Design Materials and Making for Social Change

Design Materials and Making for Social Change spans the two interconnected worlds of the material and the social, at different scales and in different contexts, and explores the value of the knowledge, skills and methods that emerge when design researchers work directly with materials and hold making central to their practice.

Through the social entanglements of addressing material impacts, the contributors to this edited volume examine homelessness, diaspora, migration, the erosion of craft skills and communities, dignity in work and family life, the impacts of colonialism, climate crisis, education, mental health and the shifting complexities in collaborating with and across diverse disciplines and stakeholders. This book celebrates the role of materials and making in design research by demonstrating the diverse and complex interplay between disciplines and the cultures it enables, when in search of alternative futures.

Design Materials and Making for Social Change will be of interest to scholars in materials design, textile design, product design, fashion design, maker culture, systemic design, social design, design for sustainability and circular design.

"Design, Materials and Making for Social Change wonderfully demonstrates why textile design is about world making through and through. It showcases a new breed of material designers engaged in social change at the interface between the material, the ecological and the social. By bridging research and practice through collaborative approaches across continents, the authors demonstrate why a circular approach underscoring the agency and aliveness of materials can yield workable answers to the social and ecological challenges of the industry. From 'material drafts' and literacy in the North to decolonizing materials and vernacular circularity in the South, this volume illustrates paths for transitions from object-oriented designing to design as a relational praxis of repair, care, and regeneration of the web of life." 

--Arturo Escobar, author of Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence and the Making of Worlds (2018) and Pluriversal Politics: The Real and the Possible (2020).  

"Making in the context of a planetary emergency should not be guilt-ridden, but rather a means to prototype how creative knowledge can reconnect us to the natural world. This book will help to ground design research and textile making in a rigorous yet hopeful journey towards a circular future."

--Carole Collet, Professor in Design for Sustainable Futures, Central Saint Martins UAL