 Ac nid oedd ydych chi eisiau am adnodd Professor Theo Zymu Popolys yw hwnnw i ddiwethaf i ddweud y llesaf o ddweud ffasgfa ac ymddyliau ddweud sy'n ddweud i'r cyffredin iawn. Be'r Professor yw'r ddweud ffasgfa yw'r ddweud yw'r Unedig Pwg Ffasgfa ac yw'r ddweud yw'r ddweud yw'r argyteb. Os ydych chi'n fod yn yr ysgol yw'r ddweud, byddwn yn ychwanel. Mae'n meddwl i'r holl ddisgynfaenol ac i'w meddwl o gyfnodol. Mae'r cyfrifodol, cyfunodol, ac i'w meddwl o'r llwyddon cymaint â'r rhaglen, ac i'r cyfrifodol ac i'w meddwl i'r cyfrifodol, mae'n meddwl i'r hyn o'r lleoedd y lleoedd yn mynd i'n gwneud hynny, gyda'r lleoedd yr Arhigol, ac yn ei amgylcheddau a'r lleoledd Llogico-Mathemaiddol. Mae'r lleoedd yn amgylcheddau, amgylcheddau i'r lleoedd yn gwneud y gallu cyfrifodol. Mae yma'n Ohaeth eich fath o ddechau cymaint â scherpau a gweithio cyrchu hefyd ymd통 yn gael cyfnodol ac mae'r gweld o byd yw'r ddweud hefyd, ac mae'r gweld o gweithio hefyd.... Yn y casfoddDI yn ychwanegoedd gan eich sefydling. Dyna'r ochr blynyddu ar gweithio ddim yn gweithio gyda drosaf Llywodraeth, Theo Zeymem popolus. Gweithio rydych chi'n ffordd o dyna'r gweithio. Thank you, thank you, and welcome, welcome everyone, and thank you very much for being here today in this lecture theatre and online. In this lecture I would like to essentially open a conversation about the work of citizens, professionals and organisations that engage in a type of work that I call design creatives. I would like to discuss what unlocks their capabilities to address societal challenges. But who are the design creatives? Let me start with a quite personal account of the topic of this lecture. So this is me with my sister a few years ago. We grew up at the suburb of Athens in a place full of contradictions. People living in flawless houses literally sleeping on the soil on the floor in an increasingly reduced agricultural area at the north of Athens. And next to them wealthy families living in villas with well kept gardens and big trees often. And next to them again empty land full of thrown away materials, usually construction materials and wandering animals, dogs, sheep and cats. And as a group of 20-odd children, maybe 7 to 14 years old, we had our own conflicting societal challenges. After all, life can be hard when your shoes have holes, when you risk to destroy them in the rough terrain or in the mud or when you don't know how to tie your shoelaces. And life can be hard for the whole place you live in when they are hungry animals looking for food and then their people plan poison bait really all over the place to fight dog biting. Such challenges were real issues but also real opportunities to discover what mattered to us. It wasn't just about solving a problem, after all we didn't know what was the problem. It was the design of the shoe or the rough environment in the mud, the skills or our teachers, the biting dogs or the people who put poison baits. What was the problem? We were just eager to design a way out of something that we thought compromised our capabilities as individuals but also as a place to be enact as we thought it was right. Or to put it more academically as we had the reason to believe it was of value. But we didn't know what was of value. So maybe take a few seconds to travel back to a place that you grew up and think of something that you think compromised your capabilities to be enact as you value. And maybe we can discuss that at the end of the presentation. But in our case as a group of 20 we designed the shoe less and the shoe lacing ventures as we call them which included places to walk without shoes. A lot of that was on the trees. Prototyping new shoes, competition and academy that provided training and paper certificates in shoe lacing. We also had the animal welfare venture which included properly constructed shelters with wood and carbon paper for wooden and hungry animals. And unfortunately I don't have pictures of those campaigns and champions for healthier dog life. And we do that for the pure fun and of course out of boredom but in the process we are discovering what we had the reason to value. We created shoes, services, shelters, commodities but we also we grew our communities, we grew friendships, we grew attitudes to each other, attitudes to nature, cultural practices. And I think the value of our work was not just the making of the shoe, the shelter or the certificate but it was the making of a place. The making of a network value that comes from an ecosystem of commodities, communities, cultures that unlock our capabilities to discover and achieve what really mattered to us. And that's essentially what I call today design creatives. Of course since then I realized that design creatives are not only children. It is a type of work that's carried out by citizens, professionals, communities, organizations that work across different sectors. Myself, as Garth just mentioned, I become professional architect although I think my mind was still working as a design creative thinking a little bit beyond the specification of a building. And later on as a researcher I start looking at the sources of design capabilities in the cultural and social space of people but also in the mind of people in the cognitive processes. So I start starting the neurological interaction in the brain that are essentially the sources for our abilities to address design tasks using brain image techniques, fMRI and mathematical modelling. But then I met Sophia de Souce. The chief executive of the Glasgow community design. This is a national charity that aims to connect people with design and design with people. And really I invite you to have a look at this organization as an example of a design creative. Sophia together with Catarina Alexiw, Vera Hale and myself and a growing network of academic individuals and organization. We started a journey of probably more than 15 funded projects by UK Research and Innovation Council to essentially discover these two questions. What are the sources of design capabilities that are rooted in the places that we live in and how can we unlock them to address societal challenges? And that's a very topic of this presentation. So in the next slides I would like to say very briefly a few words about what I think is the capability problem in societal challenges, the role of design, ways of unlocking capabilities to address societal challenges and to conclude with the value of design creatives. So I approach societal challenges as