New Work is a co-design project to develop services that meet practical everyday needs of micro-businesses across the North East. It’s about working people helping each other out more with the practical hassles that wear us down. We spoke to Helen Kerrigan from Enabling Concepts who guided the businesses participating in the New Work project and Grant Carruthers from Bright Creatives, one of those businesses.

Melissa Lukowski: What is the concept of New Work?
Helen Kerrigan: I work for Enabling Concepts. We help small businesses, we mentor them, help them grow, point them in the right direction and give them some good advice. When Dott came around looking for projects that would help the community with design, we asked them whether we could do that and whether they would help us.
We had companies like Bright Creatives, all micro-businesses with less than 8 employees, small businesses who were growing and already had a bit of experience, but they were at stages in their lifes where they needed to progress.
The project has been going for almost a year. We first got together 4 months ago.
There are 6 case studies, which are all massively different. The only thing they have in common is that they’re all working for themselves, all micro-businesses. We have a landscape gardener, we have a bicycle shop owner, an osteopath, software developers, PR & communications people…
You would think there are no connections. You would think: “How on earth can somebody with a bicycle shop help somebody who’s an osteopath?” But we can help them with so many different parts of their business. (more…)

An interview with Robert O’Dowd, Executive Producer of Dott 07

Melissa Lukowski: You’re the Executive Producer of Dott 07. What makes Dott 07 Festival different from other design festivals?
Robert O’Dowd: The original idea was driven by the Design Council, which is the national body for design in the UK. They wanted a programm that really engaged with the general public. The problem with design and the design industry accross the world is that they don’t often think about real people. They like peer acclaim, they like to win awards from each other, they like to make things that they think are nice, but haven’t fully understood what people wanted. (more…)

Julia Schaeper from Engine on service design, the difference between working with the public and the private sector and the advantage of being a generalist.

Do you still have to explain service design or is there a broad understanding of what service design is and can do by now? Which props do you use to explain service design to your clients?
You still have to explain it very much. But there’s a difference between the public sector and the private sector. Lots of commercial clients have heard about service design. Many many times, when you’ve done a project and your clients see the success, they come back to you. So you would have to make a one off explanation: you pitch your project, you bring forward case studies of other projects, you highlight the benefits and the impact and effects that service design has had in those projects. But once they buy into it, they’re likely to stick with it, because it adds so much more value to an outcome.
In the public sector, it’s very much pioneer work. You really have to make yourself relevant and really sell yourself. That can be very hard. In the public sector, there’s a lot of tendering involved and that’s a very lengthy process. Sometimes you’ve got to do things like fund raising a year in advance before the actuall project happens – the pace is very slow, it requires a lot more time and resources. (more…)

Julia Schaeper, service designer at Engine, on their Dott 07 project Our New School

Melissa Lukowski: Julia, can you tell us something about your project Our New School?
Julia Schaeper: The Our New School project is a year long project that started in the summer of last year. The starting point was to give us the big subject of school and design. That was pretty much it. So, we had to figure out what we could do with the subject of education and school and design.
We did a lot of research and found out that currently in the UK, there’s this huge investment programme of about 70 billion pounds to refurbish or rebuild all of UK’s secondary schools – it’s called Building Schools for the Future (BSF). They have evaluated these schools and figured out that most of them are poor or mediocre at their best – in terms of performance. Many of these schools have a lot of high aims and many issues to solve, but very often the architecture does not tackle any of these issues.
We found that a really interesting opportunity for us from the service design perspective. We wanted to see, what different approach we could offer – whether that’s going to be any better or not, that’s the big question… Just to give it a try and see what happens when you mix service design with the idea of Building Schools for the Future, looking at how our children should be learning in the future, at how our schools should be like. (more…)

We’re back in Germany now. We need the weekend to recreate – running around conducting interviews, taking pictures, filming impressions, listening to debates, transliterating interviews and talking English most of time was quite exhausting. We have lots more to write about on this blog, but give us time until Monday. Next week we will not only be working on this blog, but also putting together a video documentation on the Dott 07 Festival.

Lauren Tan gives us some more insights on Dott 07 and her view of service design.

Melissa Lukowski: You are conducting part of the research for your PhD on Dott and the Dott 07 Festival. Can you give us some insights?
Lauren Tan: The idea of Dott came from Richard Florida’s work. He wrote about how creative communities build economic prosperity. There’s a high concentration of designers in London. It’s like a magnet, a real hub for growth and economic prosperity. It leaves the regions behind a bit. Part of the Dott programm was about trying to close that gap, to build a creative communiy here. The Design Council’s Chief Executive came over Florida’s work and he thought: “Why can’t we have a creative region in England – other than London?” So that’s how Dott was born. It’s about building a creative community in the North East, trying to encourage the people in the region to do more designing, to come forward with their creative ideas and see what will happen … (more…)

What a surprise! We were listening to the debate »movement dilemma«, and after a short brake, when we wanted to leave, we suddenly discovered familiar faces among a group of Glasgow students sitting behind us: Hamish, Hazel and Joanne, who did their exchange year at KISD. The fact that they drove three hours by car to chatch an impression of DOTT07, shows how big their interest in social issues and service design really is.

They promissed to comment on their impressions of the festival on this blog, so check back and feel free to leave your comments!

I just overheard a Dott 07 crew member questioning a visitor on her opinion to the festival. One of the questions was whether the lady had visited the Welcomes Zone. In her answer she made a very good point: she did see it, but she didn’t visit it, because it wasn’t very inviting. She suggested combining the Welcomes Zone with the coffee area – come in, sit down, have a cup of tea.

The coffee and tea stand is right at the end in a corner of a separate tent. Unfortunately, Dott 07 haven’t managed to set an example to the people they want to sensitise and educate. Dear people of Dott 09, take this as an opportunity for improvement!

An interview with Lauren Tan, PhD student at Northumbria University

Melissa Lukowski: We’re standing in front of the new Northumbria University. What is the concept of this school?
Lauren Tan: About a month and a half ago the Faculty of Design, Newcastle Business School and the School of Law moved to the new site of Northumbria University. The building is divided into design on one side and business and law on the other side. It’s like the hemispheres of the brain: design’s on the right hand side and law and business on the left. The aim is to get the faculties, especially design and business, to talk to each other a lot more. When you go inside, it’s a really interesting space: the class rooms have glass walls, so there’s lots of transparency and everyone can see what’s going on. (more…)

Several Projects at dott 07 are about Sustainability. But the festival itself takes place in tents which aren’t insulated. And the doors have to be open all day to let people in. So the only way to make the festival tents warm is to put up radiant heaters. But, unfortunately, this isn’t really sustainable. This could be a good project for dott 09: The Heat Dilemma.