Illumination: data, knowledge and design

You are listening to an MPavilion podcast. Conversations about design and the world we live in. For more visit our archive at mpavil​ion​.org and subscribe wherever you find your podcasts.

Bonnie Shaw:

Good evening, everybody. Thank you all for joining us out here in this absolutely gorgeous evening in this absolutely gorgeous pavilion. It’s so special to actually be out here face to face as humans. This is certainly my first time in a almost room with a large group of people like this. And it’s yeah, it feels pretty special and a bit scary. So I’m Bonnie Shaw. I’m the co-founder at Place Intelligence. We’re an agency that works with big data and a deep respect for planning and city design to produce evidence, to support decision making and city design work. And we’ve partnered tonight with our good friends at Arab and Hassell to bring you a series of conversations about data and about knowledge and about the role that city design plays in revitalising our cultural institutions and our cities.

Bree Treverna:

Just as we begin, I would like to acknowledge as traditional custodians of the lands that we are on today, where people have been making, discussing and building for many thousands of years, we celebrate the diversity of aboriginal people and their ongoing culture and connections to the lands and waters of this country. We pay our respects to elders, past, present, and emerging, and acknowledge any aboriginal and Torres Strait island people with us today. And as I was coming to the event tonight, I thought I need a notebook and I haven’t needed a notebook for a long period of time. Because I’ve just written on scraps that are sitting around my desk, which I eventually throw away. And I found this one and I grabbed it in a hurry, but it’s actually a guidebook. And as I was walking here tonight, I was thinking about just the different ways that we engage with information and how this conversation started.

And certainly the conversation with Bonnie began through a discussion about this return to the city that we are having at the moment and the different kinds of information and data that was suddenly coming forward, telling us different ways about how we were living, how we wanted to live, whether we should continue to live in that way. And then the conversation very much expanded with the discussion with Annie, from Hassell around or whose voices do we do we hear in that? How do we understand how our city is feeling? What is the temperature of our city and what can we do with data to help understand that? So in that spirit, we’d like to help build on that conversation tonight. So we would encourage you all to be vocal, to ask questions, we’ll be asking our panelists to be building on things that others have been saying. And tonight we’ll bring you three different conversations.

Bonnie Shaw:

So the first conversation tonight will focus around data as illumination and the role that data can play in revealing new insights and new knowledge about our cities. As we kind of grapple with some pretty interesting challenges.

Bree:

Then we are going to talk about some of our knowledge and cultural institutions and the way that they have helped us to understand different kinds of information flows. The voices that we are hearing through that. And then finally a conversation around how design can help us to engage different communities and have different types of conversations. We’ll also be having some Q and A in between our sessions. So we’d encourage you all just to get comfy. As we bring our first panelists up here, we’d also encourage you orders to catch an eye of someone that you don’t know. It’s all a bit awkward. Use that social awkwardness to introduce yourself to someone that you don’t know. Say hi, and look forward to a great conversation.

Bonnie Shaw:

Thanks Bree.

Bree:

Thanks.

Bonnie Shaw:

So I’ll introduce our first panel if you guys want to come up.

So our first panel is focused around data as illumination and we’re joined by four incredible data experts and city makers. On my left here is Norion Ubechel, he’s the CEO and co-founder of Place Intelligence. Norion’s got 15, 20 years of experience working across place making and campus activation and asset management, data science, and brings that to the invention and delivery of some incredible data driven tools.

Next up is Marion Terrell Marion is a senior expert in all things, government and city data. And she’s been leading the cities and transport program at the Graton Institute for the last 15 years. Next up is Sarah MacArthur, the newly appointed acting director of City Lab, the city of Melbourne’s innovation team, where she leads a whole range of incredible programs, looking at service design for better city impact. And then finally on my left is Niels Volta, who is a senior interaction designer at Paper Giant. And Niels brings an incredible degree of experience as a researcher, academic and practitioner, working with data and technology across cities. So please welcome them.

And so I wanted to start the discussion tonight and throw it open to the panel with a question. And Sarah, I’m going to start with you around what these new kinds of data sources that we can access are teaching us about our cities that we didn’t already know.

Sarah:

I think so many things like it’s we want to dig into this a little bit more, but with Sharon Madden’s comment from her new computer, you know what, from a new book, what we’re using the metaphor of the city as not a computer for and what kind of, or the way that our language and the way that we view cities and what that actually tells us about what we can draw out of it. So how do we look with new eyes? I think at what the data is actually telling us, how do we find new metaphors to our actually describe what’s actually happening within cities and also think about not just past and what we’ve gathered previously, but how do we actually start to think about the future and the ways that we can map place and what those desirable or preferred futures actually look like and bring that into the mix.

Bonnie Shaw:

Amazing. And you do a lot of work around speculative futures. Do you want to maybe explain a little bit about what that’s about and what kind of data you might use in that work?

