Participatory Practice in Space, Place, and Service Design

'Participatory Practice in Space, Place, and Service Design' is premised on a belief in the importance of participatory practices in finding creative solutions to the plethora of problems we face today. It argues that engaging professions with the public in mutual exploration, analysis, and creative thinking is essential. It not only ensures better quality products, places, services, and a greater sense of civic agency but also facilitates fuller access to them and the life opportunities they can unleash.

This book offers a uniquely varied perspective of the myriad ways in which participatory practices operate across disciplines and how they impact the worlds and communities we create and inhabit. This book suggests that participatory practices are multi-disciplinary and relevant in fields as diverse as design, architecture, education, health care, sustainability, and community activism, to name a few of those discussed here.

How do designed objects and environments affect wellness, creativity, learning, and a sense of belonging? How do products and services affect everyday experience and attitudes towards issues such as sustainability? How does giving people a creative voice in their own education, services, and built environments open up their potential and strengthen identity and civic agency? Addressing these questions requires a rethinking of relations between people, objects, and environments; it demands attention to space, place, and services.

Kelly L. Anderson has spent most of her professional and creative career within the non-profit sector, namely in education. Whether finding ways to communicate complex systems or designing for learning, she works to surface people's stories throughout the design process. With a background in Industrial Design, Kelly has also completed a Master's in Transdisciplinary Design at Parsons in New York, where she was awarded several distinctions, including the John L. Tishman Scholarship for her commitment to sustainable development, design, and construction. She was also awarded the IDEO & Knight Foundation Civic Design Fellowship to explore how design may be used to strengthen community identity and resilience within the city of Detroit. Kelly is currently completing her PhD with WonderLab at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, while also teaching. Originally from the US, she now calls Melbourne home.Dr. Graham Cairns (series editor) is an academic and author in the field of architecture who has written extensively on film, advertising and political communication. He has held Visiting Professor positions at universities in Spain, the UK, Mexico, the Gambia, South Africa and the US. He is the author of four monographs and multiple chapters and articles. He has edited various books and has been a book and journal reviewer for over twenty years. He is currently director of the academic research organisation AMPS (Architecture, Media, Politics, Society) and Executive Editor of its associated journal, 'Architecture_MPS', UCL Press.