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!Volume 9 Issue 2 – 2015
Making and sharing the commons: Reimagining ‘the West’ as
Riverlands, Sydney through a dialogue between design and
ethnography
Sarah Pink
RMIT University, Australia
Michelle Catanzaro
Western S yd ne y Un iv er si ty, Australia
Katrina Sandbach
Western S yd ne y Un iv er si ty, Australia
Alison Barnes
London College of Communication, University of the Arts, UK
Joanne Mcneill
Western S yd ne y Un iv er si ty, Australia
Mitra Gusheh
University of NSW, Australia
Enrico Scotece
Western S yd ne y Un iv er si ty, Australia
Ciro Catanzaro
Abstract
Scholars from the social sciences and humanities are increasingly seeking to improve the relevance and social
impact of their research beyond the academy. In this context, ‘designerly’ thinking and methods are being drawn
on to inform social change agendas, and a range of new relationships and collaborations are forming around this
node of activity. This article critically reflects on this trajectory through a dialogue between ethnography, design
and theoretical principles from anthropology and human geography.
We draw on the example from a workshop during the ICD Symposium and our response to the challenge of
reimagining Western Sydney as ‘Riverlands, Sydney’. We found that various conflicting descriptions and
residents’ experiences of Western Sydney warranted a critical take on the constitution of a ‘problem’ of Western
Sydney and the possible solution as ‘Riverlands, Sydney’. We argue that a diverse mix of experiential and
theoretical ‘knowing’ is needed to tackle locally embedded opportunities and challenges, and that local
knowledge must ‘sit at the table’ on an equal footing with design practice and academic analysis.
The article outlines points of contact that could be created to involve local people and organisations as experts
in a hypothetical, collectively imagined project, and how this could lead to their active engagement as
co-researchers, co-designers and co-producers in making and sharing commons. The article demonstrates how
this type of critical and collaborative design framework incorporates theoretical and ethnographic dialogues, and
how this approach provides the entry points for going beyond stale policy-based responses to contemporary
societal challenges. Using a combination of experiential and theoretical tools to look beneath the surface of the
already constituted ‘question’ or ‘problem’ allows possible re-framings to be explored before responses are
developed. We argue that ethnographic understandings developed in dialogue with design, which are rooted in a
perspective that takes seriously local ways of knowing as forms of equal expertise, can enable this.
Introduction
Social science, humanities and design research approaches are increasingly brought together in processes that
seek to lead to social change and generate forms of wellbeing. Therefore new theoretical and practical
propositions have begun to enter the design space, offering stimulating new possibilities for the development of
design research and practice. However, such new disciplinary relationships and configurations do not come
without their challenges. They invite not only collaboration but also reflexive and interdisciplinary forms of
conceptual and practice-based interrogation. In this article we discuss this with reference to the example of an
interdisciplinary encounter and propose how theoretical or ideal models of social change might be used as
design probes rather than serving as pre-determined solutions in design research.
In 2014 we were invited to participate in a workshop that responded to the challenge: ‘How can design activate
public engagement in the commons in Riverlands, Sydney?’This challenge was posed in the context of a wider
exploration of the reimagining of Western Sydney (Australia) as ‘Riverlands, Sydney’. Here we draw on this
experience to propose an approach for using the notion of ‘the commons’ in design research and practice.
Growing out of the workshop, we took the original proposition of ‘Riverlands, Sydney’ as a newly imagined
version of Western Sydney as our starting point, responding to this particular brief in the form of a methodology.
Rather than seeing ‘Riverlands, Sydney’ as a predetermined ‘solution’ that a design process should seek to
create, we approached the issue from an alternative starting point by situating the outcome of design more
closely within the process of researching and understanding. We argue that a diverse mix of experiential and
theoretical ‘knowing’, derived from engaging with local people as researchers, is needed to tackle locally
embedded opportunities and challenges, and that such local forms of knowledge must ‘sit at the table’ on an
equal footing with design practice and academic analysis. Thus by attending to local experience, pleasures and
aspirations, it becomes possible to reformulate ‘problems’ and identify value generated through, by and in the
existing context. It suggests the benefits of an approach to design that is ‘processual’ rather than being
problem-solution oriented, and that this approach enacts Schön’s (1983) notion of the ‘reflective practitioner’.
This attention to local ways of knowing expands the possibilities for designers to explore situations intuitively
and reflexively, with a view that ‘problems’ may not present themselves as such and ‘solutions’ may be multiple,
or not the only design response (Catanzaro, 2015). We demonstrate this by outlining how points of contact could
be created to involve local people and organisations as experts in a hypothetical collectively imagined
project—as co-researchers, co-designers and co-producers in making and sharing commons to critically
reconstitute the relationship between the ‘problem’ of Western Sydney, and the possibility of Riverlands, Sydney.
