Design for Social Innovation
STUDIO WORK
My studio is the place where I get to design the world that I want and the future(s) I need. Design for Social Innovation - to meet social needs and create new social collaborations. Care, conflict, equity, co-operation, collaboration, and intervention - this is my personal practice, I hope you enjoy.
Queirolo, Natalia. “Creative Unions Private View.” 2018.
SYSTEMS OF CARE
Speculating Systems of Resilience and Collective Care - WIP
Currently in its research stage, this project will be investigating and examining some of the current systems that support our way of living. I will be using a combination of Participatory Action Research, Contextual Research and Participatory Design to map different systems to find similarities in how they operate, succeed, and fail. Once there is a strong foundation and analysis, I will draw on the practices and methodologies of Future(s) Design, Systems Thinking and the Solidarity Economy to speculate alternative future(s) systems, harnessing local knowledge to tackle global problems.
MAKE IT OR BREAK IT
A conflict resolution board game, inspired by Brexit, informed by Belfast.
Make It or Break It is a three-step board game explicitly dealing with the ramifications of isolationism. Working around notions of wall-building and wall-breaking, it exposes how entrenched cultural barriers can become. In light of Brexit my aim was to share the lessons learned in my home city of Belfast about barrier building and segregation and how, once you build a wall, even when the wall is gone, the divide remains.
This work focuses on the cultural and political landscapes of conflicting groups and uses design to encourage participants to see through a different lens. Design, with its focus on empathy and understanding of different people’s needs, can play an integral role in conflict resolution.
Exhibitions
WantedDesign, New York Design Week,, Brooklyn, NY. 2018
Creative Unions, London Design Festival,, London. 2018
MCYCLE
Designing within the Solidarity Economy to create Menstrual Equity
mCycle is a socially, economically and ecologically sustainable menstruation management service. It challenges taboos, shares ownership and completely closes the loop on menstrual products.
Every month, mCycle delivers - by bicycle - organic tampons and sanitary pads in a box that transforms into a bin. Once used and collected it’s compacted into non-food soil for prison parks and football fields. mCycle is a co-operative company which puts control in the users hands and creates a local online community in which members can share their experiences of menstruation. As a co-operative, the products get cheaper over time making them more affordable, also, this means users can collect dividends at the end of each year, or save them up until menopause as a period retirement bonus.
Exhibitions
WantedDesign, New York Design Week,, Brooklyn, NY. 2018
Creative Unions, London Design Festival,, London. 2018
BYOC
Bring Your Own Chair - Design Residency
Bring Your Own Chair was an art project taking place in rural towns and villages across Kilkenny, Wexford and Waterford. Workhouse Union were seeking designers to explore the possibilities of socially engaged practice within Bring Your Own Chair with a particular interest in the potential of co-creation, craft and industry to sustain rural economies.
During the residency we researched current industries and economies within the region and tracked their histories. There was a rich history of co-operative organisations, in particular, dairy co-op’s and an abundance of local craftspeople, businesses, farmers and produces. With so much local expertise we wanted to share co-design methodologies to facilitate participatory action. The result was a prototype for a game that could be customised by the users to make it town specific. It engaged the participants in an ideation sprint which was designed to create novel opportunities for collaboration.
*in collaboration with Amber Perng
SOCIAL MOTIFS
Decoding space in Belfast
In 2017 I began a cultural exchange design project with Amber Perng. We were intrigued by the overwhelming similarities and differences between how Ireland and Taiwan have endured as inferior (in scale) islands neighboring two of histories biggest colonisers. Social Motifs was a quick visualisation exercise that took place upon returning from a research trip to Belfast. These motifs document some of the physical and non-physical structures that we experienced during the trip.
*in collaboration with Amber Perng
ARCHIVING
THE
ARCHIVE
Global Design Initiative - Cologne
The Global Design Initiative brings together like-minded people, mainly global design education leaders who believe in new approaches in dialogue and exchange. The project aims to investigate intercultural learning, to understand the use of narrative in design, the use of cultural artifacts, behaviors, and places as source material for design intervention.
Archiving the Archive - During the initiative, my group focused on the unfortunate collapse of the local city archive due to a poorly designed public infrastructure project. We developed a public intervention at the site of the, then demolished archive, manually collecting stories and memories of the city from members of the public, creating a new collection of public records. We proposed a design for a series of public benches around the block that once housed the archive which had recording stations enabling the city to begin collecting an oral history of the intimate accounts of its citizens.
VERNAL EQUINOX
Hoxton Window Project - Installation
A window installation based on the Vernal Equinox. The concept is derived from the ancient art of watch making, producing a design that illustrates the passing of time. The lines and abstract circles along with layered shapes create a particular colour range that demonstrates the variations of light that occur throughout the Vernal Equinox.
*in collaboration with Ciaran McCusker