Alyssa Tang

Conversational Artefacts was a design-led research project exploring how critical design and public exhibition could be consolidated into an inclusive qualitative creative research method to engage participants in conversations about community. Through a series of public, pop-up exhibitions across multiple sites in Auckland CBD, critically designed artefacts were displayed where members of the public were invited to participate in this project by sharing their thoughts, experiences, and stories about ‘community’.

Critically designed artefacts, inspired by contexts surrounding community such as exclusion, isolation, inequality, and connection, were displayed and presented as conversational prompts to scaffold a discussion about what community meant to people. Responses inspired further iterations of artefacts, propelling the research forwards, and contributed towards collaborative meaning-making that built towards a collective idea about what our Auckland City community could be.