SEE and SEEK are two programs of the larger PERL initiative. Both are funded from the European Commission for the period 2009-2012. Their common aim is to promote and facilitate Framework Projects as projects that aim to promote and coordinate a multiplicity of self-standing social innovation Local Projects in order to enhance large scale, socially driven, sustainable changes.

SEE and SEEK are conceived to be (mainly) developed by design schools, in collaboration with other local partners. That is, it considers design schools as agents for sustainable changes.

SEE and SEEK are supported by DESIS Network (the international network on design for social innovation and sustainability) and it is an integral part of its activities

Background

Design for sustainability and sustainable territorial planning are converging. In fact:

• Sustainable solutions tend to be localized. That is, to keep in account the territorial specificities of the place where they have to be implanted.
• Sustainable territorial planning tends to be articulated in local projects. That is, to be implemented through a variety of relatively autonomous small scale, self-standing projects.

Local projects are self-standing in the context where they are embedded. That is, they must be:
• Economically viable and, therefore, to be based on service ideas, capable to leave in the framework of the emerging distributed social economy.
• Technologically viable and, therefore, to use, in an innovative way, the existing technologies and knowledge.
• Socially viable and, therefore, to refer to locally already existing active communities or to communities that are activated by the same project proposals.

Local projects are expression of larger trends:

• They are driven by social innovation initiatives and, in turn, they generate new waves of social innovation. That is, they are based on local actors active participation and they create radical different ways of living and/or producing.
• They are coherent with the emerging distributed system scenario and, in turn, they are its concrete implementation. That is, they are nodes of large, flexible network that are, at the same time, both local and global.
• They are “living entities” of the territorial ecology and, in turn, they re-generate the ecology of the territory where they are embedded. That is, they are local systems that, thanks to their number and diversity, enrich the environmental and social resilience the larger ecological system in which they are embedded.

Local projects are (very often) triggered and supported by framework projects: larger meta-projects conceived as strategies for sustainable local development, to be implemented by several self-standing local projects (and that, in turn, have the capability to strength existing individual local projects, increasing their visibility and coherence).

Framework projects: main features

Framework Projects (FP) are projects that promote and coordinate a multiplicity of self-standing social innovation projects (Local Projects – LP) in order to enhance large scale, socially driven, sustainable changes.

They coordinate the Local ones both horizontally and vertically. That means:

• in a given space (as, for instance, a neighbourhood, a city, a region) in order to promote its sustainable development enriching its territorial ecology;
• in a given system (as, for instance, the healthcare, the school, administration ones) in order to promote its evolution towards a more effective systemic architecture, turning it in a distributed organisation.

Both FP and LP result from a positive interplay between bottom-up initiatives (by grassroots associations), peer-to-peer exchange (between similar initiatives) and top-down interventions (by local authorities, sensible businesses, other non-profit associations).

Framework Projects emerge from co-design processes where a multiplicity of actors is involved. To start and coordinate this complex partnerships, a set of specific design skills and tools are needed (to trigger and facilitate actors interactions). This design approach can be explicit (when professional designers are involved) or tacit (when there are used by non-professional designers). But, in any case, it will play an important role. In particular:

• Framework Projects require a (tacit or explicit) design approach to define their strategy, to recognize the existing resources and on-going social innovation processes, to involve the stakeholders and to facilitate the convergence toward shared visions and common decisions on what to do.
• Local Projects require a (tacit or explicit) design support in terms of appropriate strategic and service design skills and tools.

SEE considers a variety of framework projects with the aim to promote their visibility and to offer the possibility, to different involved actors, to compare and discuss their experiences.

In order to facilitate this exchange, it creates an online peer-to-peer platform open to design schools, stakeholders and larger interested audiences.
The specific platform is conceived to become a worldwide social network of framework projects promoters and partners, where emerging issues and topics will be posted, compared and debated, where new researches on SEE-related topics will be promoted and where new framework programs and projects will be enhanced.

In order to obtain this goal framework projects with similar characteristics and comparable approaches will be clustered. The resulting clusters will facilitate focalised discussions and more useful exchanges. And will create stronger links between promoters, designers and design schools working on similar topics.
Role of the Design Schools

In SEE the collection and the communication and visualisation of the selected framework projects are done in collaboration with several design schools. Schools play two roles:

• They present projects that they can analyse and/or in which they are already involved
• They design the selected and analysed cases visualisation and communication.