Western /R iv er la nd s, S yd ne y offers an ideal case through which to explore t hi s qu es ti on d ue t o it s tr aj ec to ry a s a
part of, and in relationship to, Sydney. Historically, the phrase ‘Western Sydney’ related to ‘disadvantaged
communities’ close to the western periphery of central Sydney. This area has subsequently become gentrified
and is now termed the relatively affluent ‘inner west’ suburbs. Due to urban development and population growth,
what is now identified as ‘the west’ is positioned much further from the city centre. Concurrently the label of
‘disadvantaged communities’ has also moved further west, the new west being perceived and labeled as socially
and culturally ‘problematic’. Yet simultaneously it is recognised by many of its residents as culturally rich,
economically vibrant and encompassing a wide range of environmental ‘assets’. These conflicting descriptions
invite a critical take on the question of how the ‘problem’ of Western Sydney and the possible solution of
‘Riverlands, Sydney’ is constituted.
In what follows we outline a critical and collaborative design framework that incorporates theoretical and
ethnographic dialogues in response to this challenge. We argue that such a framework can provide the entry
points for going beyond policy-based responses to contemporary societal challenges. Using a combination of
experiential and theoretical tools and knowledge to look beneath the surface of the already-constituted
‘question’ or ‘problem’ allows possible re-framings to be explored before responses are developed. We argue
that ethnographic understandings developed in dialogue with design, which take seriously local ways of knowing
as forms of equal expertise, can enable this. Finally we reflect on this framework in order to return to the
question of how the ‘commons’ might be treated in design practice. First we explore the notion of the
‘commons’, its relationship to property, and how it might be connected to social science research and design
practice.
The ‘commons’ as a site for design practice
In a context where social sciences and humanities scholars are increasingly seeking to improve the relevance
and social impact of their research beyond the academy including new ways to participate in change-making,
there are a growing number of connections between design practice and social or cultural research agendas.
While participatory design research and practice have long been implicated in social change processes, perhaps
in some national contexts more than others including Sweden (e.g. Ehn, 2014) and Australia (e.g. Akama &
Prendiville, 2013), the current interest in connecting design with social science approaches to social and
environmental issues brings a shift in emphasis and interdisciplinary collaboration (e.g. Pink et al., 2013). We
understand the brief/challenge to consider a reconceptualization of ‘Western Sydney’ as ‘Riverlands, Sydney’ is
a further gesture towards this form of collaboration.
An applied anthropology approach (e.g. Pink 2005; 2007) to understanding such a ‘problem’ would
characteristically seek to turn the question around. Therefore, if asked ‘how to imagine?’ Riverlands, Sydney in a
way that local people best benefit, we might reconfigure this original question to determine a number of sub
questions. These include what local people already see as being of benefit to them, from where their existing
forms of well-being and creativity are derived, and how these might feed into a revised vision for
making/imagining Riverlands, Sydney – if that goal continued to be relevant in the light of our investigations.
This is not to criticise the brief we were given, but to refigure it as a proposition and as a probe rather than as an
end goal.
For anthropologists (e.g. Strathern, 2000; Pels, 2000; Amit, 2000) and designers (Pink & Akama, 2015), the
uncertainty
of not knowing what is going to happen next, or exactly what the outcomes of our work will be or
how they will be manifested, underpins the participatory research and design process discussed here. Likewise
for the reflective practitioner ‘situations of practice are not problems to be solved but problematic situations to
engage in’ (Schön, 1983, p. 31). Our starting point in developing the methods we outline below was the idea of
co-designing for an uncertain future. The idea of turning around the provocation of Riverlands, Sydney was built
on the principle, that design cannot be prescriptive, a principle that is also fundamental to ethnography (see
Akama et al., 2015). By embracing uncertainty as the most inspiring and exciting part of design rather than
seeing it as a problem, (we don’t need to predict a future to design into), we acknowledge that aspects of the
context might change. We could be designing with people whose lives are changing or see that environments
and institutions are changing and that, given this context of change and uncertainty, design is ongoing and
might never end. Thus our commitment to making a design intervention in Western/Riverlands, Sydney might not
be something that had an end focus, but a process of continuing engagement and co-design – with local people,
groups and organisations – which would be continuously adaptive in its aims and outcomes.
The import of this perspective means taking ‘Riverlands, Sydney’ not as an end-point or a goal, but as a
speculative probethat we might interrogate, undermine and play with in the process of determining how a
reconfiguration of property and the relationships through which it is constituted and experienced in Western
Sydney could enable renewed forms of wellbeing. Gibson-Graham, Cameron and Healey (2013) argue that one
dimension of:
“
[t]aking back property for people and the planet involves recognising that it is
the relationships between people with respect to property that matter in the making
and sharing of commons (p.147).
”
If we consider making to be an ongoing activity in the world, projects of making are not fresh starts, but make
withwhat is already there. As the anthropologist Tim Ingold reminds us:
“
We are accustomed to thinking of making as a project’ [that starts with] ‘an idea
in mind, of what we want to achieve (Ingold, 2013, p. 20).
