Patrycja Kaszynska

University of the Arts London · Social Design Institute

This article proposes a model of social design inquiry directed toward shaping shared societal goals. Drawing on Dewey and McKeon, the approach is based on means-end evaluation and communication in plurality. This presents a response to the double challenge of dealing with conflicting aspirations for the future and the current need to balance diffe...

Narrative intelligibility is central to making sense of valuation. Narrative intelligibility is a framing device that combines empirical observation and situated interaction with teleological, purpose-oriented, normative inquiry. Thus understood, narrative intelligibility provides a useful analytical frame to explain how the phenomenon of valuation...

The Scoping Culture and Heritage Capital study was commissioned jointly in November 2021 by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). The study was led by Dr Patrycja Kaszynska, Senior Research Fellow at UAL , in partnership with cultural sector partners and policy makers, and coll...

The term 'social design' is used in a variety of contexts, but - or maybe because of this - it is far from clear what it means. The starting point for this paper is that there is a need for stronger and more critical community discourse to understand and clarify what social design is and what it does. By analyzing key texts, the paper identifies co...

Introduction to a series of 6 papers articulating a methodology for assessing the impact and value of design in the UK including design's economic, social and environmental value

The word crisis comes from Ancient Greek κρίσις which can be translated as ‘power of distinguishing’ and is related to modern κρίνω which means ‘to pick out’. This is apt, because the pandemic of 2020 has exposed the limitation of approaches to social governance premised on calculation. The – some would argue false – choice between either saving li...

This article is prompted by the observation that many accounts of the value of the arts and culture have failed to engage first-order, empirical data and to take full account of the experiences of those directly involved in cultural activities and practices. This neglect is the result of a complex path dependency. The more obvious explanation is th...

This article explores, in the context of prevailing discourses around the value of the arts and culture, the reasons why the UK's Arts & Humanities Research Council launched a research project on cultural value and sets out the character of that project. It is concerned with arts and cultural engagement across the commercial, subsidised, amateur, a...