How to make it work

author: Bori Feher

CLOUDFACTORY // A SOCIAL DESIGN PROJECT BY MOME EcoLab

In the summer of 2011 a group of dedicated students and young professionals from MOME EcoLab, the sustainability research group of Moholy Nagy University of Art and Design Budapest in Hungary, travelled to the remote Bodva valley, one of the poorest regions of Europe, to meet and help local Roma communities living in extreme poverty. The aim of the visit was to start a long term social design project with relevant impacts. After four years of multiple failures, dozens of dead-end-streets and lots work, the group is just about to understand “how to make it work”.

In the first year of the project they were focusing on the local gastronomic heritage of the village of Bodvalenke, where malnutrition is widespread and unemployment rate is almost 90%. The team considered the diversity of recipes and the culture of picking wild fruits and herbs as a genuine local resource and used it as starting point for solutions.

A team of sociologists, economists, photographers and designers collected local recipes, anecdotes and personal stories to create a local cookbook, called MASINA / Socio-Gastronomy in Bódvalenke. Parallel to that, a team of young designers and architects developed a set of herb, fruit and vegetable dryers for local families, to produce high quality organic food that can be sold on the market. These timber structure dryers had been designed so that local kids could manufacture them from local scrap wood and recycled materials. As a bonus, graphic designers created a brand called PluszOK (translation could be: Plus or extra sense in English) and a set of design packaging, so the products of the DIY driers could be sold in market for much higher price. Economists also developed theoretical fair-trade business model how marketing and selling activity will generate local income, and thus strengthen resilience of the community.

Although dozens of student and young professionals has been involved, a handful of different disciplines had been brought together, tested methodologies had been used, the outcome of the project was a complete failure. The ultimate question of the local people was: how these brilliant designs help to feed their children next month?

The project in remote Bodva valley to help local communities was a failure in the first year. And in terms of impact, projects from the second year were failures as well. Dead-end-streets over and over again. However, each time they got a little closer and closer to understand: how to make it work. The team started to realize that for people living in poverty it is much valuable what is given today than what is being promised for tomorrow. They realized, that the real structure and context of such social challenges are much more complex than any textbook and theoretical model can describe. The group realized, that resolving such complex challenges starts with listening and never with demonstrating. And finally they realized, that working for a community is significantly different than working with a community.

Whith all these lessons learnt, MOME EcoLab has changed its objectives and prioritized ‘learning from the local community’ and ‘working with the community’ over ‘helping the community’.

THE CLOUD FACTORY PROJECT - MOME ECOLAB HAS TO LEARN FIRST.

Since 2013 the Lab is working to create a community center in Bódva Valley, called the Cloudfactory where both designers and local kids can learn from each other, work and act together. They teamed up with one of the biggest elementary schools of Bódva Valley, and started to work with kids, first graders of the school – whom have the local knowledge, network and are recognized by their community.

This time the Lab walked on the project road slowly. The group spent an entire semester on a project just to get to know each other with the kids of the valley. They were given small diaries and were asked to draw the most beautiful clouds each day, for an entire month. Then contemporary Hungarian writers and poets were invited to create short stories as written illustrations for the drawings. After that, young graphic designers from MOME helped to put together the whole graphic story of the clouds of Bódva valley, a subjective atlas of dreams, desires and perspectives of the local kids: a book called the Cloudbook.

The book was a perfect project to build mutual understanding and trust between the EcoLab team and the local kids and to show what they can achieve together. Based on that foundation, the next phase started: designing a community center with kids, a creative workshop building; the Cloudfactory. During a number of co-design workshops local kids and young architects of EcoLab worked out what their design factory should be like.

In Spring 2014 experts from Maryland Institute College of Art – Center for Social Design (MICA CSD) joined the initiative, and during a design summer camp with EcoLab they built the 1st phase of the Cloudfactory, a small wooden structure which can be a place for future interactions between young designers, students, teachers of the school and kids of Bódva valley of course. Since then EcoLab held a number of design workshops for the school kids, and started to collaborate also with their teachers.

The Cloudfactory now seem to be on a right track for interdisciplinary and multi-stakeholder dialogue, capacity building and knowledge transfer in the field of social design, and design for resilience. MOME EcoLab tries to listen, hear and see with positively open mind to stay able to react, as team members learn more about the community.

In July 2015 MOME EcoLab and MICA CSD are going to hold an international summer university in Bódvaszilas, Hungary, where they will rethink and redesign the courtyard of the elementary school: install new play n’ learn spaces and build the 2nd phase of the Cloudfactory.

Bori Feher, 2015

MOME EcoLab is the Sustainability Resarch Group of the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design Budapest. The Lab was founded in 2010 by Daniel Barcza and Bori Feher. It’s a practice based, open, creative think-and-do-tank. Its aim is to develop creative, sustainable, and tangible solutions for the social and ecological challanges of the 21st century, to create positive value where it is most needed, to achieve big impact with small interventions.