Actieteam
Werkplaats Social Design x Journalistiek
In collaboration with Afdeling Buitengewone Zaken and funded by the Creative Industries Fund NL, Sander van der Zwan has been working for four months (November 2021 - February 2022) on this project that aimed to address the following question: how can social design be represented, communicated and documented in a good way?
Publication
‘The articles don’t provide a definition, but a starting point for continuous joint defining.’
“During the project, I have oscillated between analyzing ways of representing social design, creating representations of my own and trying to understand what good representation might be. In two short articles, I have shared some of my insights. I didn’t write these articles to provide one clear picture of social design, but rather to argue for embracing its diversity and giving ingredients, such as the often occurring characteristics, so that social designers together with potential clients can start thinking together about what social design might be for them. It is in a sense a plea for refraining from being occupied with making general claims, and start engaging in critical joint reflection between client and designer about what social design adds in their particular contexts and projects. Here is a one liner: the articles don’t provide a definition, but a starting point for continuous joint defining.” (Sander van der Zwan)
“The first article discusses that social design as a field is very diverse, and that defining what social design actually is, would not only reduce its richness, but also be exclusive to many practices. And so, I argued that it might not be helpful to try to answer what social design “actually is”, but rather show enough individual stories of what social design could be like in different situations, so that readers may train their sight to see in their own context when and where social design might be relevant. In the second article, I discussed that a particular way of representing a social design project can be good for some things but bad for others. What a good representation of your project is, depends on the particular project, your concerns, who your audience is and under what circumstances it will be received. Finally, I presented a few pointers that I would personally pay attention to when representing my own projects on my website.”
