Workshop reports ‘Designing for Ownership’ at Strelka Institute, Moscow

From 9 − 14 July 2012 The Mobile City (in this case Michiel de Lange in collaboration with Marc Tuters) developed and gave a six-day workshop ’Designing for Ownership’ at the Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design in Moscow. This workshop was built on the approach we developed for the ‘Social Cities of Tomorrow’ workshop that took place 14 – 16 February 2012.

The workshop is part of a series of Summer at Strelka workshops aimed at a practical change in the city’s microrayons. The microrayon where we did research and development is Yuzhnoye Medvedkovo (south Medvedkovo).

This workshop aims to help create an actual long-lasting change for the better in an urban neighborhood in Moskow. This is done by bringing together creative workshop participants and various neighborhood stakeholders (citizens, local government, businesses, neighborhood organizations, and so on). The workshop aims to find out how these different people can communicate better with each other, by making a prototype for a product, an event, or a service that acts as a catalyst for conversation.

The workshop also aspires to create a methodology for activating citizens with the aid of digital media technologies that could also be applied elsewhere. How can we design a process that allows people to feel ‘ownership’ over their living circumstances, and actively participate in making their environment a better place?

Read the reports of the six workshop days on the Partizaning.org weblog.