challenges that are value driven and rooted in places. Challenges that arise because there are deeply existential and value formative situations. Not only value driven situations but also value formative situations like the one that we saw in my introduction from my childhood. Challenges that arise because there are very highly interconnected complex issues, reality situations that are rooted in the place that we live. Situations that I think that create this poor boundary between the self and the other, the human, the non-human, the local and the global. And in these cases places is not just a geography, it's not just a thing, it is a way of understanding reality as a place, a way of acting on reality as a place. So in this context societal challenges include a wide range of challenges from ageing society, healthy ageing, biodiversity, participation in shaping our build environment, participation in democracy, alienation from nature, all these are examples of societal challenges. But there are different ways to conceptualize and act on these societal challenges. Societal challenges very often are seen as a problem of utility satisfaction, satisfying needs and desires in our society. And societal challenges are again very often seen as a problem of limited availability or resources. Having limited access to critical resources to develop, to grow, to be satisfied. Societal challenges can also be seen as a problem of having limited opportunities to achieve something of value. And that's my particular interest, limited opportunities to access assets but also limited power to make use of these assets to produce something of value for you or for others. So take for instance a sustainability problem. The sustainability problem can be seen as an utility problem where the focus is based on protecting intergenerational needs for the current and future generations where needs are needs for food, shelter and other utilities. But sustainability problem can also be seen as a resource problem where the focus is on the idea of protecting or increasing in a valuable ecosystem of resources, of course natural resources but also social and cultural resources. And the sustainability problem can also be seen as a capability problem, as a problem where the focus is in the idea of protecting or enhancing the freedoms that we have, the opportunities that we have for the current and future generations to define what we have to, the reason to believe that is of value. And again maybe, again take just a few seconds to think of a societal challenge that really matters to you. But try to think of this challenge not as a problem of satisfied needs or as a problem of limited resources but as a problem of limited opportunities that you have to access resources and limited power that you have to use these resources to make something important for you and for others. And again that's a theme that maybe we can discuss later on. So my interest on capabilities, build on capability approach to human development that's originated actually by Indian philosopher and economist Amartya Sen. And as you can guess the key question here is what is and can't be the opportunity to just imagine what is of value but also what's our opportunity to be able to do and be what is of value. And in this context the core unit of interest if you like is this opportunity to access and convert assets meaning valuable resources, connections that we have with others, skills that we have, knowledge that we have, materials that we have into value situations. And this is a very basic example but capability is then the opportunity for instance to access an asset, a bike but also the ability to cycle and convert this asset into something of value, mobility. So overall when capability is this web of nexus of opportunities that we have to access and convert assets into something of value but typically it is perceived as a property of an individual, individual capability. The set of abilities to do or be something of value that is determined by our eternal skills and knowledge but also external condition the social and political environment. But I would argue that capability can also define as a capability of places, as capability that arise because there is a knotted value or contested value in some cases when human and non-human actors come together in certain time and space. So again very basic example, the symbiosis of cuts with humans or dog and humans is an example of a place capability. So overall then very broadly the capability problem in societal challenges can be seen for instance as a problem of equity of opportunities, a democratization problem, as a problem of creating opportunities, an innovation problem or maybe as a problem of creating interconnected opportunities for human and non-human actors, so ecological problem. But what's then the role of design in this context? Now historically design work has been a practice and professional service that is concerned with the research, development and production of what I call in this presentation commodities to include products, build environment services. But design work has also been an intentional catalyst in shaping society, in shaping cultures, in shaping ecosystems with a positive or negative effect on societal challenges. And design work is then a type of creative work, professionalized but not always, that is situated within but also across many different sectors, healthcare, leisure, hospitality, environment, engineering, construction, arts and design. And it's important to highlight that within these sectors design work is carried out within design industries like architecture or fashion or product design but also in non-design industry like healthcare, leisure or policy making. And I would argue then that there are three species of designers, well three colors of designers, the design commodity specialist, the architects, the product designers, the graphic designers that work within a specific design industry with an expertise to respond to the need to satisfy a specific utility, housing, clothing etc. And what they do is they deliver blueprints of a commodity that can be manufactured, can be constructed. Then you have the design entrepreneurs that work within and across sector with the expertise to respond to the need to identify a particular market. And what they do, they deliver value propositions of a commodity as they call it and an entrepreneurial venture to make it real. And also we have the design creatives