Selection criteria

In SEE Program the projects object of analysis must have the following characteristics:

• To be a framework project (with the related local ones) or to be an individual project with an high potentiality to generate a larger framework one.
• To clearly aim at promoting and facilitating social innovation and sustainability at the local scale.
• To present a (tacit or explicit) design approach. That is: to be based on a vision (of a viable sustainable local development) and on a strategy to implement it (catalysing existing social and economical resources).
• To be sufficiently developed for what regards places, aims, involved actors, expected results and strategies to get them. Beyond this, they can currently be at different stages in the conception and development process.

Activities

1 Core group definition, pilot projects collection, supporting platform design (year 1)
• An initial “core group” of partners (inside and outside DESIS) is defined.
• A collection of framework projects is realised (it could be a short list of 10-30projects).
• A first pilot on 3 framework projects is conducted with the aim to analysed them in depth (out of the list of 10-30)
• A template is designed on the basis of the results that will come from the pilot
• Web platform to facilitate the exchange of experiences between the partners, and between the selected projects main actors, is designed.
• A 2 days workshop is organised with representatives of the pilot projects (sharing experiences; comparing approaches; further investigation of bottlenecks; action plan for further collaboration and research online.

2 Projects collection and platform fine-tuning (year 2)
• A collection of a second, wider set of framework projects is realised
• The collected cases are clustered and common characteristics are focalised
• The supporting platform is up-graded.

3 Scenario building and platform use extension (year 3)
• On the basis of the previous 2 years of experiences, different scenarios are built and visualised.
• The up-graded supporting platform is opened to other interested actors, as: schools and universities (beyond the initial core group and beyond the design schools) and a variety of other interested stakeholders.

4 Projects and scenarios communication (end of year 3)
• A publication presenting projects, clusters and scenarios is prepared (using different contributions collected through the platform).
• A short visual presentation could be also realised as a part of the PERL presentation at the CSD in May in NYC (not yet established)

5 Working group meetings / Collaboration (all along 3 years)
• Three Task group meetings will be organised during each of the project year (Not yet fixed)

SEEK focuses on a selected number of framework projects and considers with particular attention the design tools that have been used or that are currently in use. On this basis, and considering different clusters of similar programs and projects, it generates some dedicated sets of design tools that we will call: enabling kits.

The enabling kits, therefore, are sets of design tools conceived to stimulate and facilitate co-design processes and larger social conversations. That is, to trigger new ideas, support dialogues, promote community building and foster the convergence of different partners. To do that they combine methodologies of user/community-centred design, service design, participate scenario building, solution visualisation, solution simulation and prototyping, real scale experimentation.

Enabling kits can be useful in all contexts where co-design processes and social conversations take place: from large research teams, to participatory co-design groups, from small communities to the whole society.
Role of the Design Schools

In SEEK program enabling kits are developed in collaboration with several design schools. Different schools play different roles:

• Schools involved in selected framework projects, offering their experience in the co-design processes.
• Schools involved in the enabling kits realisation, discussion and practical test realisation.

Selection criteria

In SEEK Program the framework projects, that are chosen as reference for enabling kits understanding, must have the following characteristics:

• To have been successful and to present a clear (tacit or explicit) design approach as one of this success main motivation.
• To be sufficiently developed projects, to make the analysis of the co-design process and of the implied tools possible

Activities

1 Establish the notion of framework project enabling kit (year 1)
• An advising group of experts (professors, researchers and other experts) is established
• The notion of framework project and the one of enabling kit are better defined (thanks to a desk research on current “tool kits”, “enabling packs”, “pedagogical packages” etc…).
• On this basis, the notion of enabling kits in framework programs and projects is clarified and characterised too.
• A pilot on three projects is conducted to understand their characteristics with respect to the idea of enabling kit developed in SEEK
• A template to analyse framework projects in terms of enabling kit is made. It will be applied to guide research on framework project enabling kits in SEEK 2nd and 3rd year.

2 Field investigations and kits prototyping (year 2)
• Particularly relevant framework projects are selected, using the SEE collection and its clusters as database.
• In-depth investigations of the selected projects enabling systems are made, including visits and interviews of involved key stakeholders.
• A smaller number of framework projects with their enabling systems are selected. Their enabling systems are elicitated and improved in order to generate and externalise first “enabling kits”.

(NB: it has to be noted that, according to each specific framework Programs and projects timings, the year 2 activity might be carried out already in year 1).

3 Enabling kits assessment and fine-tuning (year 3)
• Enabling kits prototypes are assessed by the involved design schools and revised via a common discussion and during a 2 days workshop
• Enabling kits prototypes are disseminated through the DESIS network and, then, through the entire PERL network.

