Call for Radical Reframing
Author: Paul Gofferjé
Program: Radical Reframing Identity and Integration (RRII)
Background
Together with the University of Technology Sydney and the Hague University, No Academy implements the research program Radical Reframing Identity and Integration (RRII). The program focuses on radicalization among young people. This problem has many forms and barely receives appropriate answers. Why do young people do what they do, why do they derail and what counter-strategies could we come up with? How can we better understand the underlying emotions such as anger, frustration and a sense of exclusion?
About the program
The RRII program is conducted in three cities: Arnhem and The Hague, and (to compare internationally) in Sydney, Australia. In each city, a team of young artists works under the guidance of experienced 'social' designers: artists who are used to deal with social problems.
Feelings of frustration and exclusion are the result of social processes. Researching these processes is at the heart of our program. The goal is not so much solving radicalization among young people, but to create a whole new perspective on the problematic situation itself. The program aims to link the creativity and imagination of designers and artists to the craftsmanship of city professionals (eg. police officers and youth workers), and to develop a more imaginative, connecting and empathic way of "positive communication" on this subject.
Our method
Unlike many social designers who focus on participation or making products for a specific, location-based context (community art), the designers/ artists in our RRII program concentrate on research into human and social themes: the values, emotions, processes, interactions and communications that underlie the problem (de-framing). Following this study, carried out from a field lab, they set strategies and interventions that lead to new interaction or rearrangement of existing systems (re-framing). Our designers/ artists manifest themselves not in a finished "product" or a cosmetic solution, but in unexpected conversations, platforms, relationships and knowledge.
Many interventions will be conceived in cooperation with and within the repertoire of city professionals. Within new frames, experiments will take place with specific interventions, that can give a new impetus to thinking and doing. During the program such interventions are mainly assessed by the extent to which they are able to foster dialogue between parties or between different value systems. The projects include analysis, reflection, observation, translation, imagination and interventions that are not obvious within the old frames.
The method is based on the 9-step plan by Kees Dorst (University of Technology Sydney), which forms the core of his "Frame Creation" model: