Empowering Locals Through Service Design and Social Innovation: The MakeinProgress Case Study
Year: 2018

The society we live in today is undergoing a paradigm shift (Murray 2009) The crisis of the capitalist model is creating the need for certain social innovation processes (Murray et al. 2010, Manzini 2015) This paper presents an example of how social innovation and service design (Meroni and Sangiorgi 2012, Stickdorn and Schneider 2012) can promote local territories through making. We tested a "what if" situation to answer the following research questions: a) what kind of maker space could work in this territory; b) who are the potential users; and c) if making could increase the local territory's appeal for social innovation. Using the method of action research (Stringer 2014, Stoecker 2012) we created a demonstration plan we refer to as demo service in order to experiment with different kinds of activities and areas of application. The MakeinProgress (MiP) project was then initiated. MiP was a case study of the way making could facilitate local development (Bianchini et al. 2014) with the aid of service design. MiP previewed the use and social function of an old filanda (textile mill) being restored thanks to public financing. The converted former mill was initially conceived of as a business incubator, and was later adapted to fit local needs. The territory in question was unfamiliar with the dynamics of making, maker spaces, and social innovation. Service design was widely and practically used (i.e. open calls for ideas, workshops, space hacking, etc. hence demonstrating what can be achieved when design positions itself as the intermediary between institutions and local communities. The action research methodology helped an awareness of the project to emerge and spread through the local territory, aiding the identification and training of a group of local citizens who could assume management of the space; it also helped shape the space according to local demands. Thanks to service design, the former mill became a place that allowed the community to promote new job opportunities, share ideas, and facilitate the creation of new businesses. MiP also enabled new collaborations between the creative community and pre existing local companies, helping the latter to benefit from the community through exposure to new technologies and the cross pollination of ideas. VENANZIO ARQUILLA, ANNALISA BARBIERI 197 Theoretical Framework Crisis and Social Innovation The starting point of this work is a view of the society in which we live. The 2008 crisis that erupted in many Western economies opened a can of worms, exposing all the contradictions and loopholes in the system we had been living under. According to Castells, this crisis is structural and involves several dimensions: "A financial crisis triggered an industrial crisis that induced an employment crisis that led to a demand crisis that, by prompting massive government intervention to stop the freefall of economy, ultimately led to a fiscal crisis" (Castells et al. 2012, 4) It represents the collapse of a system that has proved unsuitable. According to Schumpeter, all periods of crisis are also periods of creation; Manzini adds that we are now divided into two different worlds, where two realities coexist in conflict: "[T]he old 'limitless' world that does not acknowledge the planet's limits, and another that recognizes these limits and experiments with ways of transforming them into opportunities" (Manzini 2015, emphasis ours) A change right now seems more necessary than ever. A new world is slowly emerging in the space between the remains left by the crisis. One of the primary aspects that characterizes the face of this "new" world is the development of social innovation practices in our culture. "Every era needs a bit of social inventiveness. But there are reasons to believe that social innovation is particularly common when the existing institutions are showing signs of stress and when problems of social cohesion, unemployment, urban decay and youth unemployment seem resistant to traditional solutions" (Mulgan and Landry 1995, emphasis ours) So what is social innovation? It is a widely described phenomenon, and here we use the definition given by NESTA: "Social innovation is innovation that is explicitly for the social and public good and is innovation inspired by the desire to meet social needs which can be neglected by traditional forms of private market provision. Social innovation can be developed by the private, public or third sectors or users and communities" (Murray et al. 2010, emphasis ours) 198 RESHAPING THE LANDSCAPE Design and Design for Social Innovation and Service Design In this scenario, both design and service design have an important role. The role of design has consistently changed from the era 1 of the first industrial revolution, and as Manzini (2015) says, "Design is a culture and a practice concerning how things ought to be in order to attain desired function and meanings. It takes place within open ended co design processes in which all the involved actors participate in different ways. It is based on a human capability that everyone can cultivate and which for some the design expert becomes a profession. The role of design experts is to trigger and support these open ended co design processes, using their design knowledge to conceive and enhance clear cut, focused design initiatives." So if social innovation has the potential to change the world, with the need of a new culture at the base of it, design could be the right tool for the creation of this culture. One key point is the birth of a new design culture characterized by innovative practices, in which the polarization between problem solving and sense making becomes more and more blurred. 1 Cf. the ICSID definition at www.icsid.org/about/definition.  Manzini 2015. VENANZIO ARQUILLA, ANNALISA BARBIERI 199 Per Manzini, "Design for social innovation is everything that expert design can do to activate, sustain, and orient processes of social change toward sustainability" (ibid. In the creation of this new culture that could sustain the developing social innovation, service design and its tools also have a peculiar role, since "Within Service Design, Service Interfaces are designed for intangible products that are, from the customer's point of view, useful, profitable and desirable, while they are effective, efficient and different for the provider. Service Designers visualize, formulate and choreograph solutions that are not yet available. They watch and interpret needs and behaviours and transform them into potential future services" (Erlhoff and Marshall 2008, emphasis ours) Design Theme Definition: Social Conversion of Public Assets in Disuse Among the various areas in which social innovation can act, 2 here we present a case study on the issue of redeveloping unused spaces within cities, acting as a local resilience booster through design. According to Cottino and Zandonai (2012) "Attention to such spaces is shifting its value from a residual function within social planning into a real opportunity for reuse. The unused spaces are therefore seen from a perspective of social innovation as resources and opportunities to be seized upon to create not only simple urban regeneration projects, but also places to regenerate and reconvert to social use." In projects that deal with territorial design, referring to territorial capital improvement can highlight the territory's individual characteristics through a materialization of products, services, and strategies (Maffei and Villari 2006) Its role, then, is to promote systemic innovation starting from unique local resources, using different levels of specialization (strategic design, service design, communication, product) and different targeted 2 A wide range of activities, such as: the development of new products, services, and programs; social business and the work done by social enterprises; the reconfiguration of social relations and power structures; innovations in the workplace; new models of economic development, social transformation, systemic change, and sustainable development driven by businesses. It can also deal with hard to treat social problems such as youth unemployment, the increase in the average age, immigration issues, and cohesion within multicultural societies etc. (Caulier Grice et al. 2012) 200 RESHAPING THE LANDSCAPE actions (social, economic, cultural, etc. One can therefore conclude that territorial design "is the offspring of so called strategic design that is, addressing local objects through a strategic approach and designing local products and services (be they industrial, communication related, event related, etc. using multidisciplinary skills, either from other branches of the design disciplines or other disciplines entirely" (Franzato 2009) The output of territorial design then helps determine the appropriate strategy, as the territorial products subsequently developed are a result of said strategy and give it concrete form. The questions that informed all our research were: How do service design and social innovation fit into territorial enhancement processes? What tools and competitive advantages do they offer? Field Research and Analysis To answer these questions, we conducted field research and explored various design tools. Field Research The aim of the field research was to analyze, in light of previously implemented projects, how the design operates within the regeneration processes in the social use of unused spaces, with the consequent aim of being able to encode these methodologies in tools that can be helpful to the actors participating in these processes. During our research 19 national and international case studies similar to MiP were mapped. The analysis focused especially on management model/activation, activities, outcomes, and the role of design. Two strategic documents were also analyzed during our field research (Smithsonian Institution 2013, Minervini et