Sarah:

Yeah, I think one of the things I’m working on right now and working with RMIT to bring forward a master’s course, which truly focuses on the idea of imagination. And if one of the core tools that we are looking at is a lack of ability around finding collective imagination, collective sense, making and collective decision making on our futures. How do we find ways to encourage people and give them the tools to feel like they agency within futures? I think futures is something that is often seen as the domain of a few or, you know, powerful or, you know, whether it’s, you know, technocratic societies, government, whoever, how do you find ways to find diverse and pluralistic futures to encourage everyone to have an ability to shape what that is. And do you make sure that they’re not relying on used futures or futures that have been presented to them in many different ways, like media culture, film, or influenced in other ways to really find what their desire is, and then pull that forward to help make decisions.

Bonnie Shaw:

Awesome. And so this idea of kind of opening up access for participation from everyone. Norion, I’ll throw to you and maybe, a similar question. What access to these new data sources, what do you think it’s changing about how we’re designing cities?

Norion:

Thanks, Bonnie. Great to be here. Thanks everyone for coming out and thank you for the fascinating insights. We’ve been working really hard to try and understand how we can aggregate really large data sets at national and international scales and machine through that. So we can find patterns in places and precincts and local communities and all the way up to the macro scale. And then of course, keeping in mind the locality of place, how we understand our local context, our local communities, and bring that together in unique ways that we can generate insights to power design-based decision making. And I guess the interesting thing there is with so much data that’s out there. The question is around building the tools that we need first to unlock that data, but of course building the knowledge and literacy and the design and planning community of how to approach that data in the first place.

And so we’re seeing this first wave of that happening globally at the moment. There’s a lot of democratisation of mobility data and qualitative data from social media, all kinds of information that’s now accessible, but the question has always been, how do we find insight and meaning in that information, as opposed to just, you know, death by data. Often we present these large, you know, complex reports with every metric under the sun. And it really comes down to those very salient sound bites that’s going to allow a decision maker to have more confidence in what it is that is being prescribed. And so I think in that respect, you know, as we move towards from, you know, hindsight diagnostic analytics into insight and predictive analytics and then finally into the artificial intelligence piece and machine learning around looking at big patterns, which is, you know, like Netflix is recommending a movie, computers might very well recommend potential patterns or solutions that you might like to look at. But it is of course, the role of the designer as the prescriptive analyst, which you’ve always been prescribing the future conditions for societies to use that information in more meaningful ways.

So of course the goal here I think is to unlock data and then learn how to work with that, to create meaningful and tangible benefit.

Bonnie Shaw:

Amazing. And Marion in your work, when you are producing these very complex reports on the state of how the transport networks are functioning and the roles that plays in our cities and economies, how are you seeing those, the data that you’re using and the insights that you’re producing being used by the audience that you’re targeting.

Marion:

So thanks for the question, I guess what I’ve, there’s been a lot of downside to COVID, but I think what the real upside for me has been is the absolute explosion in real time data. And so we’re getting, and it’s not, not just for me, but I think decision makers are relying on, they’re looking. There’s no point in knowing that there’s a recession a year after it’s happened. People really want to know right now. And so governments have become more innovative as well. Looking at things like payroll data, restaurant bookings, mobility data, visa transactions, and shipping movements, and many, many sources. And each of them is quite imperfect. And I think that’s partly, there’s been a bit of prejudice against using them for that reason, but there’s an enormous strength in being able to triangulate and use multiple sources so that even though they’re imperfect collectively, you can get a much more responsive picture of what is going on.

And at a time like we’ve just been going through and are continuing to that’s. It just gives us an enormous amount of policy grunt, I suppose, that we didn’t have before. So, so I’m trying to use that a bit. I did do some work probably four years ago using Google maps data and scraping journey times over a long period of time. But these days it’s much easier. There’s lots more mobility data. And again, each, each data set’s got its own peculiarities, but the more you get, the more you can overcome or find out that, but by using multiple, you start to converge on some insight that then you can rely upon.

Bonnie Shaw:

So I’m picking up on your use of the word perfect and Niels you probably know where I’m going. So you were heavily in the science gallery, obviously you were heavily involved in the science gallery’s perfection exhibition and built the mirror. How are you seeing the use of kind of perfect and imperfect data sets being used in city making?

Niels:

I really get the easiest question to start with don’t I. Look, I think a lot of my work is centred around ethics and how we involve the public in discussions about ethics. And obviously once you start talking about ethics these days, the word data comes up straight away. And there’s something really interesting about how we engage with data. Do we just look at data sets and take them for granted? Do we immediately inform a decision, say a new transport network or a massive government investment in transport or yeah. New opportunities to improve the mobility and to improve access to the city, or are we actually going to engage with the public? And it’s my belief that data in itself doesn’t really tell a story. It gives you lots of data points and it gives you lots of opportunity to develop a story around, but it’s really the public that you want to engage in that conversation and help them understand, first of all, what data they have produced over their life or while they’re commuting, or as they’re using Google maps.

