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Designing Community

by Elise Sterback

‘Communities may sometimes need to be manufactured and policies may have to be directed towards the creation of spaces for them to develop and flourish.’ (Adrian Little, 2002)

Design Assembly is doing its part to foster a community in the world of design in New Zealand, but  what more needs to be done to develop the design community and whose responsibility is it to do it? I thought I would begin my contributions to the Design Assembly website discussions by introducing this question and by the same token, introducing myself as a new contributor and member of the Design Assembly team.

I am currently researching the state of communities in the creative industries and arts sector in New Zealand. In Auckland, this topic is particularly hot at the moment, with the development of the super-city looming at us on the horizon.

Although members of regional communities are being canvassed for their opinions on what shape the super-city should take, other communities that could be said to exist through their common interests, such as the arts, risk being forgotten or ignored, not to mention sorely underrepresented.

The way our political system is set up, individuals are divided up into the geographical sections of the country they occupy, for the purpose of participating in the democratic process. Is this method still relevant and effective in the increasingly global age of telecommunications? Do you even know the name of the family living next door to you? Perhaps we are better united by the beliefs, pleasures or skills that we share.

The difficulty in this is the manufacturing of these new communities. Some argue they simply exist as their members exist, but others say that they need to be deliberately formed. In either case, conscious action needs to be made to ensure these communities are recognised and represented, as default representation does not exist within our present society.

As individuals we all have the opportunity to participate in public decision-making, and some might question whether a community would really be more effective at doing so. This is an issue we need to examine and justify, but in the past definite benefits have been demonstrated from interdependence and co-operation, that even go beyond political engagement.

The first step is to define the community, will its members belong by default, simply by fitting the criteria? Who will the members be? The design community is one characterised by its members predominantly being business owners or employees and so it is seen to be an industry group. However, there is often a sense that designers have concerns beyond their commercial commitments and consider the relationships between each other to be more than purely professional.

Will competition between designers on a commercial level get in the way of co-operation between designers at a community level? How do we overcome this? It’s timely to be asking these questions, when the structure of our city is being looked at quite objectively and opportunities are being created for new approaches.

If you would like to participate in any way in the research currently being undertaken in this area please contact me.