Final outputs

The Counter-Framing Design project investigated the politics of design framing practices within the field of sustainability to understand the ways in which different framing practices may lead to different socio-ecological outcomes. The project developed a new design approach through field research, co-design workshops, and design events undertaken within the context of UK-based citizen activist groups mobilising for a new economic system. Here you can access the multimedia project outputs.

Counter-Design Booklet

Counter-Design: Praxis in Eco-Social Movements
The Counter-Design: Praxis in Eco-social Movements booklet shares the project findings and process. We explain our approach to counter-design and discuss how our findings show how community structures become ingrained by the ways in which social norms are challenged by a community. Our counter-design approach thus implies ways through which we can support anticipating such potential outcomes in future research and practice towards new economic futures.

Follow-on Impact Projects

Un-edge: Design for Relational Economies

Un-edge is a design project aimed at building educational tools and knowledge to tackle the root cause of our ecological and climate crisis, our economic system. This impact-focused project emerged out of Counter-framing Design research that identified a knowledge gap, the ‘uncommon knowledge’ that is missing from conversations on democratic innovation for a new economy. The project was funded by Loughborough University’s Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF) impact accelerator funding and partnered with Public Works, Outlandish Coop with inputs from a wide range of new economy actors including Postgrowth Institute, amongst others.

Policy Toolkit for Social Innovators: Making Design Research Inform Citizen-Centric Policymaking: 2021

The policy toolkit for social innovators was developed as a practitioner toolkit for designing citizen-centred social policy. In collaboration with Citizens UK and Professor Andrea Siodmok as expert advisor, the project sought to bridge public policy and service gaps through citizen-focused design methods. The project was funded through Loughborough University’s Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF) impact accelerator funding, exploiting knowledge developed through research undertaken during the Counter-Framing Design project.

Talks and seminars

Counter-Framing the New Economy

For Design and Economics Unconference, 2021.

From Publics to Counter-Publics: Designing for Autonomy

Online for the Participatory Design 2022 conference.

Framing the Political in Socially Engaged Design

Online for Parson’s New School Management and Social Justice conversation series.

Dissensus within Organisational Structures:
Negotiating Radical Horizontalism 2020

At Loughborough University London’s internal seminar series.

Further seminars hosted during the project can be found online at these locations:

Powerpoint slides

Counter-Framing the New Economy

Academic publications

Carlton-Parada, Anaïs, and Sharon Prendeville. “Radical design praxis and the problematics of intent.” CoDesign 20, no. 3 (2024): 387-404. https://doi.org/10.1080/15710882.2023.2269913

Prendeville, Sharon, Pandora Syperek, and Laura Santamaria. “On the politics of design framing practices.” Design Issues 38, no. 3 (2022): 71-84. https://doi.org/10.1162/desi_a_00692

Prendeville, Sharon, Anais Carlton-Parada, Victoria Gerrard, and Pandora Syperek. “From publics to counterpublics: designing for autonomy.” In Proceedings of the Participatory Design Conference 2022-Volume 1, pp. 218-229. 2022. https://doi.org/10.1145/3536169.3537795

Prendeville, Sharon; Syperek, Pandora (2021). Counter-framing design: politics of the ‘new normal’. Loughborough University. Conference contribution. https://hdl.handle.net/2134/19426736.v1