SEED Foundation - Social Environmental Enterprise + Design
about us
Design is about people, and solving problems. It has long been a tool for business to help increase financial gain and market share, and develop products and brands that people identify with and want to be a part of.
But why should the power of design and the benefits it brings be limited to the private sector?
The SEED Foundation believes that design can be equally powerful when applied to social enterprise. And that designers can find a whole new exciting application for their abilities by becoming social entrepreneurs. Products, services and systems that are well-designed are easier to use, more visible, more desirable and more sustainable.
We are in a moment when a lot needs to change, and as it happens, design is a very good way helping people find new and inspiring ways of doing things.
SEED Foundation wants to boost the success of social and environmental enterprises through design. We want to turn designers from perpetuators of social and environmental problems, into key contributors to solving them. We believe sustainability should be as much about creating communities and jobs to enhance life as it is about environmental stewardship.
We are currently developing the first of a series of demonstration projects to trial our design methods in a new context. These are based on three core principles:
1. infrastructure
So far, sustainability in product design has tended to focus on ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’.
But it is not just about the objects themselves. It is also about what surrounds them. The way products are designed is important, but if you don’t consider the infrastructure that they need and how people use them, this is just not enough.
How does a product reach you? How do you use it? and what will become of it when you no longer want it? Simply making material adjustments does nothing to alter the human behaviour that is really at the heart of the issue. This is the new space in which designers must learn to operate.
2. interconnectivity
We live in a complex world of multi-layered, inter-related networks.
Advanced design thinking increasingly recognises the need to address the relationships between these networks rather than deal with them in isolation. It examines the connections between things, the infrastructure that supports them and the people who use both.
3. business, public sector and people
The Sustainable Development Commission describes a gridlock on sustainability issues between three key sectors in society: business, public services and ordinary people. Each wants to change but doesn’t want to do so alone and needs to see the others playing their part. By applying a user-centred approach and focussing on the needs and desires of real people, designers can build bridges between these sectors and create ways for them to collaborate more effectively and enjoyably. This approach also encourages the people concerned to be actively involved in the design process.
Sustainable development is, after all, an overwhelmingly social concern. For organisations of any sort whose primary objective is to engage communities, there can be few more effective methods of tackling the problem head-on.
who we are
Clare Brass comes from a design background. Alongside her product design consultancy in Milan she also ran a number of projects tackling social and environmental issues. She has established several design-led initiatives and organisations dealing with social or environmental issues.
Campaign Leader at the Design Council from 2004, she became Leader of Sustainability in 2006.
Flora Bowden graduated in Fine Art. She worked in the field of sustainable architecture in London before taking up the position of Environmental Design Coordinator at the Parliamentary Design Group (Policy Connect). She collaborated with Clare Brass on a Design Council research paper about the future role of design in the sustainable development agenda.
Their findings led to the establishment of SEED Foundation
contact us
SEED Foundation
20 Dudley Court
London NW11 6AE
Telephone: 0208 209 0350
Email: info@seedfoundation.org.uk
