Designing for Self-Determination: Making Futures Without Policing

Abstract

This workshop examines the potential opportunities and dangers of using a design approach within grassroots movements that are building alternative social structures. Designers claim to be able to shape future ways-of-being by designing artifacts that invite new socio-material interactions. Yet, design is only one way to create the future. Does design inherently produce static, blueprinted ways-of-being? Is it possible to design within systems that are relational, cooperative, and dynamic? How might designing objects help community organizers reckon with the tools and technologies of existing infrastructures and develop lateral solutions? Workshop participants will investigate the limitations of design in this context by practicing the practice, using the example of designing for alternatives to policing. We will work in small groups to build on community-based precedents, prototyping objects, tools and technologies that could support alternatives to calling the police in response to a threat. Then, we will draw from our collective experience to discuss and debate what design might or might not offer in this context.