I was helping facilitate an academic workshop with Abhay Adihikari and Inez Boogaarts on codesign on Friday and the issue of what do people do with the institution’s research came up.
When a project finishes, when the report is published or the dataset filed; is that the end? Do things just stop?
Where you stop, someone else starts
There’s difference between directly engaging with datasets/knowledge and the consequences of having been with such information.
The impact is not necessarily in the direct interaction with the research material. It is not the dataset. It is not the paper. It’s the consequence and to find that realisation needs a moment to take a breath.
Taking a pause afterwards.
The time in which people realise something from within themselves. The memory, the story, the question, the trauma. The researcher and their institution can hold a space for them to hear themself, to share their words, to start to make or do something now.
The power of research can be in enabling validation of other people’s lives and ideas. A way of being with people so they can find a structure or explore a place to say more and do more themselves. Their discovery of agency and capacity thru experience of your work.
Your thing may not be the centre
As with museum interpretation, it’s not the information panel that is the central experience. It’s the stories and conversations that encountering the panel enables. You build the thing for what happens next.
People want to find meaning and feel that they matter.
Codesign is a way of sharing power and capabilities so more people do find and feel all that.
The systemic imbalances do not go away but new spaces are made where more people have greater intent and agency.
We need to work out how to pause more and then cultivate the discoveries that more people find in those gaps.