And they are really the, sort of the sort of source to help you build that narrative and subsequently inform policy. And as you point out, Bonnie, a couple of years ago, we developed this sort of thought provoking, I should say, prototype. So an AI that can read your face and that sort of spits out a number of assumptions about who you are as a person. And even though that’s, that’s very far away from what we are discussing today. So urban data and how data informs urban design, the narrative is exactly the same. And that is that the public simply does not understand what data means or what sort of consequences, fast stretching consequences data can have. I might be perceived to be aggressive by my algorithm. And that might automatically rule me out from say certain types, certain types of employment, or I might be automatically surveilled by police. I’m not saying it happens, at least it doesn’t happen necessarily in Australia. It happens elsewhere. But I think when it comes to urban design and data being used to inform urban design, I think we have to follow the same sort of yeah precautions and be conscious that there is a person behind every single data point. And it might just be a single data point at a bit of an outlier, but that’s really interesting for an open design sort of yeah proposal or idea.

Bonnie Shaw:

Thank you. Alright. I feel like everyone’s kind of loosened up a little bit now, if anyone has questions and would like to jump in, please feel free. Hey, Sarah, I’m going to come back to you because I know you did a whole lot of work recently around the Melbourne vision and used a lot of qualitative work and story with, with the community in Melbourne. Can you talk about a little about how you might bring qualitative data and quantitative data together to tell a compelling story?

Sarah:

Yeah, I think building on what you were saying, you know, the idea that data doesn’t tell all the story and that the stories are, you know, embedded within people and, you know, bringing quo and quant together and more than just sentiment, but actually deeply really understanding in particular, you know, at the neighbourhood level, how communities can own their own story and their vision is something that we’re actually headed towards now. So as you were saying, Bonnie, we worked with community to build the 10 year community vision.

Something that each council does to help understand how councils can deliver on the aspirations of community. But we’re now really taking that down to the neighbourhood level and understanding how, how those communities can actually build their own visions and what it actually means. And also how you give people ownership of those as well. So that it’s not just something that’s, that’s owned by government because we want to, we want to be able to share, you know, what, what that data means and empower people again, how do you help enable them to realise their own individual aspirations by building capability and capacity within communities to help enable them in the future as well? So I think, you know, there’s, there’s the role not only for, for government to pull those that quant together, to be able to see the power of that, but that’s also about empowering communities to be able to understand use and enable their own futures with that data as well.

Bonnie Shaw:

And Norion, you guys should feel free to ask each other questions as well. Don’t wait for, for me to jump in, but you talk about kind of understanding data and cities at different scales. And Norion that’s a lot of what you talk about opening up access and democratising access to data. What can you learn from the data that you access and use at different scales? So like a regional macro scale, right down to a local community.

Norion:

Thanks Bonnie. So the question was how do we understand context through different scales or resolutions of data and how we might be able to apply that in different scenarios? Okay, well I think, you know, there’s, there is this globalisation factor at play, right? Cities are very like each other. And so there’s a bit of almost too much similarity that we might find. And, and one of these concepts of, you know, COVID and lockdowns, and that there’s a hidden benefit there of understanding that there’s this context in place and people have to pause and be in their local environment. And of course that, if you think about culture, where culture comes from, it comes from people being in one location for a long period of time. So maybe it was a bit of a pause to reflect back on our local culture.

Which then of course starts taking shape into our local communities. And we start thinking about the context of our place, our walkable catchments, our nearby parks, the level of exposure that we can have with other people. Then we’re stepping up in scales thinking about, you know, bigger precincts, broader communities in and around that, and then how, how these places are actually distinct and different from one another.

Of course, cities are very much like brands on one, in one respect, they’re competing against each other to attract businesses and offer the highest quality of life so people want to live there. And so all of these different resolutions or scales are important, I think to consider when we’re building data narratives that people can use to inform design and decision making processes in all different aspects of city building. And so I think we have to be aware of the local context, but we also have to see the macro patterns as we step up and then learn the lessons from best practise from around the world and bring that back to enrich our, our processes. And I think I’ll pass to one of the other panellists to either build on that or move away.

Bonnie Shaw:

Marion, what do you think?

Marion:

So, so I think what you’re saying is very interesting, but in my world, it’s a little bit different to that. So, because what I’m trying to do is influence policy makers, scale matters a lot. So the jurisdictional levels in Australia they are very, very different, they’re very different powers. They have very different capabilities, different leaders. So when I think about how to use data, it’s very particular to scale. So not necessarily different if you think of Melbourne versus Sydney, but very different if you think of Melbourne versus Geelong or city of Melbourne versus state of Victoria, for example. So, so I’m very interested to hear you see more about similarity in scale when it’s so different, I suppose, to what I experience.

Sarah:

But also I guess, to build on that there’s sometimes artificial boundaries that we have. So the city of Melbourne is obviously just a series of suburbs within the inner city, but doesn’t represent greater Melbourne. But obviously working with other local government areas to actually get that full picture is important because understanding that an invisible boundary doesn’t necessarily kind of shape or give you the complete picture, I think is important.

Bonnie Shaw:

Most people walking around don’t realise they’ve stepped from the city of Melbourne into the City of Vierra.

