How Can we Critically & Creatively Engage with Power Relations in Collaborative Design Research?

Abstract

This workshop explores power relations in collaborative design research. As co-creation is becoming more established and even something of a holy grail, it is important to revisit and further understandings of, for example, the limits to democracy in collaborative research and conflicting agendas. The workshop draws on ongoing research that explores housing needs and solutions at the intersection of an ageing population, students and migrants, and that engages multiple stakeholder groups in collaborative processes. The proposed workshop will stage an enactment of the research design, from invitation to analysis, with the workshop participants playing the different roles in the process. This will enable us, collaboratively, to critically and creatively engage with some concrete interfaces to power negotiations as well as the meta level of power dynamics in collaborative research. We will enrich our understandings of power relations by engaging with indigenous thinking, expressed as decolonizing methodologies.