International Masterclass: Communities and Co-Design

Eindhoven has a well deserved reputation for excellent co-design. This was more than justified by the fantastic, energetic, challenging and generous participants of the recent Proud master class on working with community groups held at Capital D`s Innovation Space in Eindhoven. This space has changed a lot during the time the Proud project has been in action, its now growing into a really energising creative space perfect for facilitating workshops and master classes.

The day-long event was structured around 3 activities.

1) An analysis and sharing or the best and worst experiences of the group in terms of group working. This drew on the great depth and experience of the group, there were very stimulating discussions about the level of structure, support or chaos needed for good events. As well as some examples of really excellent group working.

2) In the second section e showed some of the tools and approaches we have designed in Imagination to help groups. We experimented a little with creating some new, Dutch language downloadable tools. We are increasingly using editable PDF tools that allow us to design an interesting or beautiful document and allow it to be modified by local users. Three of these tools are available to download in this blog post, along with the report for the overall event. We also discussed our replacement for post its in group work: hexagons.

3) At the end of the ‘show and tell’ we invited the designers, group workers and entrepreneurs to suggest improvements to the tools we showed and also to pick 3 of them to be delivered to them. We had some really great suggestions form the group, we are now in the process of fulfilling the orders we have, especially for the hexagons.

Looking back, we have made some really interesting new friends and potential collaborators through the workshop as well as some ideas for new tools and approaches. We have also spread the ideas of the Proud project and co-design wider and shared some of our tools at the same time. We will be keeping in contact with the recipients of the tools to see how they are used.

Finally, a huge thanks for the support from Capital D, their co-design space is an excellent venue and now we know they have an excellent photographer who can document activities very well. If you are in Eindhoven and are looking for a venue you should check it out.