Radical Ecologies

How can design engage with complex spaces in meaningful ways? What types of tools can we employ to engage with these systems of scale and the environments they produce?

Radical Ecologies, held as part of retune festival 2018 was the first in a series of workshops exploring how participatory design can be used as a method to engage communities to think critically about systems of scale and imagine new alternatives. Using methods from systems analysis, critical thinking and speculative design participants deconstructed and reimagined complex environments, investigating system layers and co-designing responses. In the first stage of the workshop participants used systems mapping to speculate on topologies of the topic, mapping different actors and forces at play. After mapping system elements groups generated artifacts critically exploring the values of the imagined spaces.