that work within and across sector with an expertise to respond to societal challenges and the need to protect or create something of value. And you can think of them that what they do is essentially to create projects, to create situations that make possible commodities and other assets, human, social and cultural assets to be created to grow our capabilities. So overall then the design work can focus in these three areas. Commodity making, the making of building, production and services that produce certain utility, so it is concerned with the utility problem in societal challenges. Design work that focus on venture making, the making of commodities and their entrepreneurial ventures that will mobilize, connect different human and non-human assets and resources to make this commodity real. So it's concerned with the resource problem and we have design work that focus on change making. Or I prefer to think of it as habitat making, making of commodities but also social, cultural and natural assets that grow our capabilities to achieve or protect something of value. And that is the capability problem, it's concerned with the capability problem. And this is the type of work which is the focus of design creatives. And broadly speaking then design creatives work with communities or they might work with government to convert their experience and knowledge into practical ways to improve issues like social care. They might work with scientists to convert scientific knowledge into practical ways to improve people with visual impairment. They might work with artists and technologies or they might work with local communities to improve issues of inequality and way of living in different places. And in all these examples the design creatives are individuals, they are communities, they are professional organizations that work within this particular situation to discover and develop what is needed in terms of commodities. They don't know from the very beginning what is needed, what are the processes, practices, cultures and communities to generate and protect something of value. And these are the design creatives and there are some key areas of work that characterize what design creatives do, the practice of design creatives. So design creatives will try to explore how things should be different, explore pathways between the actual and potential. They explore actual realities to reveal their potential for the future but also explore emerging realities to reveal limitations in the actual and create a pathway to a new actual. But also they explore what creates difference, what creates value. So they explore the principles and the values that shape or should shape a reality but also they explore the specification and the properties of specific assets that could generate this value. So explore pathways between the principles and values of a situation but also specification of properties. So overall design work can then be conceptualized as a movement at the intersection of these two dimensions. And you can metaphorically thinking, you can think of design creatives that they work in these four rooms. At the top room they work very hard to discover and conceive the principles and the values of actual and potential situations. But also then they go to the bottom rooms to work to discover and conceive the specific properties of actual and potential assets that could generate these value situations. And for the purpose of this presentation I would like to conceptualize the work of design creatives as four types of movement within this space. As an immersive move, so design creatives will engage with the situation to discover what creates the value. They will have an inciting move that will work to engage other people, other organizations, mobilize their assets to create something of value. But also an integrative move that will start connecting assets and situations to unlock potential or an inventive move in the other direction that will devise new assets in new situations to critically reflect about the actual and shape the new actual. So now let me go a little more in details about the making of design creatives. I would like to share some insights about the sources of design capabilities of design creatives. And the intention here is to synthesize a bitical observations that are drawn from several Eucreate funded projects that were co-designed with Glasses community design and collaboration with many other academics and communities and cross sector organizations. And overall this includes work with over 75 places of design creatives. In all these projects, the research team in its time worked with and as a design creative to respond to wide range of societal challenges which was different in its project. But they are grouped here in four categories for simplicity. Challenges and opportunities that stem from particular places, towns, buildings. Challenges and opportunities that arise in multiple places like the sustainability of historic religious buildings. Or challenges and opportunities that arise because of the interaction or the need for the interaction between different places, so cross place collaboration. And challenges and opportunities that arise because we live in a network society like poverty or aging society, health aging. And in all this project we work with and as design creatives to co-develop practical approaches which I call them here sources to unlock capabilities for design work. But also by doing that to start co-developing knowledge on what foster or inhibits design abilities for work, for design work. So I would like to share four stories that follow these four categories of societal challenges. My first story is from Tidworth Months which was part of a much bigger program project which was called Unearthed and Assets. And you can see the partners at the bottom of this slide. Now in this corner of the project the context was the life of women that have their husband in the army and live in Garrison Town far from the support of their families. And facing often challenges that are similar to people living as single parents. And that was because they have limited opportunities to be together as family as their husband was away for long periods of times. But also limited opportunities to build and maintain friendships or to build and develop personal interests. Even driving licence was very difficult due to frequent and short notice relocation. And the design creatives in this case was a research team but also