I contributed in a workshop on Iceland earlier this summer arranged by the Iceland Academy of the Arts and the Oslo National Academy of the Arts together with HDK Gothenburg. It was about local sustainability, and I was there together with students from all over northern Europe. It was a very nice trip, and two of the guys; Snorri and Jón made a film that you can watch if you press this link.
For me this whole trip was a little eyeopener; there is of course a lot we as designers can do in our community. But we tend to think too big sometimes, and maybe also too global; the problem or potential may be right under your nose, in your own local community, in your own nighbourhood! And not even maybe, it most definitely is.. I think that starting to think this way can free us from the way of designing for mass production, because as soon people start seeing that designers exist everywhere, and that we are a resource in peoples everyday life (not only on a commercial level), we can be integrated into the local workforce as any other professions.
We can create new and perhaps educational experiences, we can provide facilities for new social contact crossing the lines of generations, ethnic backgrounds and professions, we can explore and facilitate new methods for local production giving people possibilities they didn't know that they had etc. etc.
By visiting different locations around the small town Höfn on Iceland, we learned how a holostic strategy for local development is very important to enable new things to happen. Not in a practical way perhaps, but in an economic way. As designers we can provide great skills in developing these strategies and we can also work on the ground by initiating various examples of what a locality could contain together with people.
Enjoy the video, there will be more pictures later! :)
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