Viable futures through design: Community engagement experiences in the creative industries

Community engagement projects for social innovation are increasingly happening across the globe and show a trend that involves communities in participatory approaches for the resolution of a variety of social needs. However, little has been discussed about how this type of projects could possibly lead to the production of viable futures as design innovations, and how social and cultural factors influence people’s engagement and participation in community-based projects. We argue that making viable futures by design requires a bottom up approach where ideas depart from the community itself, where the co-production of knowledge takes place through a process that is collaborative, participatory and engaging. From this perspective, in this paper we discuss insights gained through a Study Tour Project in which we explored the various aspects of the concept of engagement as a key component of design innovations in people’s everyday activities. The Study Tour Project took place at a Faculty Creative Industries in Australia and comprised two different design explorations: Mutant Piggy student project involving students from Australia, Chile and Peru; and the InstaBooth research project involving Brisbane’s Australia community. From our experiences we establish the concept of viable futures by design as the enabling of new endeavors that are made possible within particular contexts and within local people’s knowledge. Finally we propose that the making of viable futures by design is an engagement process that requires co-production of knowledge and suitable tools to facilitate democratic and true participation; and that this process can prompt social change as a by-product of these community-engagement experiences