4. Collaborative Workshop

Public sharing, disseminating, and engagement are important parts of visual participatory action research methods. The International Indigenous Design Charter recommends that designers ‘ensure the appropriate cultural custodians and knowledge keepers are present when consulting or co-creating’. However, conducting participatory research during Covid-19, a time of great uncertainty and stress, led me to explore different methods of engagement with the participants. The aim of the engagement phase was to develop the design outcome of the screen-printing process with the participants. 

I introduced an online collaborative platform, Miro, to facilitate engagement with the participants. This platform opened up opportunities for participants to engage in the idea development of my studio practice and the final design. I instructed participants to sign up and activate an account; provided them with a short training video to learn how to use the platform; created a specific board for the project, uploaded all photos and instructions to the board; and shared the board with the participants. Thereafter, the participants fully accessed the board and created their own designs using their electronic devices.

Selected results of this process are shared below.