”
But there is another way to think of making, which we follow here, of ‘making as a process of
growth’
(italics in
original) which Ingold writes, ‘is to place the maker from the outset as a participant in amongst a world of active
materials.’ The maker ‘intervenes in worldly processes that are already going on’ rather than ‘imposing his
designs on a world that is ready and waiting to receive them’ (Ingold, 2013, p. 21). To undertake a project that
concerns re-imagining property that is already existing, and is specific to a material locality, we therefore need
to determine how property and that locality might also already exist in the imaginations of local people before
seeking to add external layers of definition to this. The ideas of recognising (and identifying) the relationships
that matter, and of ‘making and sharing’ are also fundamental principles in ethnographic and some participatory
design practices. They refer to understanding the relationships of humans to their environment, and to making
as a form of intervention or ongoing working towards change. Thus we consider two questions, first theoretically
and then in relation to practice, to understand: 1) The significance of the human-property relationship for how
humans are situated as part of an environment; and 2) how understanding, imagining and making as part of
everyday activity can inform us about ways to enable people to engage in the participatory making of commons.
The relationship between humans and property can be theorised from multiple perspectives. Here we account
selectively for those that have useful implications for the design project with which we are concerned. As such,
we tread a line between social science and design approaches. For anthropologists, theoretical coherence and
development is necessary for an investigation to proceed, because the relationship between the ethnography
and theory is iterative in nature –ethnography is used to critically build theory, while theory is used to critically
guide how we make meaning from the things and people we encounter in the world. In contrast, design research
has greater licence to engage theory to serve the objectives of practice, as an enabler for change making. Thus
our approach to theory will not be inconsistent, but we are licensed to use it instrumentally in ways beyond
generating theoretical arguments. The most relevant approaches here are those that are political and activated
as a critique of private property itself, and those less politically motivated approaches that seek to understand
the materiality or affordances of property as they are implicated in an environment that they share with humans.
These approaches are different but not necessarily incompatible or irreconcilable since rather than making
critical arguments against each other, their respective emphases can be complementary. We outline these to
suggest a framework for understanding the relationships between property and people in a shared environment.
For Gibson-Graham et al. (2013), the notion of the commons entails a particular relationship between people and
property. As they put it:
“
So what is it that characterizes a commons? Commons and community go hand in
hand. And it is because of this intimate interconnection that rules and protocols can
be developed to manage the commons. To be a commons:
access to property must be shared and wide,
use of property must be negotiated by a community,
benefit from property must be distributed to the community and possibly beyond,
care for property must be performed by community members, and
responsibility for property must be assumed by community members
(Gibson-Graham et al., 2013, pp. 131-2).
”
The brief we were charged with reflected an aim to imagine a Riverlands, Sydney where this approach to
property might be realised. It was pitched, we believe, as a ‘problem solver’ for Western Sydney that has been
characterised as follows:
“
Western Sydney names an extensive residential, industrial and rural environment
of nearly 9,000 square kilometers encompassing the major cities of Bankstown,
Blacktown, Campbelltown, Castle Hill, Fairfield, Liverpool, Parramatta and Penrith,
with a population of 2 million people. Currently the third largest economy in Australia
(behind Sydney CBD and Melbourne), Western Sydney is earmarked for a ‘tsunami’
of population growth over the next twenty years, and with this a need for the
creation of 20,000 new jobs. It has the highest concentration of immigrants,
particularly the newly arrived, in Australia. Western Sydney is a contested landscape
with a rapidly developing urban fringe. The region has for some time experienced a
decline in food production (since the 1970s when turf farms in the fertile flood plains
of the Hawkesbury region were reclassified as agriculture) and is facing specific
climate change challenges including water scarcity, soil degradation and urban heat
islanding (UHI) caused by the combination of hotter and more extreme climate
conditions and hard urban development. Residents of Western Sydney are also more
vulnerable than those located in higher density parts of Sydney to ‘lifestyle’ diseases
such as obesity and depression, due in part to a lack of access to locally grown, fresh
food coupled with the growth in private car use, ‘big box’ supermarkets, and poor
public transport infrastructure. A consequence of these somewhat certain trends and
development trajectories (which are certainly not unique to Western Sydney) is a
diminishment of shared life resources – often referred to as ‘the tragedy of the
commons’
https://icd2014.wordpress.com/workshop-brief/.
”
We were invited to recode Western Sydney in relation to its parklands and culture in that:
“
The Nepean and Hawkesbury rivers, Parramatta River and South Creek catchment
traverse the region and exist in relation to extensive parklands and recreational
areas. Equally, Western Sydney is layered by social and cultural landscapes that may
not be as apparent to the naked eye
https://icd2014.wordpress.com/workshop-
brief/.
”
Our workshop’s objective was to develop a methodology through which to interpret the brief with reference to
local realities, and through which the brief (revised) might become locally meaningful, or embedded.
The question of the commons is not simply about urban regeneration, but about a much deeper philosophy and
politics of ownership, sharing and collectivity. It does not exclude private property, yet it is committed to a
specific appreciation of the relationship between property, ownership and access, which is inclusive and ethical.
As Gibson-Graham et al. put it:
“
The question of who owns a commons is open. Commons can be created with any
type of property-private property (that might be owned by an individual owner, a
family, a corporation, or a collective), state-owned property, or open-access
property. In other words, ownership of property is largely a legal matter and does
not deter land or other resources from being managed as a commons (Gibson-
Graham et al., 2013, p. 132).
