Design for collaboration and conviviality

Enabling collaborations between actors for mutual support and for delivering societal benefit.

ABOUT THE PROJECTS

Projects that organise interpersonal encounters to enable other projects and activities to happen. Some of these projects operate new interactions between those working in the same field or issue. Conviviality can be a qualitative orientation of these projects: “the word ‘convivial’ has an immediate appeal for many educators and animateurs in that in everyday usage it looks to the liveliness and being social (enjoying people’s company)” (Smith, 2009).

Proposed Projects

Type of Projects

A community has to be nurtured. For it to take concrete form, there is the need to design “convivial institutions to sustain and express its presence. Communities characterised by dialogue and relation require particular types of institution. Such institutions need to be dialogical, just and allow room for growth and exploration”. Conviviality may be concerned with individual interaction, but authors as “Ivan Illich was also interested in institutions and ‘tools’ – physical devices, mental constructs and social forms. He argued for the creation of convivial, rather than manipulative institutions and saw conviviality as designating the opposite of industrial productivity” (Smith, 2009). Illich adds that ‘a “convivial” society is one in which people control the tools (Illich, 1973).

Open Questions