4 Working groups meetings and events (all along 3 years)
• Three specific 2 days meetings are hold (one for each year of the SEEK Program), among partners, for in-depth experience exchanges and to take the most crucial choices. (Not yet fixed)

PERL is based both in Europe as an Erasmus Academic Network and established in Asia/Pacific, Africa and Latin America.

PERL is coordinated from the Hedmark University College in Norway. The Norwegian Ministry of Children, Equality and Social Inclusion also supports PERL.

DESIS is a network of schools of design and other institutions, companies and non-profit organizations interested in promoting and supporting design for social innovation and sustainability. It is a light, non-profit organization, conceived as a network of partners collaborating in a peer-to-peer spirit.

This international network comprises several DESIS-Local sub-networks within specified regions. DESIS-International is therefore the framework within which the different DESIS-Local coordinate themselves and undertake certain global initiatives.The DESIS vision
In the complexity of contemporary societies it is possible to recognize promising cases of socio-technical innovation. They are, at one and the same time, solutions to current problems and meaningful steps towards sustainability. These cases can be found in a variety of fields: from the ecological re-conversion of the production system to the social construction of a new welfare; from the empowerment of diffuse microenterprises to local sustainable development programs. Many of these promising cases have a common denominator: they have been conceived and implemented (mainly) by the involved actors, moving from their direct knowledge of the problem, and from their own personal capabilities. That is, they are the results of successful social innovation processes.

Social innovation mobilizes diffuse social resources (in terms of creativity, skills, knowledge and entrepreneurship). For this reason, it is a major driver of change. And it could become a powerful promoter of sustainable ways of living and producing.

Given its spontaneous nature, social innovation cannot be planned. Nevertheless, the “invention” of new ways of living and producing becomes more probable when creativity and design thinking are diffused and when there is a favorable social and institutional environment. In parallel to this, once new promising cases exist, they last longer and are more widely replicated when empowered by appropriate sets of services, products and communication. Favorable environments and enabling solutions are results of articulated co-design processes in which final users, local institutions, service providers and dedicated product manufacturers are all actively involved.

Regarding social innovation and the emerging new design networks, the professional design community has a major role to play. Designers and design researchers must use their professional knowledge to empower the co-design processes—that is, to trigger new ideas, to orient the resulting initiatives and to conceive a new generation of enabling solutions, i.e. services, products and communications specifically conceived to support them.

Design can give important contributions to social innovation, and vice versa. Social innovation can be a large and growing opportunity for a new generation of designers: professional designers and design researchers working to develop and sustain new networks, and feeding them with needed design knowledge. DESIS supports social innovation worldwide and reinforces the design community’s role in it.

DESIS aims
• Supporting social innovation using design skills to give promising cases more visibility, to make them more effective, and to facilitate their replicability; also helping companies and institutions understand the promising cases’ potentialities in terms of enabling services, products and business ideas
• Reinforcing the design community’s role in the social innovation processes, operating both within the design community (developing dedicated design knowledge) and outside it (redefining design’s perceived role and capabilities)

DESIS activities
DESIS pursues its activities on three different levels:
• Fostering social innovation and sustainability by taking part in support projects and programs, gathering together and offering greater visibility to significant cases
• Promoting design for social innovation both within and outside the design community, developing appropriate design tools and organizing cultural and didactic activities
• Fostering the circulation of ideas and experiences, with a peer-to-peer approach between the different DESIS-Local to carrying out comparative research and co-producing courses at an international level

These activities are mainly accomplished through the coordinating initiatives of the DESIS-Local, each of which organizes itself autonomously and freely. Nevertheless, some possible “standard” DESIS activities can be listed:
• Proposing and developing national and international research programs
• Organizing didactic initiatives (such as: workshops, seminars, courses and conferences)
• Preparing didactic resources (such as: teaching tools, course formats, bibliographic references)
• Collecting research information (such as: promising cases, projects and research results)
• Promoting cultural and communication initiatives (such as exhibitions, publications, broadcasts

visit DESIS Network

The main task of Politecnico di Milano is to generate the emerging visions and enabling systems for sustainable lifestyles based on the analysis of the current best practices together with the 4 working groups in WP3. The outcome will be used as the raw materials for generating future visions and scenarios in WP4 with Demos Helsinki. In addition, Politecnico di Milano will use its expertise in design to visualize the visions and scenarios into a visual script which can be readily communicated internally and externally.

