My role:
Since this was both me and Nikolai’s first full service design project, we did most of the work together, reflecting on our work as we went: Planning the youth workshops were done through discussion between us, and we both led and directed the youth during the workshops. The visual identity was a two man effort, with us passing sketches and files back and forth for iteration. Nikolai did a larger share of the physical building and crafting, while I did a larger share of the project website. In terms of the report, Nikolai did most of the writing, while I edited the layout and photography. Producing the report was our final effort, each crafting separate parts before assembly.
While our main source is the neighbouring juicery and brewery, we have also worked with nearby supermarkets and cafés.
Bokashi composting is an air sealed proces suitable for indoors production, taking 7 weeks from start to finish.
Our self made bokashi bins need to be drained during the composting process. The liquid is sold as a powerful fertilizer.
By mixing it with finished soil, the nutritional compost is broken down and made avaible for plants.
A pop-up sales model was chosen to accomodate the need of flexible working hours from both the youths and Nabolagshager. While the steps of the service flow is linear, the exact excecution of each step can be moved in time.
The area of Grønland is hightly concentrated with small businesses, and the amount of potential partnerships is huge.
At the end of our engagement in Oslo Living Lab, we had established relations with five neighbouring businesses.
At the very first workshop, we let the youths plan two years ahead. This created both a shared vision and nice discussions about what needed to be done in what order.
The shared timeline gave us as facilitators a foundation to set up weekly plans, adjusting as we went. We purposefully kept from planning long term to be able to respond to new insights.
To let the youths show off their practical and collaborative skills, we tasked them with making a hat store concept in 30 minutes.
The group to collected images that resonated with them and the business. Discussing them let us pinpoint a branding direction.
As facilitators we synthesized the pinterest board into a mood board describing our materials, textures, typography and colors.
How do you engage 17 year olds in discussing brand personality? You let them pick the music of our hypothetical store of course!
It was important to get their input at the start of every process. For our logo, everyone sketched 20 ideas each in 20 minutes.
After refining their preferred ideas, we always presented our work back to them to validate if it reflected the groups thoughts.
It was central to remain humble, and bring in external experts to consult us as a group. Minsk helped us with branding.
Everyone got to design their own uniform, consisting of a thrifted black piece of clothing freely decorated with our graphics.
The model describes the realtionship between facilitators/designers and the co-creating group. The facilitators job is to help the group ideate and structure their thoughts, before refining their ideas and presenting the work back to the group. When the group is stuck in the process, external expertise is brought in for consultation and guidance.
Our proposed model is based on the 36 workshops we held together with the youths between September and December 2018. We planned workshops, let the youths ideate, refined their ideas and validated the our work with them, and cosulted experts.
Simplifying the model of the British Design Council, we color code the steps according to the exploration and decision phases.
We now can now see at what level the creative phases operates, with shades indicating iterations.
By color coding the process, and then removing the text labels, we can see that most of the decision making (yellow) has been taken at the higher level of the group. This is something we consider fundamental to the creative spark plug model. Secondly, we can see that the process is narrowing over time. In short, the group is learning and becoming more and more self sufficient.
Several physical copies are going into the research project, and we hope to inspire others to adopt a bottom-up and co-creative approach to green employment.
