Fostering creative citizens in China through co-design and public makerspaces

This project seeks to develop a novel and inclusive means of fostering creative citizens in China in a bottom-up manner through strategic use of co-design and public makerspaces. The rationale is that human capital has increasingly become the most important asset of a country and experts argued that the key to sustainable economic growth of a city/country is an ability to attract, nurture and retain a creative workforce. This argument matches the prediction that, in 2020, the top skills employers will be looking for are complex problem-solving, critical thinking and creativity, respectively. However, this project will go beyond supporting people in paid employments and include as many people as possible, since people outside paid employment could also contribute positively to sustainable economic developments in China. Previous studies show that good use of design could make a significant impact on the creation of social value including individual behaviour changes and societal engagement. Thus, this project will also consider how best design can be used to create greater engagement with citizens to generate societal impact.

One effective way of promoting and fostering creativity is to actively engage people in creative activities such as co-design. Previous studies showed that engaging people in the co-design process not only helps fostering participants' creativity, but also could lead to many social benefits, such as encourage self-help attitudes. This project intends to foster creative citizens through a novel combination of design interventions, public makerspaces and online design resources. The design interventions will be delivered through co-design projects between designers and community members. The public makerspaces, in this case, refer to physical locations where people gather to co-create, share resources and knowledge, work on projects, network, and build. The emphasis is on offering multipurpose spaces where creative activities can take place, rather than provide high-tech fabrication tools. In this case, online design resources will be provided in a form of the design case study bank, which will act as digital repository of community-generated solutions which could be used as building blocks for future developments. By providing these resources online, they can be shared, modified and utilised by creative communities across China. The online resource will also contain co-design toolkits to support community projects.

The project spreads across three years. In Year 1, the team will carry out a literature review and case studies to identify good practices of creative communities, as well as identify key requirements regarding public makerspaces in China in order to create suitable strategies. The team will also organise the field trips to take key stakeholders from China to visit selected creative hubs and public makerspaces in the UK in order to give them first-hand experience, opportunities to exchange ideas and inspirations. In Year 2, the team will develop a prototype of public makerspace in one of the community neighbourhood centres in Yangpu District, Shanghai with an intention to scale up and expand to other areas in China. The team will initiate community co-design projects between local residents and design students from Tongji University to introduce the co-design process to local communities. The processes and outcomes of community projects will be thoroughly evaluated to identify potential impacts from economic and social perspectives. Key lessons learned will be extracted to develop suitable strategies and action plans for scaling up. Year 3 will concentrate on developing a strategic design framework with suitable guidelines for developing community creative hubs. The project will constantly engage with and disseminate knowledge to the wider audience through high-quality international publications, suitable social media platform (e.g. WeChat), co-creation activities and engagement events.

This project explores how design, especially co-design, could be used strategically to support the Chinese Creative Economy in driving sustainable developments in China. We hypothesise that a combination of design interventions, public makerspaces and online design resources could be a winning formula for developing community creative hubs, which can help foster creative citizens that will benefit both social and economic developments in China. Hence, we will work with a Chinese academic investigator and Chinese communities to identify best practices of creative communities, develop a prototype makerspace, deliver community co-design projects, evaluate social and economic impact, and create a practical package of community creative hub that could be scaled up and applied across China. Although the work focuses on China, the study will generate many outputs that could also benefit the UK Creative Economy and communities in the UK, such as case study materials, and the strategic framework, which could be adapted to suit the needs of the Creative Economy and communities in the UK.

The impact of our project can be described as:
- Enhancing the quality of life of individuals/communities in China by helping them build creative capabilities and providing them with design tools that will help them solve problems and achieve aspirations of their communities by themselves without dependency of external support
- Enhancing the economic competitiveness of China by helping communities become more self-reliant and resilient through the effective use of community co-design practice
- Contributing to increasing public awareness and understanding of creative thinking in the UK and China which will become essential skills in the future, and enhancing the creative capacity of citizens and community-based organisations through co-design projects and physical and online resources
- Contributing towards evidence-based policy making and influencing public policies at a local level - The study will identify potential social and economic impact of community engagement with design. This evidence will help both Chinese and UK local governments make informed decisions and develop more effective policies regarding community developments, creative hubs and creative capability building at the community level. Moreover, the outcomes could be integrated as parts of the policies
- Increasing the effectiveness of public policy in the UK - the literature review and case studies will provide insight into how well current creative hubs in the UK serve their communities and what types of economic and social impact they might generate
- Enhancing creative outputs at the community level in China by promoting community co-design practice and encouraging knowledge-sharing between citizens and community-based organisations

Our primary direct beneficiaries are Chinese citizens and community-based organisations. Our project will help community-based organisations (e.g. community neighbourhood centres) expand their capacity and offerings by turning them into community creative hubs. By helping them develop design capacity, they could foster creative citizens in their areas more effectively. We identify several groups of indirect beneficiaries and several ways this study could benefit the Chinese Creative Economy. Firstly, local businesses involved in this study will have better understanding of value of design and other creative practices, and, hence, will use design in their businesses more effectively and are likely to create more opportunities for design disciplines. Secondly, creative disciplines and design practitioners may benefit from an improved understanding amongst their clients. Employers and NGOs may benefit from improved creative capacity and better understanding of design practice among their workforce. Our project will provide useful evidence and the strategic framework with guidelines for policy makers and local governments in the UK and China.