Politecnico di Milano team consists of 4 members from various backgrounds – engineering, architecture, industrial design and interaction design – which allows them to approach design for social innovation and sustainability from different perspectives. Led by Ezio Manzini who has experiences of over two decades in the field of design for sustainability, the team staffs will use their specialties to tackle the issues of sustainability and generate visions and scenarios. In addition, Politecnico di Milano team will access abundant resources accumulated by DIS research unit as well as by global partners in the network of ‘Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability’ DESIS to provide necessary knowledge for this project.

Detailed analysis:
Partnerships and visions
What are the main characteristics/aspects/dimensions of the activity?
Design schools, organisations (see for example the Design Council) or studios can have a role in defining the original agreement or partnership that stand before the Framework Programme. In the DOTT07 project this is particularly evident as it has been the Design Council together with an international design thinker Thackara to set up the overall 10 years programme, its main aims and structure. At the same time DOTT07, as developed in the North East, needed to answer to the needs and objectives of the region and therefore develop as a partnership between the two organisations. In DOTT07 Design worked both as an ‘object of promotion’ (see Design Council) but also as the pivotal approach for change and public engagement (grass roots innovation and engine for innovation in the region).
Other initiatives have been similarly guided by Design such as the Feeding Milano and Chong-Ming Island project. In both the initiatives the Design schools have started the individual projects working with students to then use these project ideas to develop further initiatives. Feeding Milano started with design students’ work and is now a research project funded by the City of Milan and Cariplo foundation in collaboration with Slow Food. In these cases Design leads the project by collaboratively set up the vision and provide an ‘infrastructure’ for the collaboration to progress.
In the case of the NeWu project in China, a joint university project (Polimi, Milan & Jiangnan) has provided the synergy/platform for a partnership with Wuxi Municipality. Still in its early phases, the project is dependant on design leadership but the aim is for student service design proposals to serve as inspiration for local stakeholders.
Finally in the case of Malmö Social Innovation Living Lab, Design works by “infrastructuring” meaning creating the conditions for quick contextual experiments to explore a sustainable future among a diverse set of stakeholders. This happens by conducting a continuous match-making process that tries to align diverse actors into common projects and initiatives, looking up for synergies and opportunities as they emerge. In this case Design doesn’t provide a determined ‘vision’, but generate the conditions for opportunities to emerge; the real vision is more related to the process itself, which is to ‘democratise innovation’ within public sphere and everyday life.

Collaborative Design and open innovation
How to start/develop/disseminate it?
In many of the case studies Design works as an overall approach to change and social innovation. This doesn’t exclude the use of other methodologies or the integration of other professions such as artists or architects, in the territorial intervention. Design is actually often adopting methods and tools from other disciplines to better engage with the citizens and work on a wide scale. DOTT07 and Nord-pas-de-Calais Sustainable Periurban are a clear example for this. In DOTT07 designers have been engaged in the main Public design commission projects, but the ‘activation’ of the public and extensive visibility of the initiative has been often delegated to artists and media studios. The art-led initiatives had the capacity to reach out a wider public and sensitise about the overall programme aim, but they were generally not oriented to generate ideas and solutions.
In other projects Design has been working as main methodological guidance to enhance collaborative design processes and projects management. In particular when the design process is an open and participatory one, several questions emerge on how to keep the collaboration open while guiding it. In the Malmö Social Innovation Living Lab questions arise as for how: 1) to scale up, meaning developing new relationships, still maintaining old ones; 2) to set up collaborative decision making; 3) to set up experiments during the complex circumstances that emerge within social innovation; 4) to perform “friendly hacking” of civil servants? (e.g. to try to engage different stakeholders overcoming difficulties to change their working structures).

Emergent opportunities and grassroots change
What are the expected results/outputs/benefits?
When Design works at a wide territorial scale working with a large set of partners, starting from an existing set resources and opportunities, what can emerge is a potential transformation of innovation processes within single actors or among systems that explore and evaluate the potential of more grassroots movements and changes. Opening up cultural and operational barriers among different populations, organisations and professional groups is one of the key challenges to manage to generate more systemic effects.
Feeding Milano or Amplify both work for example to amplify and connect existing initiatives and show the potentials behind their connection and collaboration within a similar vision. Malmö Social Innovation Living Lab does a similar thing, but in unexpected ways, where the potentials for change often hides behind not foreseen connections and contributions. In all cases it is about showing how everybody can be an ‘active’ partner for wider transformations, instead of relying on other more mainstream actors.