Refugee Transition Network

Transition Design (TD) as a theoretical framework of the project integrates an emerging set of ideas related to other ways of knowing, and the design of worlds in which many worlds fit, sustainable inclusive futures, and interdependent relations with land. This growing strand of research has denounced the complicity of design with colonialism (Angelon & van Amstel, 2021), anthropocentrism (Forlano, 2016), and other forms of oppression. Pluriversal design (Noel, 2020), feminist designs (Bardzell, 2010), design justice (Costanza- Chock, 2018), multispecies design (Westerlaken, 2020), designing for liberation (Jack & Tuli, 2021), and designs of the South (Gutiérrez Borrero, 2015) are some approaches that shift design research from denouncing to announcing new realities. This transition in design as a discipline, has been very little explored in the context of displaced populations in transit or aiming to find a new home country. The hypothesis of this proposal is that TD; its ideas, methods and announcements of new realities, have a lot to contribute to both methods of micro-integrations of urban refugees and new understandings of the city as commons.

The project proposes to build a design-led international network of stakeholders and researchers, to explore the use of Transition Design as the basis of a future methodology to advance work of urban refugees management. There are three specific objectives of this research project:

1. To create a Refugee Transition Network (RTN) with relevant academic and non-academic partners, such as researchers, stakeholders, practitioners, observers, and refugee-led organisations. Through the network, we intend to further reinforce relations, create memorandum of understanding, and assemble a steering group with relevant partners for future research projects.
2. To gather cases of good practice and successful methods in the use of Transition Design and the ‘City as Commons’ in the context of urban refugee management to create a bilingual (English and Bahasa) teaching resource.
3. To gather initial insights from creative workshops applying the Transition Design framework with practitioners and communities of refugees, in the UK and Indonesia.

This research project uses a Transition Design framework aims to understand the refugee-hosting city as the ‘commons’ using Transition Design, and to engage and consult with refugees, practitioners working in refugee management organisations, and local government, to map real needs and test assumptions, to identify actionable information and to define the strategy of a future research and development project. The work of Transition Design will require a variety of tools and methodologies, used in different ways-no single one. Two key components have emerged: A framework that provides logic for bringing together knowledge and practices outside the design disciplines.

Principal Investigator: University of the Arts London, London College of Communication

Local Partner: Design Ethnography Lab, Bandung Institute of Technology

UK Partners: Ashley Community & Housing Ltd (ACH) | The Entrepreneurial Refugee Network (TERN) | Southwark Council

For more updates on the project, visit https://www.arts.ac.uk/colleges/london-college-of-communication/research-at-lcc/refugee-transition-network