”
Yet ther e is al so a nee d to loo k at our re la ti ons hip with the env iro nm en ts t hat we l ive in b eyo nd th e qu esti on o f
property. ‘Property’, as it is popularly understood, is simply a particular way of configuring the relationships
between human and non-human entities that constitute our environments. The relationship between humans and
what we might refer to as property itself deserves some interrogation: defining something as property
determines it as being something separate from ourselves, that we are able to objectify and own. Yet when
people express their relationships to things they become more intertwined. Indeed, as the discussion of
Michelle’s dad’s perspective on his home (discussed next) demonstrates, the two have grown to become part of
each other. Our relationship to ‘the land’ is often coined in terms of property, but is much more complex than an
‘ownership’ categorisation (such as private, public etc.) may suggest. As the anthropologist Tim Ingold reminds
us:
“
The environment is, in the first place, a world we live in, and not a world we look
at. We
inhabit
our environment: we are part of it; and through this practice of
habitation it becomes part of us too (2010, p. 95).
”
Here, the concept of ownership becomes more than a claim to possess part of this environment. While the
politics of property and the inequalities this is associated with are problematic, private property can also be
fundamental to a lifetime of biographically accrued meaning and personal wellbeing.
This suggests that before theorising property, or assuming that a particular vision of the commons in a particular
locality might be implemented, we need to first understand what property means to the people who already
inhabit a locality. While ideologically the notion of private property might be opposed to the thesis of the
commons or the argument for ‘commoning’, private property ownership is already part of what is meaningful in
the context of everyday and biographical experience. And following Gibson-Graham et al. (as quoted above), the
ownership categorisation of a piece of ‘land’ need not dictate the commoning potential.
Therefore, in the case of Western Sydney before re-imagining the area as Riverlands, Sydney, we would need to
investigate the existing meaning of property for local people. Moreover in an economic, political and everyday
reality where commoning is enabled across a range of property types, we would need to appreciate how forms
of wellbeing are already generated through existing property configurations and uses. To mitigate against the
forms of exclusion and other problematic outcomes often associated with private property ownership, a vision
for commoning that encompasses the diversity of configurations and uses already existent is required. By
learning from the material, physical and affective relations to property that already exist –including all forms of
private property, such as home ownership – an inclusive and sustainable vision for Riverlands, Sydney becomes
possible. As also shown by Pink (in this issue) in her work on the Slow City movement (and which likewise seeks
to generate forms of wellbeing), we often encounter contexts where activists, policy makers or interested publics
might be living with aspects of national economies, politics and societies that they do not agree with, in a
pluralistic and interdependent system. This might involve constructing a bearable relationality, so we might
engage productively and generatively with what we may otherwise disagree with (Pink & Lewis, 2014). We are
interested in how such a trajectory could play out through ethnography-design dialogue and next we explore the
potential role of local stories of Western/Riverlands, Sydney in this.
Western/Riverlands, Sydney?
Our approach to the question or challenge of ‘How can design activate public engagement in the commons in
Riverlands, Sydney?’did not assume a predetermined methodology or linear process. We were interested in
bringing together approaches from design practice and anthropological ethnography. We began by drawing on
some of the insights about ‘bottom up’ processes of engagement such as those of the Slow City example, which
emphasised the importance of local knowledge. We were also committed to developing an interdisciplinary
approach to the challenge, having amongst us a communication designer, graphic designer, photographer,
anthropologist, and social policy-maker.
We began by each talking through the interes ts a nd e xp er ie nc es w e brought to the project. Following a feminist
approach to telling the self, these accounts tended to be biographical and personal as well as professional. Our
personal lives, biographies and subjectivities are always integral to how we understand what we find, and to our
capacities to understand or imagine other people’s worlds (Clifford & Marcus, 1986) as well as their sensory,
embodied and emotional experiences of the places they inhabit (Pink, 2015). As we began to speak it became
apparent how our different biographies were interwoven with the ‘challenge’ we were working on.
Three group members had grown up in Western Sydney and their stories were essential to how we critically
interpreted the brief. We outline this ‘insider informed’ critical interpretation in the next section. First, through
one of these stories we set the scene of Western Sydney and show what an ethnographic story of local
knowledge and experience contributes when it is introduced at the very outset of the interpretation of the
brief/challenge (rather than being undertaken simply as a stage in a research process that seeks to create
knowledge to follow the original format of the challenge). The group’s individual stories of growing up and living
in Western Sydney, helped to refigure the ‘problem’ and to generate a critical perspective around the concept of
Riverlands, Sydney. As we talked around the table we learned that Michelle had grown up in Western Sydney
and as she spoke, a story of what was ‘right’ about the area began to unfold. After the workshop Michelle
delved deeper into this story, asking her father to provide his own account.
My Place:
Figure 1
: Ciro Catanzaro on fresh block of land, Werrington, 1977
Photo: Margaret Catanzaro
“
In 1977, our friends, Pepe and Karen, they brought us to see this block of land. I
was not particularly keen to come here as, to me, it was the middle of nowhere. It
was the last block of land in a street of empty houses, they had all been built but no
one lived here yet, it was so quiet and the block backed onto bushland. After living in
Stanmore, this place seemed so far away from everything. In Italy, where I grew up,
people live on top of each other and family surround you. But my wife was very
Australian and wanted a house for the kids, she thought it was important they have a
backyard to play in. I never had a yard back then, I couldn’t understand.
But, I love my wife very much and I wanted to give her everything, so we agreed
and took a loan from the bank and they started to build in 1977. In 1978 we moved
in. I will always remember, the first year was the hardest, it was so cold, this big
three bedroom house with no furniture and no family to fill it yet, then, I didn’t
really like to stay here.
”
Figure 2
: Ciro Catanzaro reflecting on his past at his home in Werrington, 2014
Photo: Michelle Catanzaro
“
But after that, things changed, I just loved this place. It is a fantastic place, a
fantastic block of land. Slowly all the houses around us filled, and our neighbours
became like our family. The suburb also changed, more people came and it didn’t
feel like nowhere anymore. If I showed you a picture of then to now, you wouldn’t
believe how this place has transformed and how many people have come here. We
were lucky we came here first.
We have never stopped to make improvements on the house and the yard. The
backyard offered my family so many possibilities, things I could never have even
dreamed of as a little boy, and I was able to have a dog for the first time in my life,
Amica
. It was so different to the concrete streets I played on when I was a boy. I
remember I built my children a fort, they called it ‘Fort Littlekid’. How they spent
hours playing outside here and on the swings. We had a pool when the kids were
young and all the neighbours could come and swim here, sometime there was so
many people, I swear the pool had no water left in it at the end of the day. When the
kids were older, we built a granny flat so they could have more space, I want to give
my family everything. Now we have a beautiful deck and I just love to sit out here, I
think it is the most beautiful place in the world. I have moved around a lot in my life
and after leaving my family back in Italy, I was worried I wouldn’t ever really find
my place, but I can say that this is the only place I really call my home.
”
Figure 3
: Ciro Catanzaro discusses his home drawing upon a Neapolitan proverb, 2014. “Casa mia, casa mia per
qunado piccola tu sia sei sempre una abbadia
”
(trans) My house, my house although little you are, to me you
are like a palace.
Photo: Michelle Catanzaro
“
I always joke with my children that I want to be buried in the backyard… As long
as my grandson doesn’t step on me, as he plays soccer in the yard all the time.
”
The critical impact of narrative/knowing: questioning the brief
As Michelle’s father’s story shows, the idea of Western Sydney as home is very much invested in the notion of
the home, a privately owned locality, which is simultaneously part of a collective world with neighbours, friends,
and material and social environments that matter. Western Sydney, seen here through this experience, is not a
‘problem’, but a joy, a place to belong to, to be
part of
and to be buried in – that is, to stay part of. The area was
1
a place for him and his family to live in, care for and grow in.
The narrative also shows how over time Michelle’s father made his material and social home and world in
Western S yd ne y. The contingencies and relationships throu gh w hi ch t he c on fi gu ra ti on o f so ci al a nd m at er ia l
relations described in his story came about are representative of how life can develop, generating forms of
attachment and wellbeing. The production of such localised forms of wellbeing can be understood as outcomes
of the everyday improvised activities of people as they go about their everyday lives. As design anthropologists
have argued, people are everyday designers and this capacity should be appreciated in design processes.
Michelle’s father has been successful in generating and experiencing local forms of community, sharing and
forming a relationship to the land, which grew over time, and which could not necessarily be designed through a
narrowly conceived commons (exclusive of private property ownership) proposition for Riverlands, Sydney.
Yet simultaneously, this shows that there is already a sense of the commons, of local community around
relatives and neighbours in the area; that is, there are experiences, capacities and ways of being and knowing to
build on. While from the outside it might appear that there is a lack of ‘commons’ in the area, the scene we
encounter in Western Sydney through the eyes of Michelle’s father, is not so much a ‘tragedy of the commons’
but rather shows it to be rich in commoning practices. The question therefore becomes how to move from a
‘preconceived outcome’ approach, through which the region is viewed as in deficit and ‘problematic’, to
embracing and building on these evident and already existing ways of being, sharing and living that are
generative of forms of wellbeing that are meaningful to the local area.
The brief or challenge had presented us with a very different version of Western Sydney to that which we
encountered in just the few stories told by the members of our workshop group who had grown up in the area.
These stories offered us pointers towards what to research to understand what the ‘commons’ of
Western/Riverlands, Sydney actually means/should mean for design practice. Western Sydney was clearly, at
least in parts, already inhabited and cared for, thus posing the question of how existing local forms of wellbeing
might be harnessed for future wellbeing. This richness allows us to create a more complex interpretation of the
brief; a different picture of the area that comes from ‘inside’. We knew there must be more stories like this out
there and that, if these could be drawn out, they would further contribute to the richness of biographical and
personal experiences that we wanted to underpin our approach.
From an applied anthropology perspective this is unsurprising; anthropological responses to applied research
‘problems’ do not deny that problems exist, but they frequently refigure the research question and the ‘problem’.
This assets-based approach involves understanding what is already there, what is positive for people who live
there, and how local people imagine a positive future. Thus what we propose involves asking what is already
happening – that is, what are the existing generative, improvised and active ways in which people produce the
kinds of relationships or processes that change-makers, who are proposing reform of some kind, are seeking to
develop?
