Anti-Brief No. 1

Beyond Property 
From buying control over ‘things’ to nurturing the relationships that make our lives possible. We are desperate to belong but we are destroying the world we belong to. How can we identify with relationships rather than things? Example: What would a brand of interbeing express?

Anti-Brief No. 2

Beyond Labour
From working to pay the bills to vocations of creativity, purpose and care. Time can be understood as a quality of human experience rather than something to be tracked on a timesheet. Example: What kind of process would you design for an organisation that wanted to explore this? 

Anti-Brief No. 3

Beyond Extraction
From extracting resources for private gain to taking care of the planetary commons. Example: If natural resources are actually our relatives, what design principles would you embed for a business that respects its wider family?

Anti-Brief No. 4

Beyond Private Contracts
From private agreements that consolidate power to flexible, multi-party commitments to collective thriving. Example: If your role as a professional was to increase public luxury, what would you start working on tomorrow? 

Anti-Brief No. 5

Beyond Governance
From centralised decisions and enforcement to institutions of learning and stewardship. Governance can feel like a serious, boring word. But what if it is also a joyful invitation? Example: Could you design a playful identity for a committee or board?

Anti-Brief No. 6

Beyond Monetary Capital
From prioritising financial wealth to understanding that real value is multidimensional and often unquantifiable. Money is a social contract but we have outsourced the rules of the game to a niche group of elite bankers. Example: How could we reconnect transactions to a felt sense of what lies beneath them? 

1. Re-Designing the Economy:

The first workshop will help us to understand how deeply design and the economy are linked. The extractive economy changes not just design, but all aspects of life. What would change if we lived in an economy of care? … and most importantly, if we are all part of the big web of life, how can we use our skills to have a positive impact? We want people from all professions because design by itself is pretty useless, but design used for the right purposes and in the right way can make a huge difference.

2. Conversational Dimensions:

In the second workshop, we will teach you different visualization techniques to spark systemic thinking and action. It will help you to gain new insights about your work or the work you do for others. We call this workshop “Conversational Dimensions” because a new visualization is a new perspective that invites others to reflect with you. It is a conversational design.

3. Designing Dialogues:

In the third workshop, we are going deep into the transition from Communication Design to Conversation Design. If we want to effect change, we need to engage in dialogue. We need tools and techniques that turn one-directional communication into many-to-many conversations. Apart from various examples of how Conversational Design can strengthen democracy, Emily and Martin will share hands-on workflows that can convert consumers into collaborators.