The attached paper was presented at the 19th international congress of the IAGP, the International Association for Group Psychotherapy and Group Processes with the Titel “Despair and desire in times of Crises – groups in the city .. of the world” in Rovinj, Croatia
Attached you will find the short version, a long version is being prepared for publication.
At the Institute for Participatory Design we are interested in co-creating a positive sustainable and just future with groups who face certain problems or challenges or who want to develop new places, products, services and concepts for their work or life environments. During our participatory design processes, groups don’t just collectively innovate by merely gathering new creative ideas. In the course of these processes they often see themselves facing their past and present states in regards to their social, emotional, psychic, historical or spiritual internal system. Only by overcoming and thus transforming these past and present states do they gain inner freedom to explore and co-create new possible futures.
While the original and primary goal of our institute’s work is not to heal trauma or to mediate conflict, but to design for a given tangible output, both can and does happen if groups work on their collective future by using a certain methodology we derive from the fields of design and planning. Working on a possible future can often be a cathartic and liberating group experience. Looking at the future holds possibilities and hope, which will not be triggered by only looking at the past.
In this paper I will explore what a good co-creative design process looks like, how it brings the New into the world and how it can help to support both behavioural changes and changes to our concrete environments. I will discuss emergence, creativity and design and present two cases of our practical work. At the end I will draw some insights and conclusions about co-creative design processes.