Techniques for imagining Western/Riverlands, Sydney
Our workshop aim was not to create a solution, but to generate a methodology or design practice and starting
point through which to co-produce the ways of knowing needed for such a design process. This brought
together anthropological ethnography and design techniques to create hybrid methods. These types of
techniques open up and present previously unknown possibilities and potentials (e.g. Halse, 2013; Akama et al.,
2015; Barnes, 2009; Chang, 2011).
What we learned from the story described above is that imagining what Riverlands, Sydney ‘could’ be may have
been itself problematic, reinforcing popular representations that depict Western Sydney as dangerous,
disadvantaged, or dysfunctional (Powell, 1993, p.12). An assets-based approach that builds upon what Western
Sydney already ‘is’, appeared to be a more productive starting point. We also recognised the importance of
seeing the project as temporal and evolving, having the potential to make an ongoing contribution to how
Western S yd ne y ca n be i ma gi ne d an d/ o r reimagined – rather than having as a goal the discovery of a singular,
lasting solution or reaching for a finite recommendation.
Bianchini (2006) draws on Maruyama’s term of the ‘urban mindscape’ in an attempt to define the urban
imaginary, indicating it is something that exists between the physical landscape of a city and the cultural and
visual perceptions of people. Bianchini (1999) explains that this can also be expressed as ‘landscape of the
mind’, meaning that the city’s mindscape can correspond to an urban ‘image bank’ consisting of local and
external images of the city. These are manifested in a variety of forms, which he lists as: media coverage;
stereotypes, jokes and ‘conventional wisdom’; representations of a city in music, literature, film, the visual arts
and other types of cultural production; myths and legends; tourist guidebooks; city marketing and tourism
promotion literature; views of residents, city users and outsiders, expressed, for example, through surveys and
focus groups (Bianchini, 2006, p.14). The ‘Westie’ stereotype associated with Western Sydney exemplifies this.
A derogatory label:
“
… perpetuated by news stories rather than distilled from real life, the Westie
image has affected how people from Western Sydney socially and economically
interact with other Sydney-siders (Sandbach, 2013, p.729).
”
This resonated with the group, and through our discussion it became evident that our individual understanding
of Western Sydney relied heavily on media representations and hearsay, if it was not through our own experience
as ‘insiders’. Due to our lack of first hand experiences, individuals were faced with a feeling of ‘existential
outsideness’ (Relph, 1976), a self-conscious reflection of not belonging within ‘the west’. To combat this sense
of alienation from the people and places of the west, we drew upon the personal narratives and stories of the
‘insiders’ within the group to enact a sense of ‘vicarious insideness’, where outsiders gain a sense of empathy
and understanding about a place based on rich and emotive narratives that evoke experiences of ‘familiar
places’ (Relph, 1976, p. 53).
This insight emerging from the personal and family narratives of those participants playing a dual role as
professional expert and someone who had grown up in the area – in addition to our various expertise and
knowing across fields of communication design; graphic design; urban photography; social policy; anthropology,
ethnography – enabled us to bring together a series of informed views that together suggested the following:
While the concept of Riverlands, Sydney offered an appealing solution, which drew on the qualities and
affordances of the already existing environment, as researchers and designers our first task was to interrogate the
brief and its underlying assumptions. This was not to disregard it, but to ask how such assumptions would intersect
with what was already there.
Local narratives and experiences were different from that of the Riverlands, Sydney proposition, they were less
tragic, told of a nurturing and fulfilling world and of personal fulfillment through embodied and social engagement in
the area. These did not tell the whole story, but signified that there was already a generative, improvised capability.
To start to approach the problem of Riverlands, Sydney we would need to know much more, and to build a
participatory and collaborative process with the stakeholders. We were not ready to design a process for making
(as growth, in Ingold’s sense of the term) Riverlands, Sydney, but we were well placed to develop a methodology for
getting to that position.
Our intention extends beyond seeking to propose a specific project. Rather, we present a hypothetical example
of what could be the next stage in the design/ethnography methodological process that this article argues for.
This approach also aims to avoid the ‘trap of placemaking’
.
Thus the methodology is not designed to make
places for people, but rather to work with them to grow the places they imagine. This move toward an alternative
vision of urban spaces is becoming more commonplace as urban planners, city councils and local groups depart
from the traditional dichotomy associated with the late capitalist approach of urban reorganisation (Cupers,
2004). Instead, we experience ‘a multitude of (dis)ordering interventions that constitute and transform the urban
landscape’ (Cupers, 2004, p. 5). In embracing this approach, we could see urban spaces as places of process.
No longer static and immobile, instead they become framed in relation to the continual construction of relations
(Massey, 2005).
Our experience of sharing ‘insider’ narratives (Relph, 1976) highlighted the importance of learning from the past
and present stories of those people who live in the places we hope will become more sustainable in the future.
This approach seeks to engage people, through the notion of the commons, in developing a process that
generates places that emerge
from
local knowledge, interests and capacities and which, through their very
design, encourage diverse access, negotiation around use, distribution of benefits, joint responsibility and
long-term investment in care. This means not arriving with pre-conceptualisations of what will be made and
avoiding making the obvious, such as community gardens or skate parks. Rather, the emphasis is placed on
developing a process which foregrounds the (perhaps not immediately evident) ways by which value can be
added to the existing asset-base. Thus in this argument the proposition of Riverlands, Sydney remains a
speculative probe for considering how positive change-making towards improved wellbeing might be played out.