the group of women who developed this self-identity as a design creative team that has this objective to improve the well-being of people living in Garrison Towns and they have also the very active participation of a community area manager from the local council. And we engage with them in a type of work that I mentioned in my introduction as immersive work to understand what is of value, what creates the value. And one of the things that we did is to create the asset mapping room. That was a room of mapping assets, mapping resources, skills, connections that they have with others in order basically to frame what is of value in their situation but also to form and plan specific initiatives, design initiatives that could generate value in their life. And the asset mapping room had physical prompts with suggested type of assets, spaces, people, infrastructures, media that were represented by different material objects. And this material object was quite important. The materials encouraged the activity to identify all these diverse assets that they have that were actively used to define a particular value situation at the center of the map. So for instance a lot of that was about play or play as a way to socialize with others. But also use this map to connect assets in order to frame new value situations at the center of the map that were not previously perceived but also to generate specific ideas of design initiatives that can combine cluster specific assets together to create a pathway to a value situation at the center. And this type of asset mapping work has progressively created this dominant driving concept for that group. A place service for children that would enable parents to connect with each other and find mutual support in these guys and towns. And this concept emerged from connecting existing assets. They were already doing some play activities with toddlers, they have access to a leisure center and they had also a Facebook group that reached almost a thousand members that enabled the group to test but also gather interest and support for concepts like this one. And this type of immersive work developed the opportunity and ability within the group to develop a strategic view of their situation. Develop what I call in this presentation strategic capabilities but also to discover new driving concepts that can create a pathway to a value situation which I call them here inquisitive capabilities. We also engage in the type of work that I mentioned inventive work to devise new assets, new situations to critically reflect about what was happening actually in the situation and save the new actual. So one of the things that we did is to create places that provided opportunities to build on and scale up existing lived activities, existing lived experiences that were value from the community. And as I mentioned in the previous slides that was quite a lot about play activities with toddlers to scale this up into a play service for children that enabled building social connection between parents. And we devise a soft play service. We use the local leisure center that they have access to to prototype and scale up different forms of play that we have experimented in different ways as an adventure, as a movement, as creation with arts and craft. While parents had the opportunity to connect with each other and find mutual support. And this type of inventive work created again the opportunity and ability for the group to build on and scale up on existing lived experiences that were value from the local community. So lived capabilities, I will call them here, but also to imagine and test the value of new lived experiences, emerging capabilities. And indeed this day service reached more than 150 families, almost 300 children and had a gross income that made it a sustainable service. And the event has become actually a blueprint for a play service in local area created opportunities for local parents to connect, but also very importantly to develop skills and transferable models of practice for other garrison cities. My second case now stems from another project which is called Empowering Design Practices. And that was a project about the future and resilience of historic place of worship and the sustainable future. The contents of this project was the fantastic stock of historic religious buildings that we have in this country. And really, I won't say that twice, is a fantastic stock of historic religious buildings that we have, but also the heritage experts. They increase interest on how place and community leadership in design can contribute to the sustainability and the resilience of these places. But also very importantly, the context was the custodians that people, they increased pressures that people that look after historic place of worship have to sustain these heritage treasures and very complex buildings, but also to serve the local community, to serve their faith community. And also, of course, the context was the place and the community more broadly increased interest from local citizens across different faith groups or non-faith groups about the value of place of worship as social and cultural resource, and in particular as a source for addressing complex societal challenges like poverty or COVID actually more recently. So, all these people faced immense tensions and pressures in particular the custodians in terms of what is possible, what aligns with my values, what is a value, is it about creating a place which is comfortable for worshipper, or it's about to open up to all different people from different faith groups, or it's about creating a place that serves the God, or it's about highlighting the history and the heritage of the place. These are complex tensions in this project. And the design creators in this case was again the research team with domain experts, but also the custodians that people that look after historic place of worship with the participation of members from the faith community, but also local citizens. And we work within a type of work that I call inciting work to engage other people, other organisations, professionals, mobilize their assets to create certain new value situations. And one of the things to do, we did, is to create a lot of places for design engagement, as we call them, and that was places with social and cultural activities, more structured workshops or more free games that incite people to start to reflect and creating stories, pictures, artefacts about the actual