Liberty versus safety: a design review

It is our contention that when designing against terrorism, it is important to fully understand both terrorist perpetrator techniques and terrorism prevention principles and to establish the myths and realities about ‘fear of terrorism’, before catalyzing new design innovations. This paper assesses the requirement for designers to mediate issues of user liberty versus security. We assess the troublesome design tradeoffs between accommodation of users and exclusion of terrorist misuse and abuse linked to bicycle parking, using the Conjunction of Terrorism Opportunity framework. We include the case study of the Biceberg automated bike parking system in relation to the fitness for purpose versus resistance to terrorism debate

The Anti-bag Theft and ASB-resistant “Camden Bench"

Case Study

ATM and cashpoint art: what’s at stake in designing against crime

When Hammersmith Police approached the Design Against Crime Research Centre (DACRC) at the University of Arts London, for help in dealing with theft and fraud linked to users of ATM’s, the DACRC team looked sideways, beyond traditional ‘security solutions’, collaborating with artist Steve Russell, to help find some new and creative ways of influencing behaviour around “cashpoints”. Hammersmith Police contacted DACRC because Prof. Lorraine Gamman, who directs the Centre, has written about design against pickpocketing and bag theft, and works closely with businesses in her role as advisor to the Home Office’s “Design Technology Alliance Against Crime

Less is more: what design against crime can contribute to sustainability.

Crime is a voracious form of premature obsolescence. Replacement of insured stolen items increases levels of product consumption that are unsustainable. Additional to the ecological cost of crime are the social and economic impacts linked to ‘courts, cops and corrections’ – money better spent on building social innovation and sustainability. The user/ abuser centered methodology of the Design Against Crime Research Centre (DACRC) at University of Arts London as a socially responsive design movement is described in this paper. It argues that DACRC’s approach is unique. It addresses social agendas by accommodating consideration of multiple, often competing, user-demands in a given context, and responding in ways that produce both fiscal and social capital through sustainable design

Lifelong Creative Learning at UAL

Lifelong learning is often understood as returning to different forms of learning or returning to higher education later in life. At the heart of the term lies the idea that learning is not confined to formal educational periods/places, but takes place throughout a variety of different life stages, experiences and situations. This paper has two aims. First, to gain a better understanding and identify initial gaps in relation to the different ways and levels of educational provision for adults over 21 (including vulnerable people) UAL currently provides by bringing together for the first time the provision various UAL staff deliver linked to lifelong learning, as part of their contributions in drafting this paper. Second, to make a case that the time is right for UAL to further discuss and develop a clear strategy on lifelong learning given internal and external drivers for change post-pandemic

Is ‘Nudge’ as Good as ‘We Think’ in Designing Against Crime? Contrasting Paternalistic and Fraternalistic Approaches to Design for Behaviour Change

This chapter describes a collaborative design-led approach to behaviour change developed in the context of design against crime. It compares this collaborative ‘we think’ way of working to that of ‘nudge’ design and argues that the participatory design-led approach delivers a ‘fraternal’ rather than ‘paternal’ strategy for behaviour change that is transformative in its means as well as its ends. We outline situational crime prevention (SCP) and other approaches to modifying behaviour to explain how socially responsive design against crime draws upon SCP as well as a participatory, asset-oriented design approach to deliver interventions that reduce opportunities for crime. We introduce case studies from the Design Against Crime Research Centre (Bikeoff and ATM Art Mats) to draw attention to two examples of social design that provide exceptions to the idea (summarized by Niedderer et al. 2014) that designers adopt anecdotal approaches rather than meticulous analysis. Finally, we suggest that ‘bottom-up’ participatory strategies associated with socially responsive design may deliver more democratic social transformations, than behaviour change ‘nudges’

Expert Workshop on "Exploring and Evaluating the Cultural Values of Arts and Creativity within the Criminal Justice System"

An expert workshop took place on 16 May 2014 at Central Saint Martins, King’s Cross, London. It brought together representatives from the Arts Alliance Steering Group - including those from Clean Break, Geese Theatre Company and the CEO of the Koestler Trust - along with expert criminologists, humanities scholars, and those linked to art and design education whose institutions wish to improve understanding about arts and their impacts in the criminal justice system and to share their design expertise in the field of evaluation. Speakers and practitioners across a variety of art forms discussed visual arts and crafts, theatre, music, design, writing and reading groups exchanging evidence and concerns about best practice in relation to the evaluation of impacts. The event aimed to promote knowledge exchange and to introduce new perspectives on how arts in the criminal justice system can be assessed and articulated within a broad framework of cultural value; also to understand which impact measurement processes work best in which contexts to assess the value of participatory arts and the way they can operate to inspire change and transform lives

Power

It has been argued that “knowledge is power.” This short essay in two parts will review looking at ideas about power through the lens of Hannah Arendt, we hope to offer some thoughts about how actions and words inform the way power manifests. In particular, about the way that power in reproducing knowledge can be aided by design that shapes intentions in action , choosing either to assist democracy or to erode it --- Building on the revival of interest in Hannah Arendt, and on the increasing turn in design towards the expanded field of the social, this unique book uses insights and quotations drawn from Arendt's major writings (The Human Condition; The Origins of Totalitarianism, Men in Dark Times) to assemble a new kind of lexicon for politics, designing and acting today. Taking 56 terms – from Action, Beginnings and Creativity through Mortality, Natality, and Play to Superfluity, Technology and Violence – and inviting designers and scholars of design world-wide to contribute, Designing in Dark Times: An Arendtian Lexicon, offers up an extraordinary range of short essays that use moments and quotations from Arendt's thought as the starting points for reflection on how these terms can be conceived for contemporary design and political praxis

Design’s Tricky Future

The idea that design needs to change following the global financial crisis of 2008 and that market-led design may have had involvement in delivering “an unsustainable mode of world-making” is accepted by all the authors in this book. They have pursued this idea by engaging with the concept of “trickiness”, discussing design in the sense of being able to address “awkwardly tricky” or “misleading tricky” things and problems with the ambition of offering an account of one aspect or another of this change

OPEN MIND: Shake Up Taboo by Design!

Gamman has contributed a 1,000-word article and a transcript of her keynote from the Open Design Forum 2014, Hong Kong Design Institute