<i>Every House on Langland Road</i> – the production of archival, architectural and artistic spaces

This article describes an Arts Council England project, undertaken by the author and a photographer, to examine spatial and temporal relations between an art project, its subject and its audience. The project explored and documented the architecture of a modernist 1970s housing estate, Netherfield, designed by a group of four architects for the new city of Milton Keynes. The estate has not aged well and the visual remnants of what had been an ambitious and idiosyncratic housing scheme were to be photographed and juxtaposed with the original architectural drawings. The photographic process contributed to a more complex series of perspectives which included the archival history of the estate and its surrounding new city, the people who live there and my own reflections on a council estate childhood. In turn, these perspectives are set out in this article in terms of the spatial and temporal realms in which they are, and continue to be, produced. Loosely conceived in terms of Lefebvre’s production of space triad, these realms are traced through the estate’s historical narrative from plans to buildings which then converge in the eventual art work. The gallery is seen as an assemblage of multiple connections drawn between various productions of archival, architectural and artistic spaces

A design analysis of parliamentary debate

Drawing on descriptions and interpretations of the design process from the design studies literature, this thesis explores and develops a method of interpreting and analysing data about large public projects whose contexts lie outside conventional design studies. The thesis undertakes a design analysis of parliamentary debate and draws data from the documentary records of two infrastructure projects. The first is High Speed Two (HS2), the London to Birmingham rail link proposed by the UK Government in 2010. Parliamentary bills were passing through both houses of Parliament and the relevant select committees, as this research was under way. The second, providing an historical counterpoint, is the first London to Birmingham Railway, planned and built between 1830-38. Through a series of studies of transcripts of debates, committee proceedings and records of meetings, the application of design analysis as a method is refined and reviewed. This analysis yields insight and understanding of the parliamentary processes, including debates and committee proceedings involved in planning and designing major public infrastructure, as well as making a contribution to the field of design studies and its methods. The implications this work has for design research are: • As a contribution to the ongoing debate about the scope and relevance of design studies as a discipline; • As a recognition of the value of the parliamentary record as a dataset, providing detailed records of design processes for complex projects with large budgets that affect large numbers of users; • By drawing on this dataset and recognising the context in which it is created, the importance of such context in the study of design is underlined; • The notion of an assemblage is developed as a mechanism for accommodating, accounting for, and visually representing the actors drawn from the contexts identified

Designing frames: The use of precedents in parliamentary debate

Using the naturally-occurring data of official UK Parliamentary transcripts for the development of a new high speed rail project, this paper takes one characteristic of the design process, the use of precedent, to explore how problems and solutions are framed during discussion. In contrast to accounts of reframing that describe one big insight changing the design process we show how one particular precedent allows a series of attempts at reframing to take place in discussion. We conclude by arguing that precedents enable a diffusion of semi-objective meaning in discussion, similar to a prototype in a more conventional design process. This contrasts with other types of discourse elements, such as storytelling, that function through the subjective accumulation of meaning

Political debate as design process: A frame analysis

Using data from the historical record of a major nineteenth century infrastructure project, this paper shows how controversial national debates can be seen as processes of design. Central to the idea of political debate as design is the concept of framing, where different ways of understanding a developing artefact are played out through conflict and resolution. The paper begins by setting the governmental context of infrastructure development before undertaking a detailed textual analysis of a specific meeting to draw out elements of a design-like discourse. The meeting participants construct a sequence of frames through which they explore their problem and with which they refine a strategy for moving forward in the process. The paper concludes that viewing political debate as a process of design can shift emphasis away from it being considered a 'simple' decision- making to more complex ideas about how our common future is shaped

Design as analysis: examining the use of precedents in parliamentary debate

Design continues to look beyond the confines of the studio as both practitioners and researchers engage with wider social and political contexts. This paper takes design into the Parliamentary debating chamber where a country raises and debates problems and proposes and explores solutions. There is an increasing amount of work that explores the use of design in policy-making processes but little that explores design as an interpretation of the Parliamentary process. This paper draws on one characteristic of the design process, the use of precedent, and examines how this appears and functions in Parliamentary debate. The paper argues that this ‘design analysis’ gives insight into debate as a design process and into the debate transcript as a naturally occurring source of design data. This contributes to the scope of design studies and suggests that the UK Parliament could be considered one of the most influential design studios in a country

Valuing Breastfeeding: Health Care Professionals’ Experiences of Delivering a Conditional Cash Transfer Scheme for Breastfeeding in Areas With Low Breastfeeding Rates

Alongside a randomized controlled trial testing the effectiveness of offering a cash transfer scheme (shopping vouchers) to mothers in areas with low breastfeeding rates, qualitative interviews were conducted with health care professionals delivering the scheme to explore their experiences. Health care professionals (n = 34; mainly midwives and health visitors) were interviewed in depth. Transcripts from recorded interviews were analyzed using a Framework Analysis approach. There was widespread acceptance of the scheme by health care professionals, with prior concerns regarding bribery and coercion being quickly allayed. Health care professionals reported that the scheme fitted in well with their routine ways of promoting and endorsing breastfeeding. They described their experiences of women’s positive reaction toward the scheme and how the scheme encouraged breastfeeding and gave breastfeeding higher value. Health care professionals reported that the incentives helped them engage women and promote and support breastfeeding in areas with low breastfeeding rates

On Dog Hair and Sand: Portrait of South Yorkshire Police

A photographic documentary of the South Yorkshire Police Service. The images and text presents the reader with a novel interface between the work of the police, the work of the artist and works of art

Challenging social norms: discourse analysis of a research project aiming to use financial incentives to change breastfeeding behaviours

The UK has one of the lowest breastfeeding rates in the world. The NOurishing Start for Health (NOSH) cluster-randomised trial was a trial of a financial incentive scheme that aimed to increase breastfeeding in UK areas where breastfeeding was not the norm (South Yorkshire, Derbyshire, and Nottinghamshire). The announcement of the initial field test of the Vouchers for Breastfeeding scheme generated a substantial amount of (mainly negative) media and social media coverage. Given the media interest and scrutiny in public health research and action (especially where financial incentives are concerned), we aimed to understand negative responses, and the underlying values they represent, to inform future public health research into financial incentives