situation in place of worship, but also the potential, what could happen in the future. And a lot of that was setting up simple provocations to trigger interactions between people, such as setting up places for people to co-create postcards with messages for people that were not present, or more systematic approaches for capturing and making sense of the different assets that people bring ideas or challenges to identify opportunities for design initiatives. And blue cards that you see in the second part picture is this design initiative for emerging, but also to create, make and prototype ideas about the actual potential, and more importantly, the activity that engage worshippers, users, potential users and experts to form what I call here design creatives. And this inciting work created the opportunity and ability within the group to trigger connections between people, connections between their ideas, connections between people with the headers of the place, connections between the natural environment around places of worship, so it created some form of connective capabilities. But also, very importantly, to convert these connections into specific ideas for design initiatives, and more importantly, into collaborations that make these design initiatives possible, so some form of collaborative capabilities. And local design creatives across many different places that we work with said things like, these activities brought us together as a team. I have gained skills and confidence to help lead the design process and engage my community in it. And particularly this second comment was very common across many different places that we work with. We also engage in a type of work that I call a mercy work, to an eth of what is of value. So we created places that provide tools for collaborative creation of a strategic rationale for their place of worship. So people will map capabilities, will map assets and have specific templates to connect them to create a strategic rationale, and in the case of churches that was a lot about purpose statement, places for discovering a shared vision, a shared purpose for working together. And people will share their priorities, they will share their concerns and principles of success and their values, and use specific techniques to cluster them into individual share and conflicting. And on that basis, form smaller teams that co-author purpose statements and vision statements that incite them to work together. And this work created the opportunity and ability to, as we saw with Stidolf Mams, to develop a strategic view of a situation, strategic capabilities, but also to discover driving concepts that enthuse people to participate. So local design creatives said that this encouraged people to think laterally and explore things, how things may happen. It's a catalyst. It has altered our perception, our vision, the size of our vision. We engage in inventive work to invent new assets, but slightly different from the Stidolf Mams case. Here we're trying to create places for developing a shared language, a shared design language, and that's in terms of key concepts that you use, key terms that you use of what is to be created. And concept develop activities that use materials to guide you to develop these concept designs using thematic areas, like delight, flexibility, legibility, but also storytelling and story making activities using imagery from different places and situations. Making activities where you create physical models of a situation and physical metaphors of ideas. And prototyping activities such as, for instance, organizing competitions that invite local people and local organization to prototype and test the viability and value specific ideas for spaces, services that might happen within places of worship. And this type of inventive work, as exactly has happened with Stidolf Mams, created the opportunity and ability to build up and scale up on existing lived experiences of communities, but also to imagine and test new lived experiences. And design creatives across cases said things like, this help us to feel that we are on the right path, created a sense of possibility, be able to do things that you previously didn't think you can do. And this theme of making possible the impossible was quite common across different places. Finally, a different type of work that we engage with them, it was kind of integrative work to integrate and connect different actors and knowledge sources to create a new potential. So we created places where heritage experts, building professionals, users and potential users create new forms of design practices. Ways of working that enable design concept and more importantly design leadership to emerge from the distributed and collective work of all these people. Essentially breaking the boundaries between the notion that there is a client that provides a problem and a building a heritage expert that provides the solution. But also ways of working that keep incubating a diversity of different ways of working and diversity of initiatives that contribute in these places and these projects. And it created this opportunity and ability within the group to integrate diversity of knowledge into this collective ecosystem with a network value, but also to incubate diversity of initiatives that contribute to this collective. So some sort of coordinating and incubating capabilities. And I do like these quotes quite a lot. One of them said, I think now we can work with them, meaning architects and heritage experts as opposed to one way traffic. There are two different projects one another one said about building design and social mission, aren't they? They are not. They are totally, totally integrated. And the research team as a design creative supported over 50 places to develop their own design initiatives. Over 400 people to develop skills and confidence to work at design creatives and over a thousand members to directly engage in members of the public to directly engage in design initiatives. And also local partners as design creators themselves influence change on moral and heritage about place, connected communities, respond to societal challenges that are really relevant to the places, but also secure funding for activities and services to respond to these challenges. Now my third case stems from two projects, the Scale Map project. And I'm very happy that UnLight is today with us in the lecture theatre. Scale Map project and the more recent one, which is very