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Co-design is Not Enough: Reflections on Creative Collaborative Public Sector Innovation to Deliver Net Zero Policy Outcomes in Scotland
Get PDFDesign continues to contribute to public service reform, systems thinking, and policy innovation, with approaches like design sprints, iterative prototyping, and creative citizen engagement applied to address diverse societal issues. As co-design proliferates as both a celebrated and critiqued method for fostering dialogue, ideation, and action among communities and stakeholders, questions arise about its suitability for addressing complex multi-stakeholder challenges and its potential to mediate effective policy design and delivery. There remains limited understanding of the relational and methodological dimensions that underpin co-design within policy processes, and of how these influence public sector innovation. This paper examines the role, capacity, and limitations of co-design in advancing the net zero policy agenda in Scotland’s northern region. Through presenting a series of five regional-scale cross-sector events, we discuss how co-design, while valuable for fostering engagement and framing challenges, was constrained by systemic and institutional barriers. We present an adaptable framework for assessing co-design’s capabilities within mission-led CPSI and offer three strategic recommendations for applying co-design methods to frame systemic innovation challenges, leveraging co-design principles and practices to create the conditions for collaboration, and positioning co-design as a creative approach to enable mission-led innovation. We argue that co-design is best positioned as a creative facet of a wider collaborative governance approach, one that demands critical attention to institutional conditions, cross-sector alignment, and how power is shared across public sector innovation initiatives
‘Weaving dreams’ and ‘Whispers across Borders’ in conversation with Wendy Teo
No full textIn Bornean culture, baskets are vessels of survival, memory, and resistance. Often regarded as the community’s first weapon, baskets hold a symbolic power. The act of weaving brings threads together, transforming them into something that can carry and protect. In this book, the basket appears as a recurring visual element, echoing the spirit of collective holding.
This ethos of weaving also shapes the structure of Our Climate Glossary, a publication that brings together over 40 writings by more than 30 contributors, reflecting on reciprocity in relation to the environment and human experience. Some texts emerged from the On Reciprocity programme by the Borneo Laboratory; a three-week international exchange that took place in Sarawak in early 2025. Others were written independently, yet speak to similar concerns.
The contributions take many forms—essays, poems, fragments, and some undefined— touching on themes such as climate conditions, ancestral knowledge, memory, and place. Yet, this glossary does not aim to define, rather to open. It is an evolving document of relation, that is between human, land, biodiversity, and possible futures
Pulsatile
No full textPulsatile is a commissioned and remunerated radio broadcast produced for Montez Press Radio and aired on 24 September 2025. The programme combines original sound works by the artist with selected contributions from invited practitioners, assembled into a continuous broadcast structure. Operating at the intersection of curatorial practice and sonic composition, the work treats sequencing, transition and mix as primary compositional devices.
The included original sound works in the broadcast were developed during a July 2024 residency at Studio Somewhere, housed within Take Me Somewhere at Tramway, Glasgow. That residency investigated Queer Hauntology through disembodied sound, speculative text and vocal experimentation. Materials generated through this residency into spatial recording, sound manipulation and spectral layering were subsequently reconfigured for broadcast
I am the Great Sun
No full text'I am the Great Sun' is a 7min long digital experimental film. It was made in response to the landscape the film is set within. The prehistoric site on the southern side of the Isle of Arran with views over the ocean to the Alisa Craig an ancient rock was a catalyst for creating this film. I was compelled to create this film after the experience of walking in the island landscape, struck by an uncanny feeling, witnessing the aftermath of violence, the damage inflicted during the decimation of the forest. My aim in making the film was to depict the alien power and beauty of the natural world, and the pathos of human attempts to control it. The film is part of a series of four experimental film works that explore Timothy Morton’s idea 'ecogneocis'.