In our aim to ‘design a methodology – not a solution’,
our
approach offers a way to work with people, rather
than a solution to ‘problems’. This means, taking insights from the stories we encountered in our group, which
undermine the assumption that the future participants will think there is a problem. Following our commitment to
work towards a sustainable Riverlands through existing forms of human improvisation, the methodology we
propose is for harnessing human activity in the world to work towards a common sustainable environmental and
economic future for Western Sydney.
To achieve this we propose a suite of
methods for imagining the future
that seek to engage the past-present-
future relationship as a form of understanding the Riverlands and their ‘problems’ and opportunities. Based on
ethnographic, speculative and collaborative principles they therefore involve the researchers/designers going to
where those people we wish to involve in this work already are and to engage with them in their localities. This
avoids ‘parachuting in’ and would instead create research environments by working with organisations with
strong local links, and that are neutral but active, mobile, and invite local participation.
Figure 4
: Those of our group who were ‘insiders’ mapped their journeys and movements through Western
Sydney, showing us otherwise unrevealed elements of life in the area. This particular map depicts Penrith and
surrounds.
Photo: Alison Barnes and Michelle Catanzaro
The insider stories told in our workshop took us through narratives of aspirations, hidden/invisible places, tacit
mappings of the world, journeys and movement. They showed us the otherwise unrevealed elements of life in
Western Sydney that are not appreciated by narratives that cast the area as a ‘problem’ or ‘tragedy’. They told
us of the joys of living there, as well as the need to leave as young people, along with there being a possible
later return (with kids). These stories began to build up a consistent image of the forms of wellbeing, and the
ways of belonging and wanting to leave, that were part of being from Western Sydney. They demonstrated the
need to collaborate with people living in the area, to generate more stories of past and present ways of living
and being in Western Sydney, and to use these to invite and document imagined futures for the proposed sites
of the commons and what they might be and be called in the future. To do this we developed a hypothetical
mobile, multi-sited public art project. Inspired by what was meaningful to those people who loved living in
Western S yd ne y de sc ri be d in t he i ns id er s to ri es o f ou r group, and by the kinds of thing s th at t yp ically contribute
to a sense of the commons, we developed four themes: sharing, cooking, drawing and planting.
Figure 5
: Concept prototype for the
Food for Thought
bus: a mobile, multi-sited public art project.
Photo: Katrina Sandbach
At the centre of our method for generating stories of the past, present and future of Western Sydney would be
the
Food for Thought
bus. The bus would be inhabited by an ethnographer and a designer and co-design
volunteers, who would be involved in the process of collaboration, and would join the bus during its travel
through the area. The bus would be mobile, open, regularly repainted (like Melbourne graffiti walls). It would be a
place where people make food, its sites would become places for planting and trees, and people would invest
their stories in it through their cooking, painting, talk or performances. Using the bus as a mobile base, the
ethnographer and designer would document images, sounds, performances and live objects that are generated
and the stories interwoven in them. The researchers would continuously analyse, determine the patterns,
commonalities and differences, and start to understand what is shared, what is known and what is imagined and
what excites people. Working in this way we would shift the question of Western Sydney, and what it means,
away from being a ‘problem’ that needs a Riverlands, Sydney to be its design solution. Instead we would
reconfigure it as an ongoing co-design opportunity in which project participants would become co-designers of
what happens next, and reflective and critical reviewers of any process that we proposed.
Figure 6
:
Food for Thought
media pack: The bus can facilitate co-design processes – for example, by asking
users to respond to a ‘thought of a day’ related to the project in material (e.g. postcards above) and digital (e.g.
social media) form.
Photo: Katrina Sandbach
In creating a material, sensory and tactile world around the
Food for Thought
bus, we also propose forms of
digital presence and engagement. The bus and its movement through the area would not only be local, but also
virtual and connected to wider narratives, stories and collaborations. The digital presence would tell the story of
the bus, as our main character who moves through the environment, beginning its story at an event where it is
named by children we have connected with through local organisations. Using digital mapping and social media,
the bus will be traced online. It will connect digitally to the activities and shared aims of partner organisations
and engage wider communities in its work, while also reporting in a responsible and ethical way on the findings
of the research and design process. The online presence of the bus would also enable broader participation
through the digital exchange of stories and imagined futures. As such the local narratives would be connected
through the journey of the bus, creating a larger narrative of the region.
The
Food for Thought
bus is the starting point in the journey in our design/ethnography research process. It is a
participatory method through which the local population can be engaged, by joining them in the material and
online localities they already inhabit. It is not a ‘solution’ to the problem of Western Sydney and it is not a
process that will lead to the prototyping of Riverlands, Sydney. Instead it is an investigation that poses the
commons of Riverlands, Sydney as a probe and asks what Western Sydney has been, is, and could be. This, we
argue is where research and design processes need to start. That is, through a careful dialogue between what is
imagined by different stakeholders; by an interrogation of what an ‘insider’ perspective may reveal about the
otherwise hidden; and by creating a participatory process that attends to local narratives and seeks to
foreground the unspoken ways of being that are fundamental to wellbeing.
