History and Futures
The conversation with Hefin Jones, by Joe Pochodjaz, was an interesting interview that helped to understand the process of conducting a community project for education placemaking on the Welsh Space Campaign, to prove Wales is capable of space exploration. It was interesting how Jones would talk about how to strike a conversation with the people he would be working with within the community by creating a fictional topic that can help reimagine an interest in the community. This really creates an avenue in exploring ideas that aren’t exactly happening in the now but showing the important strengths that people may have to help understand and realise to use for their own benefits. He clearly worked with young people to help them see themselves as having the power to do whatever they want in life, which they understand their abilities much better. Jones plays the role of listening and giving to his audience which helps him with achieving the interactions to shape his work and what he will be doing with the data of research he has conducted. The overall approach is inspected through speculative design thinking that allows Jones to recreate a magical realism of the situation to understand the space informing the environment. This process is a continuous reflection on the created and modelled issues to help shape the outcome through listening and responsive interaction with the objective in mind. This approach to the service creates an ideal environment to change its understanding for the better of the community by showing interest in the development of the people and the spaces they’re engaged with around them. This is all about creating relationships within groups to express an interest in working together by being responsive and sensitive in conversation on the subject matter at present. Design Anthropology thinking is the root of this project to allow Jones to question the cultural insight of the community in Rhymney Valley South Wales where he can use the ethnography approach in his investigation for his project.
Design Anthropology – Prototyping the Social: Temporality and Speculative Futures
Design Anthropology: Object Cultures in Transition
This essay by Jamer Hunt, explains the argument of how the impact of anthropology can benefit from social engagement through methods such as ethnography that can define the present future in a speculative design. This can help make decisions on future impacts in trends that people might not be totally aware of but brings conversation on how we can tackle these issues.
A better understanding of the nature of our world can help the launch of a product through its marketing and user-centred development to achieve ideas. This is why taking the anthropology approach can open new ways of thinking through design to achieve an outcome you wouldn’t have imagined when you start putting together the research you’ve conducted.
Design Anthropology – applying design for change
This book talks about the theory and practice of Design Anthropology which goes into great detail about the combination of elements from design and anthropology that we speak about in this weeks module.
SpeculativeEdu
SpeculativeEdu is an educational skill and practice toolkit that is focused on technology and people. This is a site that brings articles and tools to help understand the process that is put in practice for many different case studies. It’s a great resource to look up articles that are inspiring and useful for your own practice.
Trees for Cities
Trees for Cities is a wonderful project that’s not just a service for communities up and down the UK but also used across the globe. This charity is about providing trees in urban cities to help prevent better life for the people in their communities. We know trees provide the power to remove carbon dioxide, dust, and other gaseous toxins but also reduce air pollution by tonnes of millions to help cities across the globe to better peoples health. The project is a service to encourage people to plant and grow trees in their neighbourhood which they engage to make a better future for the communities. The engagement with the communities is to create conversations over the prospers of creating a legacy to improve the environment they surrounded in and help the future generation.
The prospers of the service is to deal with the future of the climate and help to keep a balance and reduce the impact of the changes to our environment. Communities around the world are coming together to speculate a growing issue that’s being acknowledged of the impact that could happen shortly. We’re not sure what’s to hold in 10, 20 or 50 years with the environment we live in constantly changing every day with the challenges of how we treat the environment is using materials that are affecting our planet.
Workshop Challenge
I began by discovering issues in and around my location that I felt are issues that can be raised to challenge and make a difference to the community. I’ve looked at local issues that are quite common in other towns to see what can be a problem from graffiti to potholes in our roads that are causing problems to the environment.
The topics that are of interest to me are Fly Tipping, Potholes and Mobile Library that can be great issues that can be discussed and achieve great things to help the local communities. I personally narrowed my three ideas down to two which I believe are strong topics, Fly Tipping and Potholes as these can be fun and interesting issues that can be challenging and insightful to understand the benefits for the community.
Potholes
The chosen route I took with the three ideas is the pothole issues in the town as there are many problems on the road that causes accidents or damages to vehicles. Throughout the UK potholes across the country cost taxpayers £90 million to repair the safety of the British roads. The frustration in reporting and waiting for these to be filled is always constant pressure and strain on the local authorities to push on fixing these hazardous craters on our streets. It is not illegal to fill in potholes if there was a quicker solution to repair these without going through the local authorities, usually down to endless paperwork that needs filling out to sign off the job.
I came across a story in my local newspaper about a man who lied in a pothole to flag the local authority of the issue, which the council replied that the pothole did not meet the criteria to be repaired. However, the council returned to Mr Crotty that he was badly advised on the criteria and the council are looking to repair the pothole. I found this article amusing as Mr Crotty needed to make an issue on this pothole by laying in it to show the size it truly is to make a point to the local authority.
Fix My Street is a platform to report, review and discuss local problems in communities across the country. This site is full of data that can be useful for live problems like potholes to help unearth what problems there are and gets noticed by the local council.
I came across in my research campaigns and art projects that helped fill in the potholes on our roads. Domino’s pizza created a campaign around these in America where they funded to fill these in and then advertise their business to help not just for their delivery drivers but the community that need these repairs. The campaign was ‘Paving for Pizza’ where they produced a creative solution to repair potholes. This was an opportunity not for the safety of their drivers but also an opportunity to help advertise Domino’s Pizza business with on-road marking adverts.
Chicago artist, Jim Bachor has been filling the streets potholes with unique colourful mosaic masterpieces over the current climate of the pandemic during the lockdown period. The project title, ‘The Holy Trinity consists of four mosaic-filled potholes depicting toilet paper, hand sanitiser, a can of Old Style and a star from the Chicago flag—each surrounded by white rays that hint at religious iconography
Project Brief
Potholes across the country seem to be a daily issue for motorists on the roads as councils filling in almost two million potholes a year. This has become a huge expense on the taxpayer’s money and hard to keep up with the demands of filling these sinkholes that are constantly popping up over towns and cities in the UK.
My question is:
How can we make our road surfaces safer for motorists and pedestrians by contributing towards filling the potholes and maintaining our streets for the future?
People can report to the local authorities about potholes that they think is unsafe for road users, but this can be an issue with the council where fundings and time management can prove to be an obstacle to maintain good roads on our streets.
We need to pilot a scheme where local households and businesses in the region can help to support the management in fixating the problems on our roads. There can be an innovative solution that can be open to interpretation for either a product, service or commercial use that can gain interest from investors or local support groups to be part of a scheme that can benefit everyone as a whole.
The project needs to consider the safety aspects and financial viability that everyone can contribute and support towards the road maintenance and possibilities in creating new jobs.
