THE AGE OF NEW AGENCY CHANGES EVERYTHING
The outbreak of Covid-19 has shaken the world, leaving the creative industries in an unprecedented situation.
The full impact of Covid-19 is still almost impossible to absorb. However, I am here to report on a remarkable cohort of young creatives who, instead of being overwhelmed by the confusion and complexity of the pandemic, have embraced the opportunity to practice independently, to reflect critically and most importantly to recognise the value and possibilities of immediate design action and activism. This cohort were located all over the world as Extinction Rebellion declared Climate Emergency, as sexual harassment survivor Tarana Burke shouted-out MeToo#, as George Floyd’s brutal death exposed a ‘pandemic of discrimination.’ Not suprising therefore, that this should lead to extensive self-examination and reflection during Covid-19 by our Design students, on the values and priorities that they have encountered in their national and international design industry experiences. No wonder that this year has encouraged them to ‘break the silence’ in the Design profession and emboldened them to consider a social justice and empowerment movement of their own.
As a supportive, collaborative cohort, these students found themselves in March 2020, often sole retainers in abandoned studios, new shepherds of forsaken projects, and also with time and opportunity to innovate and self-initiate. They became unique correspondents, distinctive witnesses and unexpected critical commentators, as we all experienced catastrophic political, social, cultural and ethical disruption and then a slow recalibration.
What has resulted is this publication and critically analytical Instagram Conference on September 17th as part of the London Design Festival 2020. The Design legacy of Covid-19 has created substantial re-evaluation, dissent, critical reflection and expansive positive “New Agency”.
As part of a Design School with 8 Design BA (Hons) degree courses this ‘agency’ has taken on many innovative forms: our illustrators are engaged in more journalistic reportage activity, our designers are intent on essential field/home research labs, generative systems, decolonisation methodologies, real & virtually-real experiments and corporate social responsibility comic narratives. During lockdown students experimented with new materials, with copy-shop activism, with fermenting and conservation for food security, with coding manuals, with Unsettled Publications, with agile typography, with new psychographic imaginings and innovative ways of capturing environmental data, while many also investigated genuine ‘service-design’ through volunteering in the community or in hospitals in Europe and Asia.
It has been a great privilege to work with this Janus-faced group, in both education and professional practice at the same time, looking both ways, who have been able to reflect and re-imagine, beginning to prototype a different kind of creative industry. Their vision is of a valued and inclusive professional design community that focuses more on purpose and responsibility, considering the sustainability of all they address, convincingly confronting ethical issues and deconstructing economic norms.
They are exploring a new set of societal values and wish to challenge now, once and for all, some of the old practices which have perpetuated in the creative industries. It is untenable for a profession with an expertise in communication to remain dominated by mono-cultured white men, reluctant to support, often determined to exploit, young designers with no consideration for the betterment of society, for a plurality of cultures, for the preservation of the environment, reflecting humanist experience, for a fairer, less materialist world.
I was taught by Ken Garland in the 80’s but this new creative generation is much more aware of the damaging nature of ‘the high-pitched, high pressured, scream of consumer culture’ of which Ken talked more than 50 years ago and are adamant that now, enough is enough. They believe that we need to be more responsible as an industry, to call out the injustices, to insist on ethical conduct and this cohort are the new design generation to ensure change happens.
Design has changed radically in the last decade. Priority has shifted to social and service design, to designers developing their empathetic and benevolent sensibilities, listening attentively to the issues, noticing and observing, seeking out problems. No more egos and design celebrities, time for a bonfire of the vanities. Designers have recognised the moral limits of the markets, the predatory nature of capitalism and welcomed the civic responsibility hardwired into the role of being a designer. Designers, like architects are not self-made and self sufficient, their role as communicators and interpreters of complexity is deeply rooted in society, an important role full of humility and responsibility to serve communities.
During 2020, society changed, leaving communicators scrabbling to catch up with shifted value systems and transformed audiences. Before the pandemic, it was hard to imagine the compassion we would find, the sense of community we would develop, the endeavour we would show. Equally, it was hard to imagine the quiet cities, clean air and plummeting carbon measures with which the pandemic would unexpectedly gift us.
We’ll never be able to fully solve that crisis with solutions like the size of lightbulbs and plastic straws. But such an existential problem does require more agency from us all
Such transformation requires more agency from us all. It requires each of us to ask how, exactly, we live and work, the values we say we hold; it expects us to be honest about the hypocrisies we may find in our answers; and it demands a braver, more imaginative response. This has indeed ‘changed everything,’ leaving a new wave of creative practitioners an empowering ‘New Agency’ to demand better and explore the genuine potential of applied societal creativity.
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Sarah Temple: Course Director, Diploma in Professional Studies in the Design School at London College of Communication, University of the Arts London