The film was screened at: ‘The Play of Life and Non-Life in Landscapes of Abandonment’
04.12.25
Reid Lecture Theatre, Glasgow School of Art
The event entitled 'The Play of Life and Non-Life in Landscapes of Abandonment’ was open to the public as well as staff and students from across GSA and was hosted by the Reading Landscape Group with guest speaker Professor Carl Lavery. The evening included talks by Carl and myself, the screening of I am the Great Sun' followed by a panel discussion led by Peter McCaughey. 'The Play of Life and Non-Life in Landscapes of Abandonment’ was introduced by Michael Mersinis
Performance Review
No full textContinuing a tradition of commentary on the subject that has been a hallmark of 'Variant' since its inception, this article considers the options available to self-organised artistic activity in Glasgow presently. The intention is to reflect upon trajectories of professionalisation which are presented here as not only being endemic within financially supported activity, but also baked into presentational formats purporting to be informal, or outside the financial operations of an art world proper. This topic is taken up in relation to definitions of 'artist-run' or 'artist-led' activity, changes to the mechanisms of cultural subsidy in Scotland, and ongoing debates around fair pay
Tending An Olive Tree
No full textThis essay explores the entanglement of art, ecology, and geopolitical violence through the translocation of a Palestinian olive tree sapling to a Scottish gallery space. Positioned within a recent exhibition by the Reading Landscape Research Group at The Glasgow School of Art, the work documents and reflects upon the complex symbolic, material, and legal journeys of the sapling—a gift from the author’s former instructor, a Palestinian olive farmer displaced by war. Interweaving personal narrative, classical references, and historical context, the essay situates the olive tree not only as a botanical entity but as a deeply politicised and juridical object, implicated in settler colonial practices and international regimes of plant regulation. Drawing on Aristophanes’ Peace, the essay reconsiders the ancient comic invocation of peace through agrarian imagery, proposing a contemporary reading of peace as a fragile truce rather than a romantic ideal. Engaging theories of the body, care, and xenopolitics from Judith Butler and Jean-Luc Nancy, the essay proposes the olive tree as both subject and witness—a migrant body marked by trauma, surveillance, and hopeful resilience. Through a reflection on exhibition practice and the limitations of representation, the work advocates for a form of political tending: an ethics of care enacted through embodied, situated artistic practice in the face of ecological and humanitarian collapse. The essay ultimately positions the olive tree sapling not as an object of aesthetic contemplation, but as a living, contested agent that disrupts dominant narratives of peace and belonging
Finding My Blue Sky: The Search for Feeling in Art, Again
Get PDFTHE exhibition “Finding My Blue Sky” is structured as an invitation to imagine your own paradise. The parallel title in Arabic makes this clear: “What is the World that you Dream of?”
Accordingly, the exhibition is a journey of retreat and surrender in search of a sense of longing and belonging — of home, of sacred space — by inviting viewers to participate in the creation of meaning. In the words of its curator, the art-world influencer Omar Kholeif, “‘Finding My Blue Sky’ invites spectators to indulge in the sensuous curve of artistic endeavors that exist in their own culturally situated space of dreaming — one that allows us to sketch myriad possible routes to modernity, and with this, new ways of looking altogether.”
The exhibition uses both London spaces of the Lisson Gallery, as well as its courtyards, windows, and adjacent street corners. We are guided around the spaces by directions such as “Find your wave under the cloud” and “Find your soft landing”. A reflection space is also provided, with deckchairs under olive trees. The images are often hung creatively — high up, low down, climbing the walls diagonally, inside and outside — all to change our perceptions of what they are and what it is they signify.
Kholeif describes one of the works — Shapeshifter (Chilled to the Bone) by the Swiss-Hungarian painter Liliane Tomasko — in terms that extend to the overall project; the work serves “as a seat of multiple desires that are stitched together, unstitched, and re-stitched”. This plurality of approaches and images means that the exhibition is deliberately constructed as a polyphony of voices and visions to which we are metaphorically invited to add our own.
The exhibition brings together more than 20 artists of diverse nationalities and eras whose work Kholeif has journeyed with or, vicariously, through over the years, in order to invoke the voices of these artists and set them in dialogue with others in the exhibition. Such bridging moments are found in the interrelations of works by the Portuguese painter and poet Luísa Correia Pereira and the Lebanese artist Huguette Caland, both of whom feature deconstructed and transfigured images of bodies in their work. These pioneering women are seen in dialogue with the French artist Laure Prouvost, who also revels in transgressive transformations, using her distinctive, playful-heroic register
Work Developed within the “Drawing Threads” Design School Research Cluster
No full textFinished collection including 2 Rings a brooch and experimental artefacts developed for the School of Design Drawing Threads Research Cluster.
'Drawing Threads' Ring !, Recycled Aluminium and TECU® Gold Copper alloy, 25 x 12 mm - 2025
'Drawing Threads' Ring II, Recycled Aluminium and TECU® Gold Copper alloy - 2025
'Drawing Threads' Brooch, Recycled Aluminium and TECU® Gold Copper alloy - 2025
'Postcard - from Linlithgow', Recycled aluminium and TECU® Gold copper alloy, 135mm x 90mm - 2025
The Crown of Thorns is a familiar sight I have often glimpsed through rain-splattered train windows while commuting between Glasgow and Edinburgh. This project has transformed it from a passing landmark into a source of inspiration for an interrogative exploration of materials. Visiting St Michael’s for the first time and researching its history have sparked new methodologies of material transformation within my work.
Working with mixed metal processes is central to my jewellery practice, and for this exhibition, I became particularly interested in the relationship between the spire’s materials—its original redundant aluminium cladding and the newly introduced bronze alloy. I was drawn to their metallurgical properties and the contrast between the cool, industrial grey of aluminium and the warm, golden tones of bronze. Using processes such as lost wax casting, wire drawing, and sheet fabrication, I have experimented with embedding one material within another, layering them, and allowing elements to emerge through careful surface removal.
The artworks I have created for this exhibition include jewellery and a selection of experimental works, shaped in part by archival imagery—particularly postcards that document the church’s presence over time. Often inscribed with personal messages, these postcards serve as tangible records of place and memory. Their small, tactile nature has influenced my approach, mirroring the way objects can hold both historical and emotional significance.
