Trojan Horsing
A Technique for Radical, Discreet change
I recently spent a fascinating afternoon with Design Declares, in a working session dedicated to Service Design for the Planet, a real-time exploration of the Design Council's Skills for Planet initiative.
It made me consider my own lens of working. Self-initiated projects by definition adhere to a certain creative purity and ethical orientation, but we know much of the work ‘out there’ is actually in collaboration with other entities, i.e. brands and organisations. This is where constant negotiation with incentives and values, with multiple stakeholders, requires a much defter, and strategic response. This session was a lesson in the artful use of the Trojan Horse metaphor.
With a presentation from Service Designer Maria Elges on her pioneering work on water stewardship at Arup setting the scene, teams then broke out to consider how their own skills as Service Designers could be applied to designing systems that meaningfully contribute to care and regeneration of place, local ecologies and communities.
As a non-Service Designer, I was the interloper in the room, but my lens of story and narrative found a room alive with incredible skills and strategic thinking but also insights on the several challenges that designers face in making a case for more life-affirming design, when cost, profit, speed and narrow efficiency remain entrenched markers of success.
Maria spoke to a personal practice she applies to any given brief: the power of adding a '+' to it, which really is what it is to think, and act, like a steward. Be it a project on energy generation, water-way management or mitigating flood risk, a designer (who has more power than they realise) can consider what other 'wins' can be incorporated into the solution. This is a whole systems approach, versus a narrow, bit-part problem and solution equation.
+ How can a local ecology actually be strengthened with the introduction of a new housing development?
+ How can co-design be used to empower a community to be stewards of their own waterways, to mitigate flood risk?
+ How can an energy centre become part of a larger movement towards decentralisation of power?
This is the Trojan Horse method. My takeaway was this, whether the formal framing of ‘Designers for Planet’ applies to you or you are a good-hearted human, appalled by the current status quo, with skills and talents at hand, pitch for the brief as it is presented, win the brief, and then once you're in the inside, set a large + sign in the heart of your project, and get to work.
This also applies within companies where you are full-time employed. It’s not easier, let me be clear, to use this tactic. But if you find yourself in a position to set the conditions and outcome metrics of a given project and initiative, you have immense power to change the system from within. And I am not talking about a radical change, but one that shifts someone’s expectations of what is possible when a wider lens of systemic care and responsibility, is applied. One need never even whisper this out loud, that the delicious part of it.
I was really heartened to be in the presence of people actually doing something by way of challenging current ways of seeing and doing, and offering ways to broaden into larger purpose and impact. People like Sandrine Herbert Razafinjato and the incredible co-stewards of the session were inspiring in donating their free time to build a space for others to congregate and co-create new knowledge. It's not an easy path to tread for the one who seek systemic change in a system that profits from the status quo, but this session showed some of the very real steps that can and are being taken in service to all-life flourishing.
I am put to mind the words of Mike Berners-Lee, that "there is no Planet B", but I do think there is a Planet +.
If you’re called to explore more, here is Design Declares. Perhaps your own industry needs its own declaration, too…
Always,
H