The Fair Energy Mark in the Making_v6.pdf (1.24 MB)
Download fileThe Fair Energy Mark in the making: framing a citizen-led campaign by participatory design
There is a growing understanding that design can positively contribute towards highly complex
social, economic and environmental problems we face today. One key area is citizen
empowerment to change built-in systemic inequalities and exploitative practices. This paper
presents a design intervention that explored citizen empowerment in the context of The Fair
Energy Mark campaign, a citizen-led action aimed to raise practice standards and address power
imbalances in the energy supply sector. The project-based investigation explored the tensions
emerging between expert–diffuse design in the process of elaboration of campaign branding and
communication strategy. The researchers experimented with new tools that enabled an open
participatory process of campaign framing, but also facilitated fluid knowledge exchange between
participants through experiential learning. The investigation contributes some conceptual
constructs to discuss strategic design management practice in the socio-political sphere.
Furthermore, the research identified that a closer integration of design and communicative action
theories, and participatory design and community organising methodologies present promising
opportunities to amplify the impact of design research for social change.
History
School
- Loughborough University London
Published in
Design Research for ChangePages
357-353Source
Design Research for Change Symposium (DR4C)Publisher
Lancaster UniversityVersion
- AM (Accepted Manuscript)
Publisher statement
Reproduced with permission of the publisherAcceptance date
2019-07-17Publication date
2019-12-12Copyright date
2019ISBN
9781862203693Publisher version
Language
- en