Learning more about Geoffrey Clarke’s radical, experimental design has encouraged me to embrace process-driven making, allowing materials to guide and techniques to shape both surface and form.
In addition to the touring GSA exhibition (Munich / Linlithgow / London) Add Toch (artist and curator) Invited me to show the collection in Restless Matter.
Restless Matter - Puyang, China
"Matter is never still. It shifts, fractures, and transforms - holding temporal forces at work within it. Every material arrives with a history; metal drawn from the earth, stone compressed over time. Forms shaped through pressure and surfaces marked by oxidation.
Yet restlessness speaks beyond the unruly material. It points to memory, identity, to social and cultural contexts, and to the ways jewellery can embody resistance and renewal. It reminds us that objects are not static possessions but active participants in lived experience. Here, jewellery and objects are sites of ongoing transformation, always evolving.
Seen in this way, restlessness becomes a catalyst - one that sustains enquiry rather than resolving into certainty. The works in this exhibition are not fixed results but moments within longer journeys of research and experimentation. Each work emerges from a questioning practice that thrives in the unpredictable and embraces change as method
RO U T I N G H O M E W I T H C A R L O S B U N G A
No full textTo coincide with Angolan-Portugese artist's largest exhibition to date, entitled Habitar a Contradição (Inhabit the Contradiction), the exhibition, curated by Rui Mateus Amaral, artistic director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto (MOCA), originates from one of Bunga's surrealist drawings—A Minha Primeira Casa Foi Uma Mulher 1975 (My First House Was a Woman 1975) (2018)—which evokes the journey of the artist's mother, pregnant, from Angola to Portugal in 1975, fleeing the civil war to save her two-year-old daughter and her unborn son.
The closing essay, "Routing Home with Carlos Bunga" uses the epistolary form as a means to convey both the author and artist's interior psychological states. To challenge hegemonic concepts of nomadism; to embrace the aesthetic possibilities of wandering, even in instances of longing for a site of belonging
Hybrid Piece for ZOOM Orchestra and ROOM Orchestra
Get PDFJessica Argo shares her work leading and commissioning original dance, film and sculpture for a Global Telematic orchestra to respond to, Glasgow Improvisers Orchesra GLOBAL, since March 2020 – recent outputs include a screening of new films produced by and featuring many Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra’s digital global collaborations over the past 12 months including sonic ethnography from Australian sound artists, dance and theatre from Japan, and the spontaneous generation of ideas other global players from Mexico, Spain, New York, California on Thursday 28th November. Following this there was a hybrid telematic orchestra performance with improvising between a zoom orchestra and the room orchestra which was recorded for the BBC Radio 3 New Music Show. These events were part of the three day festival organised by Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra that place between 28–30 November at the Centre for Contemporary Art.”
Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra have a fluid and multi-dimensional (perhaps even quantum or multi-versal) approach to filming improvisation and improvising with film.
Film can be a structuring role within the music, or film can explode and implode where and when that music is situated - essentially a band can play Everything, Everywhere, All at Once – using telematic digital video-conferencing technology and/or the physical theatre apparatus – sometimes ALL AT ONCE.
This paper features excerpts from a multi-mic recording of this Hybrid Piece set to a photomontage, as well as a Q+A insights from the featured artists, such as George Lewis, Maria Sappho, Constance Cooper and Maggie Nichols.
A backstage access / a peek behind the curtain of the Hybrid Piece for ZOOM Orchestra and ROOM Orchestra
Composing a piece that at first seemed mere stage directions –
“You play – whatever you want”
now “you play – in response”
“pre-selected duet” –
“now all of you play – whatever you want, as long as you are crescendoing with the light”
I wanted to place the ZOOM orchestra, first on, centre stage – all eyes and ears on them – then ask the ROOM orchestra to honour their launch of the festival as if an answer to their question. A Yes, and…
I needed to spotlit key matriarchal voices in a duet.
And then push the ZOOM Orchestra and ROOM orchestra to “play together” in a shared task -knowing the ROOM orchestra was bathed in the crescendo of light brightness – and knowing the ZOOM orchestra merely saw the stage light as a beam standing in for a face on their computer screen.
So, film is a structuring role within our spontaneous music – the quest to produce an unweildily expanding archive is MOTIVATED by the spotlight – the staging in our physical festival with a theatre audience.
By setting a regular space (that space - actually being time! 2 hours every Tuesday) for our Global Orchestra to perform to camera – in “Diverse Spaces and Places” – means that we frame, prioritise our everyday.
SYMPOSIUM: FILMING IMPROVISATION – IMPROVISING WITH FILM
01.–02.02.2025, exploratorium berlin
The 10th symposium at the exploratorium berlin deals with the relationship between improvisation and film and filmic documentation, as well as with the potential of the medium of film for improvised events and the interaction with them. The focus is on contemporary, free musical improvisation as well as on creative and experimental forms of filmmaking