Imagining New Arrangements
Introduction
When we are stuck fighting a seemingly endless array of negative effects flowing from unjust arrangements, it's critical that we give ourselves the time and tools to imagine new, more just and vibrant ones.
Like DJing and cooking, imagining new arrangements is always a participatory exercise, one which relies on inspiration and creativity, but also the keen ability to sense the flow of ideas, moves, sounds and tastes as a way of collaborating with all kinds of people.
Projects that imagined new arrangements to create new effects
Public Kitchen
Public Kitchen is a “productive fiction” that invites community residents to experience a not-yet-existing public infrastructure—or arrangement, if you would—that could make their daily lives more vibrant, affordable, tasty and healthy.
Postcards from the 2023 summer-long Public Kitchen in Uphams Corner, Dorchester.
Public Kitchen poses the question “If kitchens were public—like schools and libraries—how would it change social life?”
In 2012, we ran a Public Kitchen in Upham’s Corner. Over 500 community members came to experience a not-yet-existing public infrastructure that could make their daily lives more vibrant, affordable and healthy. We wanted to experiment with exploring how to address the stigma of things that are "public," while also capturing the imaginary about what strong public infrastructure could offer.
Social Emergency Response Center (SERC)
In emergencies like hurricanes, fires and floods, emergency response centers are a state-sponsored arrangement created to provide temporary services like housing, food, water and information. In the fall of 2016, we invited others to join us in re-imagining this arrangement to take on the real and pressing social emergency that we were facing—from state-sanctioned violence against Black communities, to gentrification, Islamophobia, privatization, environmental devastation, and more.
A SERC has four quadrants of activity: Making, Healing, Plotting, and Cooking, inspired by emergency response centers’ offerings of food, shelter, medical support, and community organizing.
Social Emergency Response Centers (SERCs) are an imagined arrangement, a DIY public infrastructure that any community can use when they need it. They are co-created with activists, artists and community members alike.
Far from the sterile arrangements of an emergency response center, a SERC might smell like fresh ink on paper from printmaking or the sweat of a dance class, taste like fried yucca or moqueca, and sound like taiko drumming or a story circle.
Dance Court
Dance Court asks the question: If communities had Dance Courts--like basketball courts--how would that change everyday life?
Dance Court is an intervention aimed at spatial and aesthetic justice—a pop-up space that invites people to collectively imagine how vibrant new public infrastructures can improve the quality of our lives.
Scene from the 2022 Dance Court at Mary Hannon Park, Roxbury (photo: Stefanie Belnavis).
Scenes from the 2022 pop-up dance court we hosted at Mary Hannon Park in Roxbury with lead artist Stiggity Stackz Worldwide’s Ashton Lites. We had a mash up of dance communities, DJs, dance classes, night dancing, and more.
Practice:
Connecting
I-A-E with Design
We want those of us who care about social justice to see ourselves as designers of everyday life, rather than simply participants in a world we didn’t create or consent to. By using design to intervene in existing arrangements and imagine new ones, we can produce new effects—ones that make a society more just and vibrant.