Niels:

There’s, there’s also something really interesting. And Mariah, it’s perhaps a question to you, cause I think you are the sort of the data tech person among us. How we deal. Look, I think when we talk about data, the five of us, we’re very often talking about data from the digital sort of perspective, the ones and the zeros on, on some sort of hard drive or computer system. But how do we make sure that the data for which we don’t necessarily have digital data let alone written data? How do we still make sure that that data reflects or is reflected in how we design cities and open experiences? And I’m particularly talking about here, us, Australia, culture of 65,000 years old with, with very limited sort of yeah written data available about those histories and the narratives and the culture. How do we make sure that is reflected moving forward?

Norion:

That’s a very fascinating question. And an interesting question about scale as well. So I think that there’s, there’s digital information that is created through our modern societies that we can of course look at to get an approximation of how things work, how connected our communities are, the level of activity in one place versus another, the level of economy in one place versus another, but also the narrative of place and culture is really important.

And I think that whilst we have so much data available and we can use that and unlock that to broaden our understanding, we still have to do deep engagement with our community. We still have to get involved in the landscapes that we’re designing and the places that we’re curating in order to create great outcomes. So I think on, on the one hand, big data can reveal the big patterns, but it isn’t all of the answers. And so I think there is this, you know, intimate balance between deep quantitative analytics and of course, deep qualitative process. And, and I would say the qualitative data is the higher level, you know, information. You really want to get to that level of synthesis. That’s about embodying all of the context, emotional, historical, et cetera. And so I would advocate that we have to be, you know, comprehensive in that approach.

Sarah:

I think another layer to that is just acknowledging that everything we build, every, every system, every map, every kind of snapshot of whatever we’re looking at is also deeply imperfect. The idea that [inaudible 00:24:46] from the Centre for Public Impact talks about, and that we create certainty artefacts, these kind of snapshots or moments in time, or here’s a plan or a strategy or, or a, you know, a thing that we’re planning to do, but it’s still deeply imperfect and such as the data, just being able to move in shorter cycles and feedback loops, and also to kind of move at different speeds in order to kind of keep up with that. And how do we move acknowledging that it just needs to be constantly living and updated and we’ll never have that picture of perfection.

Bonnie Shaw:

Excellent point. We keep coming back to perfect and imperfect. It’s very interesting. I would like to throw it open to the audience. If there are any questions, I’ll give you a minute. I know it’s scary. It took us, it took us quite a while to warm up here. You saw it. So take a deep breath and put a hand up and join in. Otherwise I’m going to pick someone, Tim. Any questions? Hi, Sue.

Sue:

Hi.

Bonnie Shaw:

So the question is when you’re talking about perfect and imperfect data, how can you understand address and start to mitigate issues around bias? Neils, can I throw to you first?

Niels:

I was going to say, I feel like it’s a question for me, or at least I’ll start with. Look, it’s really something we wanted to test with that provocative thing that we built a couple of years ago with biometric mirror. And I think one of the solu, well solution is probably the wrong word, but at least one of the mechanisms to try and mitigate as much buyers as possible is by developing a sort of inclusive process around how you deal with data. And look in reality and in practise, it’s impossible that every single data point is assessed against the person that created it to sort of build up that narrative. So I’m, I’m very conscious that that’s impossible, but it’s really an argument to involve people in, you know, sort of data analysis process, as much as possible and organically, and naturally you’ll see where your individual biases arise.

And these might, so for instance, in our project, those relate to gender identity, those relate to cultural identity, ethnicity, and we all have them, whether we want it or not. The challenge is data tends to amplify these biases and it also tends to create a risk where you as a human have very little control after a while, you have very little control over how, over how these biases sort of eventuate. And obviously, yeah, I don’t have to tell you what the sort of devastating consequences of that can be. So again, it’s that argument for an inclusive process.

Sarah:

Can I build on that? Am I able to jump in?

Bonnie Shaw:

Please do.

Sarah:

Yeah. I just think that’s a really great point, you know, building on that idea of collective sense, making it was talking about, you know, that participatory sense making synthesis of the work is the way to start to attack that, to start to break down, you know, those individual biases and again, get people involved, not just in, you know, creating the data or inputting into the data, but all the way through the process throughout.

Bonnie Shaw:

Marion, you look like you’re about to jump in.

Marion:

I was just actually thinking about, so, so part of this is the process of collecting the data that you want an inclusive process as a way of minimising bias, but it’s also what you do with the data at the other end, that is very important. And the thing that came to mind with what Sarah was saying is that you, I was thinking about weather forecasting and how it used to be that people just went out and they had their rules of thumb, and it was somewhat effective at certainly at the local scale. But now it’s highly complex, highly, you know, super computers do this, but the forecasts are always better when it’s a combination of the supercomputer and human judgement . The, the computer itself doesn’t really get you all the way. There’s, there’s, there’s still this knowledge that people bring and this judgement that they bring to bear in the interpretation of data that is fundamental as well as the process of collection.

Bonnie Shaw:

So I’m going to wrap us up and I’m going to ask the panellists to think about the greatest opportunities you see ahead for the use of city data in planning and design and community engagement. What’s, what’s the big, bright shining, positive future, Neils? And while you have a brief moment to think we’re going to swap over the panellists, and while that happens, our microphones need to be sanitised so that we’re all being COVID safe. And what I would ask you each to do is lock eyes with someone that you don’t actually know that you didn’t come here with and start to think about a question that you might ask them so that we can actually start to enjoy the fact that we are in this space with a group of people we don’t know. So Norion, bright, positive data driven future. What do you think?

Norion:

Well, I think we’re really fortunate to be able to access many, many decades of data to unlock our creative potential, to design better cities and places, and be able to test those continuously over time. So using data to create insights, to better design cities in places, and then use that same framework to continuously test and optimise them into the future. So I think it’s really liberating our ability to, as designers and planners, to be part of the process of creating cities in places in a more active way, and be able to continuously learn from what we’re creating.

Bonnie Shaw:

Awesome. Marion, what do you think?

Marion:

I think the thing I am most excited about looking forward is that not only does new data allow us to have new information and new insights, but it allows for new opportunities of people matching together that we didn’t have before just by the pure volume. So I think there’s limitless possibilities for, for better matching and cities that are in large part, the place for that to happen.

Bonnie Shaw:

Sarah.

Sarah:

Probably two things. So one is deep history and deep future. So beyond just the things that we’ve been collecting, how do we really tap into indigenous knowledge systems and other ways of viewing, and then also, how do we, how do we think about imagination as data and link that to place in terms of what people want? And then the second is really that participatory aspect. How do we get people involved in data stewardship and the collective? So that there’s a real true ownership and buy-in of the work that we’re collecting.

Bonnie Shaw:

Nice work, and Niels bring us home with something beautiful.

Niels:

I’m largely building on what, what Sarah said, and I’m going to put my inclusivity hat on as again, I think we are very fortunate to live in a society where we as individuals are very much in control over the data we produce. I think that’s definitely something to sort of yeah continue into the future, but also look at alternative models of individual data governance. And I don’t know, interfaces that allow us as in individual citizens to control what sort of data we share for what purpose, what, what the sort of outcomes of my data are, how they benefit me and my fellow citizens. I think there’s a lot of opportunity in that area.

Bonnie Shaw:

Awesome. Thank you very much. If you could all give a warm round of appreciation for our panellists and we will. I think you can leave your mics here and.

Speaker 1:

You are listening to an MPavilion podcast. Conversations about design and the world we live in. For more visit our archive at mpavil​ion​.org and subscribe wherever you find your podcasts.

You’re listening to an MPavilion podcast. Conversations About Design, and the World We Live In. For more, visit our archive@​mpavilion.​org, and subscribe, wherever you find your podcast.

Steve Coster:

Thanks so much for coming. It’s absolutely magnificent to be here. It’s even better that it’s not raining yet. Yet. So, we’ll get through this before the storm clouds arrive. It’s fantastic to be here. We’ve heard about data as illumination, we’ve heard about knowledge as illumination, and this third session is about design as illumination.

I’m Steve Coster, I’m the managing director of Hassell. We’re a architecture and design firm, working around the world, including here in Melbourne. And hopefully we are creating places that people love, through that work. I’m stoked about this panel, because this is literally four of my favourite people in Melbourne, and I think they’ve got a lot to add to the conversation, and we’ll get to them in a second. I think first, design, it’s a really interesting time for design, as the previous two panels sort of highlighted, because of the complexity of the context that we’re dealing with, and the pressure on a lot of these issues.

And of course, you can have data, and you can have knowledge, but at some point, someone’s got to create that future. Someone’s got to draw something on a page, and create what we’re going to do with all of that. And illumination’s an interesting way of thinking about it, I think, because we’ve got an opportunity to choose which things we illuminate for the future, through design, and that’s our role, that we can play in creating a future that’s better, and something we can all look forward to.

So, each of these people, I think have a perspective on that, which would be good to hear from. We’ve got Sue, who designs experience from Freestate, the world’s leading experience master planning agency. So, they create experiences. We’ve got Hannah, who creates festivals, the Rising Festival, sort of events, and experiences in the city, through arts and culture.

Tim from Finding Infinity, who sort of, I guess, represents technical expertise and knowhow, and how to bring things together to make things happen. And we’ve got Ross, who for me, represents responsibility for the future in design. Ross, from Finding Infinity, and some of you might know him from his work through A New Normal, amongst other things, making Melbourne and other cities, a producer of resources instead of a consumer of resources.

So Sue, I think you were going to kick things off, and I’m really interested in thinking about the role of creating experiences, and thinking from an experience perspective about the city, and about places, because post pandemic, there’s probably a risk of trying to deal with practical, pragmatic issues through design, how to stop disease spreading, how to make the city efficient, how to keep people separate that should be separate, how to optimise things, but actually the life of the city doesn’t come from that stuff. Does it? It comes from other things?

Sue:

No. I mean, it’s interesting that you talk about efficiency, because I think there has been a lot of conversation about designing for efficiency, the frictionless city, the seamless journey. And whilst we don’t want lots of friction in our lives, I think we need some. I think it is about creating visceral, and physical experiences that attract our attention, that make us stop in our tracks, bring us to the present, if you like, so that we become open to new ideas, to the point of around illumination. So, absolutely opening our minds up to different things. It’s why we travel, it’s why we don’t want to look at art on a Zoom. We’d rather do it in a museum. We absolutely need that change in pace, so that we can open ourselves up to learning, roaming entropy, as they say.

Steve Coster:

And so, is the current situation making that easier to talk about with people, or more challenging, because of what the world’s been facing?

Sue:

Yeah. I think we are certainly finding it easier, as people start to ask us, ​“How do we attract people back to our places? How do we get them involved?” And we certainly talk about attraction as being a moment of collision if you like, a moment that does kind of surprise. I mean, it might be like this MPavilion in the park, where you’ve got people wandering around, going on their evening stroll, and they come across this thing, and all of a sudden, there’s a group of people gathering, talking about all sorts of things.

Steve Coster:

Fantastic. And Hannah, in the festival, I mean, that’s something that’s sort of illuminated in a way that’s inherently temporal, right? It’s temporary, it sort of pops up, and then disappears again, and lives on in people’s memories. What role do you want to play in the city, the way it should be in the future, and other events like that? What role should they play?

Hannah:

Yeah, I definitely think of festivals as their purpose being to mark a moment in time, and also to reflect a place, to reflect the community, so that they are inherently ephemeral. But I’ve been thinking a lot since we started about how you can kind of elongate that impact, and also how you can reach wider audiences, and echoing what Sue was saying about that sense of happening upon something, becomes an invitation, becomes a really broad invitation to the general community, that might not be in the know, who might not be able to afford a ticket to a show.

So, a lot of the thinking that we’ve been doing is how to create those moments in public art, but also thinking about how public art can be defined. How do we use performance, sound, light, technology, to stretch out what that can be, and how long it can sit in place?

Steve Coster:

And what’s your time span, when you’re thinking about that? How much are you trying to connect to, into that event?

Hannah:

I think I’m trying to find projects that can exist… I’m going to be very specific now, somewhere between, more than two weeks, which is your general festival duration, and less than 50 years, which is your general major public artwork, that there is a whole lot of space in between that hasn’t really been that really explored from a city perspective, I would say.

Steve Coster:

And people must be feeling like they appreciate those kind of events, and instances more than ever right now. Don’t you think? Are they pining for unexpected, meaningful experiences?

Hannah:

Well, I know I am. It’s certainly… I think the loss of spontaneity during the pandemic was one of the things I missed the most. Just that ability to not know what your day, or night, or week was necessarily going to entail, and one of the best things that happened to me in the last two years actually, was walking along this river, and I noticed Deborah Cheatham, who’s an incredible artist, and opera singer, in a boat, on the river, and she was doing a listening trip, for some research for a project that she was doing for Rising.

And I just flagged her down, and we got in the boat, and went on this little listening trip together, and it sparked a whole lot of ideas that became the foundation for the next programme. But, that was something that just most people weren’t able to access, I guess, in the last two years, that just happening upon a person that you admire, or a piece of work that you admire, and being inspired by it.

Steve Coster:

Yeah. Fantastic. Thank you. Tim, what would you like to illuminate in the city, now that we’ve got this opportunity, post pandemic, bringing things back together? What are you trying to highlight through your work?

Tim:

I’ve been working on that dad joke the whole evening. As a lighting designer, just to fill in the blanks for everyone else.

Steve Coster:

You’re the only person here with a legitimate basis to talk about illumination.

Tim:

It’s interesting though, because when we look around the city, often architectural lighting design seems to be the bastion of projects like this, or the NGV, or very special projects. I liken lighting design sometimes to like sprinkles on the ice cream. Some people just enjoy the ice cream, but often it’s a little bit better with the sprinkles.

And so, we don’t always get appointed in some of the more 50 year projects that you talk about Hannah, and for me it’s about how do we influence, and how do we understand, and I guess share the stories, and get people to think about what the nighttime means to them. So, I’m not going to talk about lux levels, or anything technical, or boring, rest assured. I’m not actually interested in it myself, to be fair, because that’s not how people see, and it’s not how people experience.

And so, I like to think that we can use this time to reflect on how we could use the trust, and that’s something that we’ve already spoken about earlier, the last panel was talking about trust in cultural institutions. I first sort of came across that concept with Rose Hiscock, who’s the director of the science gallery. She did a lecture recently on that, and I was like, ​“Oh yeah. In a time where government doesn’t exactly instil trust in many of us, how could we use cultural institutions, or events, or experiences, how can we bring those out into the everyday?”

And not to over saturate us of course, but how do we take… Think about the mindset you would go into, if you went into the gallery across the road, and the openness you’re probably into, in terms of opportunities, and new experiences, if you could bring this out into the public realm, using a lot of the influence of the data that we listened to before, both macro, and micro. I just think it’s a real opportunity to think about lighting, or illumination, in terms of nighttime, and how do we experience that nighttime? So, that’s my two penneth.

Steve Coster:

No, that’s great. I mean, there was mentioned earlier about how important it is to have a more inclusive way of thinking about cities too, and experiences, and I know you’ve done some really interesting work in that space, too, thinking about how different types of people experience the city at different times of the day, and how that plays into the sort of work you do. Do you want to talk about that a little bit?

