Paul Rodgers Design Priority Area Leadership Fellowship

My vision, throughout this fellowship and in line with the AHRC Design initiative "Design for Change", is to achieve real and long-lasting transformation and impact, to enact alternative, positive, and help achieve real developments within the culture of design research that will equip it for the challenges of the future. This requires more than traditional quantitative and qualitative research. It requires evidence to become informed and intuition to inspire us in imagining and creating new and better possibilities. My aim is to achieve change that will make real differences to the lives of individuals, groups, communities and society as a whole. Working collaboratively with researchers in other disciplinary areas, I will take the lead in identifying opportunities for collaboration, trends in research, and organising events on behalf of the AHRC and work to shape preferred realities and positive future visions around key challenges (e.g. sustainability, health, security, care, poverty) where design thought and action is key. For example, this may involve the co-design and co-development of novel products that will lift people out of poverty. It might include the design of innovative services in care that will improve the health and well being of families across the country. It may comprise the design and development of new policies that will reduce further harm to our planet. My vision will be inclusive in its scope and encourage projects that adopt and utilize an mélange of different types of design research including experimental, practice-based, and hybrid approaches and methods. This will show the various cultures of design research that coexist and celebrate this pluralism in what is rapidly becoming a very healthy and mature field of research. The fellowship role will allow me to encourage and enhance projects under the "Design for Change" banner to utilize research approaches and methods that fit their purpose. "Design for Change" will borrow methods and approaches that fit from the physical sciences, the social sciences, and the arts and humanities if and when the situation arises. Adopting a pluralistic approach will allow for a flexible and open-minded exploration across the breadth of design and other disciplines and will support bringing these cross-disciplinary methodologies and communities together to strengthen the Design research base. By building purposeful relationships design researchers (working with other disciplines, professionals and citizens) will enhance their own and others' abilities to challenge existing economic, social, environmental, and political models. This will help us to understand and strengthen the inter-relations between design research and design practice (i.e. design consultancies / agencies and design teaching), and end-users. Creating, for instance, more sustainable product design, services, and processes, whilst rethinking how policy might work better. Collaboration alone, however, will not be enough. We require shifts in our cultures of co-design, co-innovation, and co-production, collectively deciding and socially organizing the future world that we will all be proud to share. My belief is that design is the best tool that we have for making sense of the complex, multi-faceted world we all inhabit. Design in the way that it can holistically explore, critique, and define what needs to be done, synthesize and propose future scenarios, and present, visualize, and communicate those ideas to others can be at the forefront of shaping preferred realities and future experiences. The objective being to develop mechanisms for enhanced co-design, co-innovation, and co-production, collectively deciding and shaping preferred situations.

To achieve my vision of enhanced cultures of co-design, co-innovation, and co-production, collectively deciding and shaping preferred situations, I will act as an ambassador for the Design research area. I will be a design champion on behalf of the AHRC and the Design community and work tirelessly in partnership with the AHRC in undertaking the leadership fellow role. My aim is that the 3 year programme will result in a transformational shift in the focus, quality and impact of design research, and the fellowship will leave a legacy of evidence and examples, and a bolder, stronger interdisciplinary design community with a new generation of early career researchers engaging with a "Design for Change" agenda. The tasks and activities will run in parallel and include:

Activity 1: Advise, Develop and Communicate. Working closely with the AHRC to help support and advise on its design funding initiatives and ensure that its existing funding schemes speak to relevant audiences (e.g. design practitioners and consultancies, government representatives, and others).

Activity 2: Co-Design and Collaboration. I will work across the whole gamut of Design research areas and bring together the wide remit of AHRC funded research in Design, across the Creative Arts and Digital Humanities team and more widely to build productive and impactful partnerships with other Research Councils (e.g. EPSRC, ESRC, Innovate UK), stakeholders with an interest in Design (e.g. Design Museum, London, the Design Council, RSA) in order to explore opportunities for collaboration and ensure complementarity in activities.

Activity 3: Identify, Inform and Illustrate Impact. Review of the RCUK's "Gateway to Research" and AHRC's research portfolio to illustrate the power, impact, and diversity of design research and to illustrate the forward potential.

Activity 4: Build Productive Design Research Networks. Establish research networks, advisory group, and a series of regular regional multi-disciplinary workshops/ design labs/ studios on emerging issues to launch the basis for further collaboration for projects that will effect real and sustainable change.

Activity 5: Innovate with the Next Generation. Strengthen greater links between the existing Centres of Doctoral Training in design, through workshops and make recommendations for innovation in training and approaches to PhD's linking into the expertise of the KE Hubs (such as the Creative Exchange hub led by Lancaster) that developed a new approach to doctoral training in the creative industries.

Activity 6: Create the Legacy. Working closely with the AHRC, the AHRC Commons Leadership Fellow, and other Theme and Priority Leadership Fellows, I will develop an online design space that will act as a lasting legacy of the fellowship as well as explore opportunities for joint collaborative activities.


Activity 7: Disseminate the Knowledge. Using insight and evaluation of the above I will develop a framework and series of case studies that illustrate the impact of design research in publications (i.e. books, journal papers, and other creative media e.g. film, video, exhibitions).

Activity 8: Respond to Landscape. Identify and embrace emergent opportunities that drive forward the design research agenda and offer opportunities for sustainable impact.