shortly called cross pollination. And both projects were aimed to unlock capabilities to carry out design initiatives through cross sector and cross disciplinary collaborations. And the context was exactly that, that the multidimensional nature of societal challenge requires this cross sector and cross disciplinary collaboration. It requires them. It's not just a wish list. And design creatives in this case was a research team with professionals across different sectors, academics and local communities. And across the years we created many places that essentially support the development of design initiatives in local places, but also more importantly design creatives, the formation of design creatives by engaging in all these different forms of work. And this inception in 2013 cross pollination has been adopted in many different projects, more than 10 projects and situations that you can find in this booklet. And generally speaking, as an approach, cross pollination is organizing for work to respond to the working areas that I mentioned throughout this presentation. So people will share and map existing areas of work, existing projects, challenges that they have, capabilities that they have in terms of skills and resources. But also they will use specific cards to trigger connections between these different projects, the challenges and the complementary skills that they might have. They will use the identified connections to frame new initiatives and new collaborations and also they will use the new collaborations to bring more assets to scale out and scale up this initiative. And the value of design creative work in this project was that it led to a growth of a network of design creatives and design initiatives. But for me, more importantly, the importance was that it increased the centrality, meaning the visibility, the impact, the access to support of previously marginalized groups, individuals, their issues and their design initiatives. And I think that was the most important value of cross pollination approach. And my fourth case, then, stems from another project which is quite recent, so I'm going to be very brief. And it's called Wise Connection and it's about ageing society and the importance to age creatively for the well-being of individuals but also our society at large. And the context is obviously that we are all growing, as Garth noticed at the very beginning, but evidence also shows that as we grow older there are fewer and fewer opportunities to re-imaging and develop and integrate into our life, things that we really value to do or be. And this is a multidimensional issue related with social isolation, poverty, sometimes cultural attitudes but also psychological factors. And the design creatives in these cases is the research team, which in this case take the form of a social venture that aims to create opportunities to age creatively within the homes of people but also in public and professional spaces with the participation of professionals and citizen champions. And the core idea here is to think outside of the box for our life. And a little bit of irony here is that we use a box to achieve that, a box that is distributed at homes as a past the parcel box, GP practices, libraries, coffee shops that includes to self-discovery, development and realisation of such initiatives. So the box will invite you to explore hopes of other people, what they value to do or be. Invite you to provide a gift in terms of ideas, skills or sources that you have that can turn a hope into reality. Invite you to incite others by writing a letter of hope but also to take an integrative action to connect assets to realise the design initiative. And at the moment boxes are distributed in London and Bristol as static boxes and as moving boxes as past the parcel box door to door. And maybe one day you will receive one of those boxes. And in conclusion then, I would like to say some overarching observations about the value of design creatives and the source of design capabilities of design creatives. So clearly the work of design creatives arise at the intersection of these four working areas that I mentioned in this presentation, immersive, inciting, integrative and inventive. But very importantly the work of design creatives work stemmed from and created these four pairs of capability sources, inquisitive and strategic capabilities, emerging and lived capabilities, connective and collaborative, co-ordinating and incubating and consistent capabilities. And across the cases the value of design creative work was the relevance that they created, the relevance of their design innovation, the form places, the form habitats, ecosystems with network value, but also the form the citizens that had the opportunity to discover and shape what they had the reason to value. Like, as you saw in my introduction for my childhood, but across the cases also the value of design creatives was empowerment. They made visible issues, values, people that were previously hidden, marginalized as we saw with the cross combination place, empowering these people and groups to achieve something of value for them and others. And that was empowerment through design, but also it was empowerment to design. They created infrastructures, skills and attitudes that develop viable, to develop viable and valuable design initiatives. In some cases indeed design creatives play a key role in leveraging almost 6 million to tackle issues of social isolation. And the value of design creatives is the resilience in societal challenges that made possible to address what was previously perceived as impossible, multidimensional and value sensitive challenge. And the value of design creatives finally is the joy, the joy to be part of a design creative. And on that note I would like to thank all the people that participate in this project which is unfortunately impossible to name or list. I have here some pictures from the research team and unfortunately I don't have all the pictures of the research teams. And on that note I would like also to highlight the role of the mighty, legendary design group at the Open University. And particularly I would like to highlight the role of Emma Dewberry and Derek Jones because over the last two years we developed this new design qualification and that shaped a lot the concept that I presented in this presentation. So it's particularly relevant for this presentation. And also I would like to thank the one and only, I say that very strongly, the one and only Professor Jeff Johnson who plays a harmonica here and who is the most empowering person that I know. Our design creative of course, Sophia de Souza and the Glasgow community design as a whole as an organization for all the generous contribution to the EU in terms of research and teaching. The most complete academic that I know and you are the guiding light on many complex weather conditions. But also the next generation of design creatives that provide all the graphics that you saw in this presentation. And I don't know what they're doing there now but it must be quite important. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. So now it's time to hear from the audience and to hear from you in the lecture theatre and if you're online with any questions and comments about the talk that's raised for you please send them through. Theo, would you like to join me in the seating area? Absolutely. So I'm sure like me you've got many many questions but if you wish to raise a question please raise your hand. Please wait until a roving might get to you and reach to you and then please if it would be great if you could introduce yourself and where you are from. Please also keep the questions short so we can get as many questions in as possible. We also invite comments from our online audience using the email provided or the slide that's currently showing I think. Questions. I've got lots of questions here. Emma. I have to ask a question don't I? Emma, do you agree from the University? Thanks Theo for that really thoughtful and inspiring lecture. I think maybe it goes back to the picture of you and a tree as a kid but I'm thinking a lot of what you've talked about. Today is about systems, about interconnectedness, about being able to see these really unique relationships between people, communities and their environments in which they sit. And it also makes me think quite sadly actually that our education system doesn't seem to value that particularly. We see it still very much drive our education in terms of individual disciplines perhaps not seeing connections as we should. And it poses a question for me which is given the value of what you've presented today and the value of being more interconnected and systemic in our thinking. What future do you imagine ideas like design creatives have when our education system is perhaps a little behind the curve on celebrating and supporting more interconnected thinking? A very important question Emma, thank you so much. And very difficult challenging question. I think this is the challenge of the future and in terms of how we develop education that take into account this more and more increased area of work that in my presentation I call it the work of design creatives. That they take this systemic view as you describe it. They often in practical sense they don't even know what needs to be developed in terms of commodities, whether they develop a building, whether they develop a technology. And so they are facing, it's an extremely complex situation to be in. And education needs to be, we need to reimagine how education happens in this context because you have a situation where someone needs to be able to address complex situations with an expertise which is, you can't really have expertise just on materials or on buildings or on humans. Or it is the systemic thing that you need to, the networks that connecting this and that requires special skills and special abilities. And that's the thing that I have to say unlike is on the audience. So I don't put it in the sport at all but she was very influential in my thinking. I was trying to explain what her influence to me and her influence to me it was exactly of stay for a moment and think about the whole situation that you are facing. And trying to work with people to discover what are this complex situation. My design background usually end up going straight away to respond to issues and challenges with solution. But that's the message. No, you stay behind trying to create the enable conditions for things to happen and the water will lift you up. And this, that the water will lift you up is the thing that a professional light really taught me through practice. It doesn't even know but through practice. Thank you. Gentleman on the left. That was incredibly inspiring and very uplifting. So thank you. I work at the community foundation here in Milton Keynes. And we have really big plans of developing new community hubs in the city. And it is really hard, extremely complicated and very frustrating. So I'm after a few tips and ideas about how I deal with the politicians, the naysayers, the money people, the economics, the value engineering people so that the aspiration, the trunas of what we want to do to build hubs that really reflect and grow with our communities can be delivered. Again, these are, I'm very happy that I have these questions because this is really at the core of my interest and my motivation. And they're not simple answers, of course, but there are certain indications in this presentation. I think my lesson is a lot of things needs to happen organically. And I really put a value to these initial seeds, the small seeds, the small groups that will grow a certain initiative and scale it up and scale it out, not necessarily up. And that is quite maybe fundamental principle because sometimes we tend and I used to tend to do that quite a lot of, okay, let's create community places and to bring the whole community here. That was not exactly the point. It's about creating these small things that have the potential to grow. Even the box that I mentioned for creative, it's an example of that. It's just a box that goes through door to door. But that also now generates a specific community group that works in certain place. So that small initiative that can trigger connections, can trigger collaborations and most of the terms that I use in this presentation is my bottom line approach, which I think was the most successful for me. In terms of politicians that you mentioned, because they are important part, actually, of that spectrum, and the scaling up and scaling up project and the cross pollination was quite a lot on what is the meaning of that. Is it scaling up or is scaling out? Is it about organic growth that goes like a tree or it's about the tree and you grow something big, an infrastructure which is big? And again, I think I would engage policy makers and policy advisors in a local small project and grow