Tim:

Of course, any opportunity I can get, actually. So, as a lighting designer at [Arp 00:12:01], we have partnered with the XYX Lab at Monash university. So, we did some work with them about two years ago, maybe three now, it’s hard to tell with time. But it was about… We were fascinated by their Free to Be crowdsourcing work that they did with the app, targeted women and girls, you drop a pen, and you’d share your experience.

So many of those experiences were actually bad at night, and it was, ​“The light makes me feel like crap,” or, ​“The light makes me feel good.” Now that’s not really a technical appraisal. It’s hard to glean the key information, but what we’ve been doing is listening to those stories, and actually going out to 84 sites around Melbourne, and understanding what makes that so. And so we’re measuring a lot of technical stuff, but also creative stuff, but also, is it a park, or is it a lane way? And that really influences things. So, in such a diverse gender balance we’ve got here tonight, I’m not going to lecture women on women’s safety, but for me, it’s completely changed the way I practise urban lighting, and it’s incredibly empowering, and there’s so much that can be done. We’re just at the start of the journey.

Steve Coster:

Thanks Tim. That’s good. Last, but not least, definitely not least, Ross, welcome. It’s great to have you here. You’ve been doing some really, really interesting work illuminating critical issues, I think, through design, and in particular, interestingly, following on from some of the comments earlier about how to bring these problems, and arts and culture together, to bring attention in a way that other ways haven’t seemed to be able to do. I know that’s something you’re passionate about. Do you want to talk a little bit about what you’ve been trying to illuminate recently?

Ross:

Sure. I’ll try and fly through it quickly, because I can go on. But, basically, I mean, it kind of fits with the flow of the evening, in terms of sort of, how was it? Data, knowledge, and then design? So, we spent about two years running numbers on, kind of due to frustration of realising there was no plan in the city, of trying how to get to 100% renewable energy, water neutrality, or zero waste.

We basically just… Me and Will, who works with me, we spent about two years running calculations on what it would cost to transform all of Greater Melbourne to a completely self sufficient city. And we spat out a number of a hundred billion dollars, and found that it would create 80,000 jobs in construction, and 40,000 jobs ongoing from there, and pay for itself in less than 10 years.

So, it sounded like some cool numbers data, but no one really cared. We presented it to state government, and they kind of said, ​“Look, it’s really cool, but we won’t do it. It’s too ambitious, too risky.” So, we invited 15 of Melbourne’s best architects over to my living room in Fitzroy, and had a little dinner, a candle lit dinner with wine, and basically just poured our heart out, and said, ​“Hey guys, do you want to help us translate this hundred billion dollar project into 15 tangible projects we can find sites, and funds for?”

And then we… I guess where it went from there was we launched it through social media, and maybe a couple of thousand people started following, and all… Like collectively, the Instagram accounts, the architects were already pretty strong, but still, no one really knew what we were talking about, and no one really engaged with it all that well.

And then, cultural institution NGV, like Ewen has actually been really supportive the whole way through. He encouraged us to launch it at Design Week, City of Melbourne gave us some funds, and we ended up taking over a rooftop in the city, and we built 15 installations that could physically exemplify what we were talking about, to be able to kind of create an experience, a feeling of what the future might feel like.

And we launched the 15 projects, and that was in March, and it was kind of… Yeah, I feel like it was years of trying to convince people to sort of hear what we were proposing. And then somehow, following that, everyone started to hit us up. It was quite amazing.

We’ve now got six of the 15 projects funded already. One of them’s already started in construction, and actually a number of these projects are then being used, so it’s, we’re basically building pilot projects across the city, and probably the most exciting one is the energy efficiency retrofit, is that it’s then led to CFMEU contacting us, and now they want to build five examples themselves, and use that to inform policy. So, I guess it’s been sort of… The whole pitch was integrating the physical infrastructure that makes the city work, with the cultural infrastructure that enables us all to thrive. And so, it’s really kind of a unusual take on the whole topic, we’re indirectly approaching it, basically.

Steve Coster:

Yeah. But it’s a great example of bringing together that diversity in the ecosystem of people, right? You were tapping into a network that was about designing an experience, in a festival, interestingly enough, some people who knew how to actually put it together, and you started to get traction that no one could have gotten alone.

Ross:

Yeah, totally. I mean, well, to start with really, design was the key. Like it was until… Pre getting all the architects involved, no one knew what we were doing. And then once all the architects got involved, actually it… I literally saw at that dinner, the project go from being our little idea, to being collectively owned by these 15 awesome firms. And that was kind of step one, is kind of bringing people together.

But then, I think the next big step was, the way I see events, I actually learnt some of this stuff from throwing solar powered techno parties, and really realised, of all the different consulting projects I did over the years, no one gave a shit. Basically just doing numbers, and writing reports, no one really… Like no one did anything that we told them to do. No one really read port, no one really cared about it.

But, every year we’d throw a solar powered techno party and tell people, ​“Music sounds better when it comes to the sun.” And they all wanted to know more about it. And so, we realised that it wasn’t solar, and music, it was technology and culture.

