Youth in Lebanon: Using collaborative and interdisciplinary communication design methods to improve social integration in post-conflict societies

In 1995, the World Summit for Social Development identified social integration as one of the three overriding objectives for social and economic development. This priority arose following a century that ended with the collapse of many states and the sharpening of strife around the world. Social integration was seen as a pathway to reinforcing common identities, supporting cooperation and lessening the likelihood of violence and conflict. For the past 20 years, governmental, academic and third sector organisations – with the United Nations at the forefront – sought to improve social integration. However their methods and interventions have commonly been restricted to policymaking and dialogue practices. Peacebuilding and reconciliation are affected by communication within and amongst different groups. Nonetheless, the potential for communication design to contribute towards social integration remains unexplored. This practice-led communication design research focuses on 18 to 30 year old youth in Lebanon – an extreme case of a politically, religiously, geographically, culturally and linguistically segregated post-conflict generation. The research adopts an innovative, interdisciplinary(1.) and collaborative(2.) approach, to explore the contribution of communication design methods towards social integration interventions. The interdisciplinary and collaborative case study process spans seven stages of practice: Discover, Delve, Define, Develop, Deliver, Determine Impact and Diverge. I developed this process with Darren Raven in 2010, and have been testing and refining it over the past five years through the socially-focused design projects of BA Design for Graphic Communication students and staff at the London College of Communication. This process builds on the Design Council’s Double Diamond design process by incorporating stages from the National Social Marketing Centre’s process. Through these stages, the research developed several innovative communication design methods: Explorations, a cultural probes toolkit exploring young people’s local context; Road Trip, an autoethnographic journey preparing the researcher; Connections, an effective method for recruiting stakeholders; Expressions Corner, a confidential diary room for understanding young people’s experiences, attitudes and behaviours; Imagination Studio, a collaborative workshop series for developing social integration interventions; Imagination Market, an efficient platform for piloting these interventions; and a Social Impact Framework; to evaluate the impact of the interventions and research. These methods enhanced candid input from young people, reduced ethical tensions, and improved their engagement with the research. The methods also involved youth and wider stakeholders in understanding and reframing the problem, invited them to generate and deliver solutions, strengthened their sense of ownership and therefore the sustainability of the research outputs, and finally, built their capabilities throughout the process. The social integration interventions developed and piloted through the case-study research ranged from a citizen journalism platform reducing media bias, to a youth-led internal tourism service encouraging geographic mobility. The evaluation of the 24-hour pilot interventions demonstrated a positive shift in young people’s willingness to integrate. The social impact and social value assessment suggests that effective social integration interventions – such as the ones developed and piloted in the case study research – have higher chances of delivering positive social and economic outcomes for the communities involved. This practice-led research presents a number of contributions, the most significant of which is a methodology, process and set of methods highly transferable across social integration challenges worldwide. The research also provides social integration theory and practice with a clear demonstration of the value and potential of communication design to advance interventions from replication to innovation. To communication design theory and practice, the research makes the case for the value of interdisciplinary and collaborative principles in enhancing rigour and social impact. Finally, to the Lebanese context, the research provides in-depth qualitative insights on social group dynamics, segments, and behaviours, which act as an evidence-base to underpin future local interventions. Beyond this thesis, the knowledge gained from this research will be disseminated to the various relevant communities of practice – including researchers, designers, policy makers, and community development workers – in the form of Creative Commons licensed design guidelines, as well as presentations, capacity building workshops, and academic publications. The dissemination of knowledge hopes to inspire and enable these communities to adopt, adapt and build on communication design methods when addressing social segregation challenges within their varying contexts. Notes in the text: (1.) Drawing on disciplines such as social, political, behavioural, and psychological sciences. (2.) Engaging multiple stakeholders including young people, civil society, institutions, topic experts and policy-makers

From Capability Training to Capacity Building

Service design is now firmly established as an important approach for driving innovation and change in the public sector. This is evident by the growing number of public sector service design projects, by the emergence of innovation labs in governments around the world, by dedicated events such as the 'Service Design in Government' conference in the UK (now in its 4th year) and an increasing body of academic research looking at the impact and value of service design in the public sector. One of the key barriers to service design implementation is the capability and capacity available to in-house teams of council officers tasked to deliver and improve the service. This is an important issue to address if service design is to truly fulfil its potential to drive innovation in the public sector. And yet, as a community of practice, we don’t often discuss the importance of service design training in the public sector. This article attempts to highlight a range of approaches to service design training and capability building in the public sector using examples from different parts of the world

Telling Your Story: People and the Aylesbury Estate’

The Aylesbury, South London, was one of the Uk’s largest housing estates and was demolished in a £2.4 billion regeneration project. The scheme aims to provide a ‘blueprint for a new neighbourhood’ and to ‘create a strong and vibrant community’. The ‘Kaleidoscope Project’ was launched to share the memories, experiences and images of theresidents. The planned urban regeneration for the Aylesbury Estate has highlighted the need to capture the rich cultural and social histories. The BIS funding provided an opportunity to build upon our existing relationships with residents through previous student life histories projects the New Deal for the Communities/Creation. The main impact was on resident’s lives and on informing government understanding of the the use of transformational learning using co-design processes. The partnerships have provided the basis for future collaborations between education, industry and the local council. This paper focuses on one aspect of the Kaleidoscope project titled ‘Telling Your Story’, with aims of capturing life stories of the Estate and a pedagogical enhancement, using transformational learning to enhance the skill base of the Estate’s long-term residents. This was achieved through a series of innovative workshops focusing on dialogues around the cultural aspects of food, craft, history and place, as well as sharing future aspirations. These processes and methods can lead to social innovation: social engagement through building a community of learners and knowledge exchange between residents and academia. A ‘Telling Your Story’ blog was developed by Triggs, McAndrew and Joanna Choukier. Related outcomes for the project was a published booklet whose intent for dissemination was to be ‘given back’ to the residents of the Estate in thanks for their participation in the project. Titled ‘People and the Aylesbury’. The booklet is a record of the events and activities undertaken with residents on the Estate