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Combined with the unprecedented stress of the COVID-19 crisis and the increase in social unrest, human-caused environmental disasters are having a profound impact on well-being, resulting in a dramatic spike in mental health issues. Studies are emerging daily around concepts of ecological grieving stress, depression, anxiety, and a host of emotions that are surfacing and increasing in our modern times. From eco-nostalgia to eco-anxiety and eco-grief, our responses to climate change, environmental devastation, and social unrest can prevent us from taking positive action, often leading to existential crises. Our proposed project, Haikeus: Transmuting Ecological Grieving into Action, works directly at the interface of some of humanity's wicked problems, which are complex, challenging to solve, and hard to fully understand. The aim of this project is to bring awareness and motivation for transmuting such an emotion into an action through the power of creativity. We further argue that the established methods could facilitate a more nuanced understanding of organizational barriers to communicate its potential value to proceed with the change.
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Designing Transformative Futures
What makes the design of futures sufficiently transformative? Worldwide, people are aware of the need to change and keep changing to address eco-social challenges and their fall-out in an age of crises and transitions in climate, biodiversity, and health. Calls for climate justice and the development of eco-social sensibilities speak to the need for dynamic and provisional engagements. Such concerns raise age-old issues of inequality and colonialist destruction. Our designs carry the imprint of this current politics, wittingly or unwittingly, into worlds to come. This conversation asked how might we respond fluidly to coming uncertainties, questioning our own practices to sow the seeds of more radical transformation, while recognizing the structural forces that can limit or temper opportunities for design activism. It was organized in three quadrant exercises, which we also reflect upon.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1909714
- PAR ID:
- 10358265
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of the Design Research Society
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2022.896
