Arts-Based Interventions in Social Design

This paper investigates how engaging our senses and ways of knowing through arts–based interventions in nature can contribute to social design. The artistic research project at The Royal Danish Academy is informed by theory and practical approaches from the arts, psychology, innovation pedagogy and –management. The research methodology is small-scale and qualitative based on a case in which eight 3rd semester visual communication students participate in a workshop with arts-based interventions such as ‘Power Animal’, ‘Silent Walk’, ‘Poetry’ and ‘Stakeholder Map in Clay’. The students are in the initial phase of a social design course working on a real project with The Royal Hospital. Considering the briefness and simplicity of the interventions the shifts taking place in the students’ process are quite astounding: The arts-based interventions (re)activate ways of knowing that are new to the students’ design practice. At times, they find themselves childlike, open, and playful, surprised how easily new and original insights form between their hands and in their minds. Moments of deep inner meaning occur, for instance by feeling the stakeholders in themselves (empathy), by feeling part of something greater (nature, social systems), and expanding the perception of the designer from being centered on self to unselfing.