rather big interventions in spaces and places as a general principle. But I will never stop talking about that. I think that summarises a little bit of my thinking. OK, thank you. We have a question online and you will come to yourself, sir. Yeah, there are some lovely comments on the YouTube live channel, actually. One from Maya Luna, what an amazing distillation of many years of work, absolutely inspiring. And Sophia de Souza, I said how wonderful to see ten years of inspiring collaboration, explained so clearly and evocatively. It made me feel quite emotional about it and hugely proud of what we have done together in this space. But she goes on to say that she is sorry not to be here. But her question is, what shall we do next? From Sophia. Of course, well, Gareth. OK, let's discuss about that. Yes, I think that's a question that we're discussing quite a lot with Sophia because there was a growth and there was a lot of projects and there was a lot of collaborations with various organisations, a network of organisations. And there was how we can really create places where optimise this kind of connections that you have and collaborations that you have and the energy and the passion. And we are thinking about ideas like creating hubs within the YouTube become a hub, which is already, to some extent, is by nature. But to make it more, to find infrastructures and processes to make that happen. Not to promote our specific research, but also to allow more researchers to develop and grow. And that includes also our other, sorry, I'm talking to Gareth, because actually I wanted to have this conversation with him and we discuss about these things and that's my opportunity as well. So we'll make it publicly. But I think Sophia's question is valid not only for our corner, for many people that are working and develop these sort of collaborations and strong connections with other organisations, non-academic organisations and academic organisations. How do we, as a society and as universities, what do we do to foster them and to make use of them? Because with time this is going to be lost. And I'm not saying only for the open university, that's for all universities and all academics that there are organisations that engage with all universities. Great. So we have a question there still. Hi, I'm Michael Gosong here, business school. Thank you very much Theo for the inspiring presentation. I was interested in your three types of design, the architect, the entrepreneur and the design creatives. A bit more the entrepreneurs, for those of us who teach in entrepreneurship or do research in entrepreneurship. What do you see? You identify as three ideal types, right? So I'm interested in whether an entrepreneur can become a design creative and what you see as some of the constraints or the enabling conditions for how we can prepare entrepreneurs for that. It feels like the questions are planned, they are not, because this is really, and I had another presentation that this slide had the three colours and actually mixed up because actually this distinction, there is a little bit of artificiality on this distinction. And the design entrepreneurs are extremely close to design creatives. I participate currently in a project by, it's a UCRIT funded by, they have the partnership of Zinc, an organisation which is really another very beautiful organisation that invites you to have a look. But they have the goal to support you not only to develop research, but entrepreneurial research, essentially. And I work in a cohort with maybe 25 people, I think, 28, maybe I'm wrong on the number, but that sort of size. And these are people that develop projects of the sort that I mentioned, essentially, but a lot of that is about healthy ageing. And you can see the distinction between design creative and design entrepreneur is not very clear because they work to address big societal challenges, to protect or create something of value. And essentially their expertise, the expertise that we develop is that the expertise develop projects that make possible to discover what commodity is created here, what is needed here, which the design entrepreneur as well a lot of times doesn't know what commodity needs to be created in order to make something of value. Maybe the difference is a little bit that the focus is more on market, identification of market and market opportunities, the entrepreneurial venture, how you structure this entrepreneurial venture, where the design creative in my qualification is, it is a concern, as you saw with tidur mums, they did an entrepreneurial venture at the end, but it is one possible kind of outcome. So they are very overlapping, so the question is very good because we have time for one more question. The one and only as he was in the slides. The one and only. Thank you so much. A great lecture, of course, with many dimensions, but I picked up on something which I thought found particularly interesting, which was you said design is value driven, which of course it is. But you also said that design is value formative. Formative. That's very interesting. So it made me think that there's a co-evolution between design and the values that underline design. Would you like to say more on that? Spot on again. Yes, actually that's the most important implicit message, I think, in my presentation, because typically design, historically, when we talk about design, we frame it as part of a problem-solving, problem-framing kind of narrative. And the notion of a value is really a side, you don't see it clearly. And I realize through this project that the notion of forming value systems, it is so important in these situations, which actually underlines all your understanding of the problem and all your understanding of where the solution lies. So this value formative situation that characterizes design is very, very important. And that's my main message, basically. That is we need to look at it more from that perspective. OK, so firstly, I just want to say a massive thank you, Theo, for absolutely inspiring lectures, as the gentleman here said. But for me, a good acid test is if it challenges your thinking, if it challenges your understanding. And it certainly did that, and it was very...well, words fell me at this moment, it was brilliant. Thank you so much. Thank you. All that remains for me to say is to thank you for joining us today, and for always supporting the Open University. In the meantime, have a very good afternoon, and thank you.