Structuring Future Relations: The Politics of Care in Participatory Practice

In this paper Ann Light and Yoko Akama introduce the idea of the ‘politics of care’ into participatory design practices. Described through a brief history of the developments of participatory design over the years, the notion of the ‘politics of care’ emerges from designers becoming involved in the relationships between stakeholders in a participatory process and their want to affect positive change through the process. The idea of ‘care’ stems from the assumption that ‘people are good’ and care for each other in their everyday lives.

Light and Akama describe one of the main issues with participatory design processes: the assumption of longer-term benefits and impacts of participatory design for the stakeholders involved. In other words, we assume participatory processes build capacity, strengthen relationships and open up new dialogues but this is rarely measured.

Through the use of three very different case studies, the authors seek to demonstrate that the notion of ‘care’ can be created through participatory processes and will firmly establish the long-term benefits amongst the stakeholders. In other words, participatory design can reimagine social structures. All of the case studies presented were successful in fostering ‘care’ amongst participants and, surprisingly, this extended to stakeholders’ wider communities.

Personally, I am very interested in participatory design and this paper provided new perspectives on the long-term benefits which can come from good participatory process. Whilst reading the paper, I could relate many of the key points to my experience of facilitating North Shields Fish Quay Neighbourhood Plan – a participatory project where the community were creating their own development plan for their neighbourhood to be adopted by the local authority. I could relate to the fostering of ‘care’ amongst participants and how this had spread to the wider area. However, for me, the positive outlook in the article did not take into account the issues faced in such projects. The paper said that participants were self-selecting as a potential reason for the positive outcomes but, in my experience, self-selecting participants have also specifically joined projects to disrupt the process. In this scenario, the notion of ‘care’ does not stand.

The remit of this paper was not necessarily to discuss the potential issues faced during participatory design but the lack of acknowledgement of potential issues make the paper feel unbalanced. It continues to assume that ‘people are good’ and all people would like to make a positive impact and ‘care’ for their neighbour but is this really the case?

The paper I have chosen this week is ‘The Neighbourhood Networks Project: A Case Study of Critical Engagement and Creative Expression Through Participatory Design’. With my background in town planning, the focus of this paper is of great interest in how we can use participatory design of technology to stimulate discussion amongst participants about their own neighbourhood.