Five Designers On Care
London Design Museum: 2020 Designers in Residence
This article is shared with you in collaboration with the London Design Museum’s Designers in Residence.
At the end of this past August, Myriam held a session with four Designers in Residence exploring the theme of care through the program directed by Sumitra Upham at the London Design Museum. The designers in residence, Abiola Onabule, Cynthia Voza Lusilu, Enni-Kukka Tuomala, and Ioana Man wrote gorgeous stream-of-consciousness pieces on the shape and qualities of caring. This article features each of the designers and their writing.
Exercises like this make space for reflective practices in a way that crits, the process of writing formal papers, strategy meetings, lunch break chats, and live, in-situ work with people are not traditionally designed to make.
I asked the designers to write using ten question prompts I provided before we met virtually for the first time. They were prompted to write as thoughts came, to let go of overthinking, to resist the reflex to hit delete, re-read, and edit. This kind of space matters because it is a way in to making visible our tacit experiences caring in the work we do as designers. We wrote and spoke about control, trust, panic, stillness, lightness, and attuning as integral parts of a designer’s work. Making those things legible lets us reconsider, appreciate, be jolted out of our usual way of doing things, critically engage, un-know, situate, make connections, and make being reflective a thicker part of a designer’s everyday practice. Exercises like this make space for reflective practices in a way that crits, the process of writing formal papers, strategy meetings, lunch break chats, and live, in-situ work with people does not always allow.
Having them do this (I also participated in the writing and sharing) was also a chance for me, as the person planning out our time together, to spend time with their experience with care in a dreamy, abstract, expansive, and simultaneously practical way before the three hour session with them the following week. The process leading up to developing this prompt and our session was way for me to rethink the drivers that determine way I tend to plan, facilitate, and show up in design contexts. In our session together, the writing was used to frame the kinds of questions and topics we later unpacked in our virtual discussion.
On Care, in Design
Abiola Onabule
Abiola Onabule is a London-based fashion designer creating clothing inspired by elements of her own Nigerian cultural heritage.
For her residency, she will investigate how the exchange of craft and skills can become part of the act of care and conversation, through an exploration into the past, present and future stories of West African women living in the UK.
Cynthia Voza Lusilu
Cynthia Voza Lusilu is a London-based designer and researcher using design thinking and participatory practices to engage with marginalised communities.
For her residency, she will exploring mental health in Black British communities, designing a new support system that builds resilience and shapes healing spaces. Cynthia is also interested in the role that civic structures can play in reducing mental distress and achieving healthier cities.
Enni-Kukka Tuomala
Enni-Kukka Tuomala is a Finnish designer and artist. Her work aims to transform empathy from an individual feeling to a collective power for social change through installations, environments, tools and games.
For her residency, Tuomala aims to design an immersive empathy training programme, with a personal empathy trainer, an empathy gym, tools and exercises, to challenge perceptions of empathy, practice it and learn how to incorporate it into daily lives.
Ioana Man
Ioana is a multidisciplinary designer working between architecture, set design and critical practice. Her work aims to highlight the importance of microbial biodiversity in the built environment and the necessity to distribute its benefits fairly.
Ioana’s proposal is to develop a new body of work exploring how architecture can work with biology to create a more sustainable built environment that embodies health and justice.
Myriam D. Diatta
Myriam was the facilitator of the session with the museum residents. She is co-founder of Matter–Mind Studio, the publication in which this article lives.
For access to the writing prompts that spurred this writing or to have Matter–Mind Studio facilitate a reflective exercise with you, your team, or cohort, say hi at hello@mattermindstudio.com !
