development and visuals done in collaboration with fellow design student Rory Thomson
This project is a case study of using design pedagogy to make understandable the politico-economic issue of sustainability, then, to suggest action through guiding tools, and lastly, to find the existing social structures to make these actions practicable continuously and over time. We position our design as a type of activism that everyone can do. On the one hand, this model of design (activism) is the means of arriving at economic models that put dignified human life and ecological sustainment and regeneration as a starting point rather than as externalities. On the other hand, it is a suggestion of what design could be within such economies.
A capitalist economic model is intrinsically unsustainable for the global ecology, even in the form of Circular Economy. A sustainable economic model would take into consideration Earth’s planetary boundaries and ensure fair and equitable living conditions beyond the national level. These economic models, albeit necessarily circular, would come not from the desire to sustain an economy of growth, but from the principles of sustaining human and more-than-human life. Hence, we would need a design for this economy that is in service of different markets, a design that gives agency to communities rather than one that makes decisions for them.
Product: A WALK-THROUGH
The walk-through is a package of four envelopes, each containing a few cards from the deck along with a prompt. They act together as a walk-through of the method of design activism which we promote. The envelopes do not have to be opened in four consecutive days, however, the order should be followed.
Cards
a digital way to explore the walk-through: https://www.instagram.com/mwol_2020/
