Practical information

This workshop welcomes contributions outlining how technology designers, researchers and activists can understand promote, and design for sustainable appropriation at an empirical, technical or conceptual level:

• Empirical cases illustrating the appropriation of existing digital technologies by grassroots initiatives’. Contributions might outline the role of existing technologies in infrastructuring such initiatives and their limitations in organizing action;

• Technical descriptions of grassroots-oriented technologies and/or of the artifact ecologies that grassroots initiatives might adopt;

• Conceptual contributions illustrating or expanding concepts, values, tactics and other socio-cultural aspects that are central to the appropriation of technologies by community initiatives. e.g. commoning, caring;

We welcome different forms of contributions: e.g., position papers, pictorials, manifestos, design portfolios or design fictions.

We encourage potential participants to discuss their interest in the workshop themes, and on the next steps of working on a topics related to the main theme.

The following, non-exhaustive, list provides an overview of potential topics of interest:

• The position of design researchers in relation to grassroots communities, e.g. problematizing the idea of expert/diffuse design, overcome by the bottom-up engagement with emerging technologies; that includes the relations between grassroots initiatives, design researchers, and existing or new institutions;

• The exploration of (alternative) research outcomes that make results relevant to communities and other non-academic audiences.

• The relation between grassroots initiatives, digital technologies, and aspects of scaling or meshing, grassroots initiatives.

Submit via email: technological-activism@utt.fr