Engaging with intervention: Some conclusions
We have outlined an approach to confronting a supposed ‘problem’ – that of reimagining as ‘Riverlands, Sydney’
the ‘tragedy’ of the commons of Western Sydney (Australia), or as it was posed to be used in the original design
brief, ‘diminishment of shared life resources – often referred to as ‘the tragedy of the commons’ (op cit.). By
building upon emerging modes of interdisciplinary practice, and specifically meshing together approaches
typical to applied anthropology (Pink, 2005; 2007) and design, we have turned this brief around to interrogate
the problem statement. This has allowed us to check the validity and the embedded assumptions underpinning
it. The information we gathered, though not substantial enough to make a claim, pointed to the ‘problem’ of
Western Sydney as one that is, at least in part, generated by outsiders who seek change. Insider perspectives
shared with us provided an equally important voice that foregrounded a different and more positive perspective.
Dealing with multiple stakeholders and varying perspectives in regeneration projects is nothing new. Our interest
is not in reviewing how such challenges are usually confronted in policy and community development settings.
Rather, we have focused on how an interdisciplinary anthropological ethnography and design process can
confront the brief. Our collaboration allowed us to reveal local knowledge to interrogate the problem and identify
how and by whom it has been constructed; reveal hidden realities and opportunities; and imagine locally
relevant and effective futures that cultivate wellbeing. We have proposed a set of methodologies informed by
design and ethnography and highlighted a further need to develop new interdisciplinary and multi-stakeholder
tactics that can support better futures for communities. In an environment where such disciplines are
increasingly being required to, and indeed seeking to, engage with intervention, public engagement and policy
projects, we argue that new models for working and collaborating across these spaces are needed.
Footnotes
1.
Amica
in Italian means female friend or companion.
List of figures
Figure 1 (1977) Photo taken by Margaret Catanzaro
Figure 2 (2014) Photo taken by Michelle Catanzaro
Figure 3 (2014) Photo taken by Michelle Catanzaro
Figure 4 (2014) Mapping Project as a result of ICD workshop by Alison Barnes and Michelle Catanzaro
Figure 5 (2014) Bus prototype begun at ICD workshop and further developed for publication by Katrina
Sandbach (original bus decal design applied over Royalty-Free image ©iStock/NoDerog)
Figure 6 (2014) Media pack prototype begun at ICD workshop and further developed for publication by Katrina
Sandbach
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About the authors:
Sarah Pink
is Professor of Design and Media Ethnography, and Director of the Digital Ethnography Research
Centre at RMIT University. Her work includes the books
Media, Anthropology and Public Engagement
(co-edited
2015),
Doing Sensory Ethnography
(3rd edition, 2015), the
Un/Certainty
ibook (co-authored, 2015) and the docu
film
Laundry Lives
(co-Directed with Nadia Astari, 2015).
Email:
sarah.pink@rmit.edu.au
Michelle Catanzaro
is a Lecturer in Design (Visual Communication) at Western Sydney University. Her
research interests revolve around place, phenomenology, ethnography and design. Michelle utilises visual
methods to engage with different aspects of cultural geography.
Email:
m.catanzaro@westernsydney.edu.au
Katrina Sandbach
is a designer and academic who lectures in the Bachelor of Design (Visual
Communication) at Western Sydney University, Australia. Her research explores the connections between visual
communication and place, and cultural identity in Greater Western Sydney.
Email:
k.sandbach@westernsydney.edu.au
© Global Media Journal - Australian Edition
Mitra Gusheh’s
practice builds on over 15 years of experience across the social, tertiary and design (visual
communication) sectors. She established Oxfam Australia’s national youth program and has developed
large-scale social change programs in Sri Lanka and with UNESCO in Nepal. She currently works for the ASPIRE
program at the University of New South Wales (UNSW).
Email:
mitra.gusheh@unsw.edu.au
Alison Barnes
is a Senior Lecturer in Graphic Design at London College of Communication, University of the
Arts London. Her research interests centre on creative methods for understanding and representing urban
everyday life and place. Alison’s practice led research is interdisciplinary, drawing on both graphic design and
cultural geography.
Email:
alison.barnes@lcc.arts.ac.uk
Joanne McNeill
is currently a PhD Candidate with the thesis working title
Enabling social innovation –
opportunities for sustainable local and regional development
. She is a Churchill Fellow (2008), established and
managed the Social Enterprise Program at Parramatta City Council, and co-authored
Australian Stories of Social
Enterprise
.
Email:
J.McNeill@westernsydney.edu.au
Enrico Scotece
is a Lecturer in Design (Visual Communication) at Western Sydney University. Currently a PhD
candidate whose thesis explores perceptual experience, Enrico utilises photography as a reflexive practice that
explores aspects of participant observation, attribution theory, perception, and intent.
Email:
e.scotece@westernsydney.edu.au
Ciro Catanzaro
was born in Naples, Italy in 1950. He has since migrated to Australia, settling in Werrington in
Sydney’s west.
