Dott 07 (Designs of the Time) by Bang Hee and Daniela Sangiorgi, ImaginationLancaster, Lancaster University Dott (Designs of the Time) is a 10-year programme of design promotion, manifesting every two years and spanning entire regions across the UK. Dott can be described as a series of creative and grassroots community design projects, intended to improve [...]

Design of the Time is first of all a ‘Design-centred’ programme as its main vision and aim are to grow awareness of Design and to explore new ‘designerly’ approaches to innovation on a wide scale. Mostly designers and design led teams have been participating in its activities forming the core of the initiative, but at [...]

There were two kinds of investigations: one at the framework level to look for design opportunities and define themes and briefs among a wide array of stakeholders and the second one at the project level to explore each design contexts and co-design solutions fot the future. Framework level The setting up of the themes and [...]

Participation was supported in different forms during Dott07. Project teams used various formats such as Design camps, explorer clubs, co-design sessions, design into schools, community awards, events, activities (urban farming) and installations. Some were more oriented to engage various stakeholders in the design process, collecting data and exploring ideas, others were more oriented in ‘doing’ [...]

Dott 07 didn’t work much at generating/increasing systemic effects of the individual projects as the programme was mainly directed at showing a different way to promote Design and Sustainability, while less attention was given to consciously amplify synergies. The approach was more similar to the ‘acupuncture’ or ‘viral’ approach adopted by 27a Region programme in [...]

Presentations, visualisations, exhibitions and prototyping took various roles in the programme. Envisioning processes, data, concepts and possible solutions became fundamental both to keep the framework together, linking projects and initiatives, and also to help people with different backgrounds to collaborate on projects with the design teams. Visualisations were personas, various kinds of maps, films and [...]

Dott as a programme had as an aim ‘not to tell people what to do’ but to explore with them how to live in a more sustainable way and how Design could help them to get there. This means that Design had a fundamental role to engage people in design activities providing the examples, processes [...]

Communication as a mean to connect individual projects The horizontal activities were management meetings, internal meetings, external initiatives, design showcases, digital platforms and communication tools. The board met eight times every year to build the partnership and plan how to generate a lasting legacy. Internal meetings, called ‘Otterburn’ and ‘Notterburn’, were attended by Dott 07 [...]