ORGANIZING DIFFERENTLY
2025-28
Funded by the Philip Leverhulme Prize for Visual and Performing Arts
Collaborators
Martin Born
Sally Cooke
Jakub Lanc
Mats Siffels
My current research builds on my previous work in participatory speculation and alternative fashion systems to explore how the production, exchange, use and recovery of clothes and other forms of material culture might be organized differently.
Context
The industries that supply our everyday products are dominated by commercial businesses that are aligned with a capitalist system organized around endless economic growth. This is problematic, because evidence shows that the pursuit of growth leads to environmental degradation and increasing social inequality; sustainable and just systems need to be organized in different ways.
While there are many inspiring examples of non-capitalist organizing in fashion and other areas of material culture, these activities take place in the margins of the system and do not dent the dominance of the conventional for-profit growth-based business as the archetypal organizational format. In design and management education, where the norms and expectations of organizing are passed on, conventional businesses dominate live briefs and industry case studies. Students do not develop an understanding of alternative forms of organizing and go on to follow familiar paths, making it difficult for these alternatives to spread and gain influence.
My experiences within and beyond research settings have revealed intense interest in alternatives to the capitalist status quo but little understanding of how fashion, or the industries of material culture more generally, might be organized differently. Underpinning this lack of literacy is a widespread feeling of inevitability regarding capitalism as an overarching system, which means that alternatives feel doomed to remain in the margins indefinitely.
The project
Organizing Differently aims to support the flourishing of post-growth systems for fashion and other areas of material culture by speculating on alternative possibilities for organizing. These speculations, generated via participatory workshops, will draw on existing organizational formats but also push beyond them, using a design orientation to devise propositional arrangements of people, resources and material flows that could thrive in a post-growth economy. In doing so, organizing is presented as a space for play and experimentation and capitalism is understood as just one among many possible systems.
Three questions are driving the research:
In practical terms, the project will involve:
Through this practice-based research I am investigating interconnections between designing and organizing. I am interested not only in how organization can be designed differently and how design can be organized differently, but also in resonances between these two widespread processes. Both, for example, create new arrangements of people and things, which ‘loop back’ to impact upon the people who interact with them.
Get in touch!
I am currently looking for partners with interests in organizing, design, material culture and post-growth economics, located in the UK and Europe, to co-host a one-day participatory workshop (timescale: mid-2026 to mid-2027).
Interested in discussing the possibility? Please get in touch!
Context
The industries that supply our everyday products are dominated by commercial businesses that are aligned with a capitalist system organized around endless economic growth. This is problematic, because evidence shows that the pursuit of growth leads to environmental degradation and increasing social inequality; sustainable and just systems need to be organized in different ways.
While there are many inspiring examples of non-capitalist organizing in fashion and other areas of material culture, these activities take place in the margins of the system and do not dent the dominance of the conventional for-profit growth-based business as the archetypal organizational format. In design and management education, where the norms and expectations of organizing are passed on, conventional businesses dominate live briefs and industry case studies. Students do not develop an understanding of alternative forms of organizing and go on to follow familiar paths, making it difficult for these alternatives to spread and gain influence.
My experiences within and beyond research settings have revealed intense interest in alternatives to the capitalist status quo but little understanding of how fashion, or the industries of material culture more generally, might be organized differently. Underpinning this lack of literacy is a widespread feeling of inevitability regarding capitalism as an overarching system, which means that alternatives feel doomed to remain in the margins indefinitely.
The project
Organizing Differently aims to support the flourishing of post-growth systems for fashion and other areas of material culture by speculating on alternative possibilities for organizing. These speculations, generated via participatory workshops, will draw on existing organizational formats but also push beyond them, using a design orientation to devise propositional arrangements of people, resources and material flows that could thrive in a post-growth economy. In doing so, organizing is presented as a space for play and experimentation and capitalism is understood as just one among many possible systems.
Three questions are driving the research:
- How can a participatory speculation project focused on organizing differently be designed to maximise engagement and impact?
- What speculative visions are generated by participants and what forms of organizing are involved?
- What is the impact of participation and engagement on people’s thinking regarding dominant and alternative forms of organizing?
In practical terms, the project will involve:
- the collaborative design of a participatory workshop in which participants will generate and develop propositional arrangements of people, resources and material flows
-
delivery of the participatory workshop in various settings involving academics and practitioners, each focusing on a particular product or material and a particular geographic location
-
building on the propositional visions created in the workshops to produce an openly accessible online resource of fictional organizations, materialized via tangible ‘props’, for use in education and other settings.
Through this practice-based research I am investigating interconnections between designing and organizing. I am interested not only in how organization can be designed differently and how design can be organized differently, but also in resonances between these two widespread processes. Both, for example, create new arrangements of people and things, which ‘loop back’ to impact upon the people who interact with them.
Get in touch!
I am currently looking for partners with interests in organizing, design, material culture and post-growth economics, located in the UK and Europe, to co-host a one-day participatory workshop (timescale: mid-2026 to mid-2027).
Interested in discussing the possibility? Please get in touch!