Sus_NET: Sustainable Making for Feminist Action

sus_NET engages with issues of gender, equalities, diversity and inclusion in international development through both the organisations that we are working with - their ethos, approach and methods; and the focus of the workshops and overall network on issues on gender, sustainability and technology. We will work directly with activists and political organisations that engage with issues of gender and inequality through their remit and approach, and we will widen the scope of the network in year two to HEIs and NGOs, taking forward the lessons learnt, best practice and the prototypes we have developed in order to impact as widely as possible not only within and across the communities we directly work with, but also into the education and policy sectors. Many of these groups are women-led and work on projects related to inequality and inclusion in digital technology. Through their community engagement they have developed unique practices and methods for working with a diverse range of participants from different backgrounds, age-groups and locations. The focus of the network is on the responsible production and consumption of digital technologies (SDG12).

By responsible production we mean the sustainable development of hackable, open source and modular technologies and using recycled and reused everyday objects, but it is also considered in terms of the social and cultural implications of technologies for environmental monitoring and feminist activism. These production approaches speak to issues of consumption, where we will also prioritise working with recycled and low-energy technologies addressing aspects of SD7: Clean and Affordable Energy. We are directly addressing issues of gender, equalities and inclusion within the broader scope of environmental sustainability and digital technology.

Developing countries across the globe are undergoing rapid and widespread digital technological change. This change is set within, rather than external to, existing cultural, social and economic inequalities, infrastructures and politics. This means that despite widespread goals of reducing inequalities and increasing sustainability, emerging digitally-driven forms and cultures can address or exacerbate these issues. Given this, one objective is to address SDG#5 of reducing inequality by seeking to understand, through community creative projects, the impact of, and potential for, technology on everyday lives. Unless we better understand what communities are diversely and unevenly doing, what they wish to do with digital technologies, how they are doing this (with what? When? How?) we are unable to develop useful interventions. At the same time, we want to do more than understand: we want to co-design and co-curate with communities to identify and realize their needs or desires, and this also means that welfare and economic development emerges from processes of engagement rather than determining them.

Part of our engagement work is to understand the extent to which 'having technology' can or should be looked to as a measurement of success, as well as what kinds of digital media technologies emerge through our engagement. Our partner organizations in year one for example, do not work with fast, intuitive, dynamic technologies and systems: they work with low-cost, low energy, sustainable tech that has been built for particular social or political goals from reusable, recycled materials. This notion of technology is very different from that cited in media, government or policy documents. As researchers in the UK we will learn from and engage with the environmentally and socially sustainable technology activism that is taking place in Latin America. We intend for this to lead develop significant collaborations that lead on to further funded projects.

Sus_NET has built an impact strategy into the heart of the network through our two-tiered approach that is designed to target impact in ethical and considered ways. In year one, our HEIs and NGOS form the steering committee for the networking activities, and in year two, it is our local community members and activist organisations who take on this role. Every activity has an appropriate impact strategy built into its design. This shapes our conception of impact, which is understood at a variety of scales. At a local level, through our community engagement work, we understand impact as meaningful co-designed practices, changing perceptions, opinions or behaviour in related and appropriate ways. At a meso level, impact is generated through people movement, capacity building and intellectual development. At a macro level, we understand impact through critical and theoretical engagement, and through pedagogic and methodological change that reshapes how each actor within the network works and thinks.

At a local level, we will build meaningful projects for the communities we work with. The activities themselves will produce innovative practical and low cost, low energy digital prototypes as well as new methodological schema and new ways of doing engagement work. They will be designed in response to local issues and is wholly designed to directly benefit the community with whom we work. The findings and exchanges will feed back into sus_NET as a whole, forging new avenues for research and identifying key and emerging research areas, shaping methods and design, and cross-cutting the themes with which we start. We test and develop prototypes (if this is appropriate and desired) with the technology organisations attached to our HEI network members, and we user test (engagement methods, prototypes, scalability, sustainability) with the communities reached via our NGO network members. We run a week long maker event in the UK during the final year, bringing together UK and European artists, technicians, communities with those of the Latin American network to culminate in a symposium that will be timed to co-ordinate with the Leeds International's festival. This also generates impact on a local level in the UK, creating walk-in, public events and further extending the reach of the network.

It is also designed to target impact at a meso level: into the educational sector, drawing on methods and issues of sustainability for pedagogy but also rethinking our preconceptions about what technology is, what technological expertise is, as well as how we teach and engage with it. It is also designed to target policy in a broad sense by working with award winning NGOs, who inform policy (such as Transfermemos) in order to capitalize on best practice from the local activist and community groups, and to share an arena with them to discuss issues of inequality, sustainability and technology.

At a meta level, research will be consolidated into a cohesive and powerful narrative. We will network a community of expertise, develop agendas and share innovative methods and prototypes. Finally, open dialogue and communication with the existing GCRF, global insecurities and AHRC funded projects ensure a focus on research in the national interest as we consolidate findings, extend research avenues and construct a global network of expertise around the theme of global inequalities and digital media technologies.