And so, that’s kind of how we broke down the strategy, is we asked all the architects to come up with ways of ==-sort of, not… The way I see it is like old school environmentalism is basically, ​“I’m a hippie, and I’m telling everyone else what I know, and you need to change, and you’re all wrong.” And that’s kind of awareness.

I think the future of environmentalism is empathy. I don’t think we have enough time to convince the whole world to give a shit. I think the radical transformation that we have to do is so… It’s so rapid, that we actually just need to get on with it, whether people care, or not. And so, the project was about trying to empathise with the people of Melbourne, to engage them in these initiatives, whether are believers or not, whether they care or not, but just love the projects for what they are, and love the cultural connection, and allow the technical solution to just unfold.

Steve Coster:

Thanks Ross. So, Sue, coming back to you then, I mean, because that’s really the same thing you are trying to do, if I understand correctly, that you can tell people over and over, but unless they feel something through the experience, their behavior’s unlikely to change.

The world’s sort of cottoning onto that, isn’t it? And cottoning onto the fact that designing that to happen in an authentic way is actually a lot harder than it seems, and certainly difficult to do within traditional discipline silos. So, how are you going, trying to help people do that, and realise how differently they have to practise to achieve it?

Sue:

Yeah. I think this word has come up in all the panels, and that’s about participation. And so, a really key part of our practise is absolutely in participatory co-design. So, absolutely getting the people who you are designing for involved in the design itself, as opposed to the sort of traditional fountainhead version of design as being from above, if you like.

And I think various people through the night have talked about this, for the community, by the community, and an example of this, and sort of going linking back to what I was saying about friction, if you compare, say, the Amazon Go stores, where you can basically go to a shop, and get all the things you want, and walk out, and it’ll charge you, you don’t have to talk to anyone, you don’t have to do anything, just grab and go, versus a concept called Hyper Burgers, which is a community supermarket essentially, where the entire community brings what they want to sell, they exchange it, and it’s absolutely about the community, for the community, not for business. So, really starting to get communities involved in running their own lives, I suppose, in a way, designing for themselves, and everyone can be a designer.

Steve Coster:

Yeah. And you were talking earlier about inconvenience, a sort of level of friction, and inconvenience in that. I mean, that’s playing out in every workplace in Melbourne at the moment, right? Because getting your task list done is more efficient when you’re at home by yourself, but geez, it’s boring, and the inconvenience, and inefficiencies of bumping into people at work, or in the street, or on the river, in your case, Hannah, or wherever it might be, probably very inconvenient to suddenly go on a boat trip up the river, but highly valuable, despite being inconvenient. So, in all this discussion about coming back to the city, and work, creating space for that inherent inefficiency is going to be a key role, isn’t it? And speaking up for that.

Sue:

Yeah. Think so. I think designers do need to think about that, designing for friction. Another example that Prue, in the audience shared with me earlier this week was, the snowstorm in a pub, in north Yorkshire, where friction, in the form of snow, basically trapped a whole bunch of people in a pub for four days, three days, four days. And that was probably a terrible thing for them at the time, but it was a community building, belonging thing.

They were invited to participate in karaōke, and all that sort of stuff, and by the end of the three days, they didn’t want to leave. They’d formed all of these fantastic relationships, and God knows, that might be the thing that they talk about for the rest of their lives, in terms of the things that happened to them. So, I think we’ve got to be open for that, and not trying to raise everything to this sort of seamless world.

Steve Coster:

Is that the role of these events, Hannah? To sort of stimulate, or instigate unexpected things? Is that what you meant by spontaneity earlier? I used to have a colleague who said a great office, a great workplace should be like a cocktail party, because you should come across people you didn’t know, and ideas you didn’t know to ask about. Is that what a festival does? A good arts festival?

Hannah:

Yeah, exactly. I think it does create opportunities for people to meet each other, to participate, I guess, in like a grand public ritual of some kind. But the sort of authenticity that Sue’s talking about at a snowstorm in a pub, which sounds so brilliant, I wish I was there, that’s much harder to just manufacture.

You can’t just programme that, that is something that requires being connected to communities, and allowing time, and space for things to come from a community, rather than be laid on top of it. And one of the… To give a kind of example of this, I guess, is when we first started thinking about this festival, and thinking about Melbourne, and walking around the river, and the parks, and the city, and trying to understand, ​“Where is there space for this gathering? Where is there a gap that’s not already being filled elsewhere by the NGV, and all the major institutions?” And we look to, ​“Where is the natural atmosphere, and vibe, I guess, in the city?”

And Chinatown was one place that really stood out with this incredible history, this incredible sort of mixing of cultures. It’s not perfect. It’s full of idiosyncrasies, and what you would probably think is bad design in lots of ways, but it has incredible natural atmosphere, and all we needed to do was bring a little bit of art to that, and lay it on top, rather than start from the beginning, building that in a white cube.

Steve Coster:

Yeah. And then you get out what you put into, right? So, if you want to be transactional, you’ll get a transactional level of input. If you can let people participate, you’ll get something deeper, more like co-creation. But I’m really interested in that in relation to engaging with first nations people around some of their design issues that were mentioned in the proceeding panels. You can’t turn up late, and get that input. You have to have invested in the conversation. Is that something that you thought about? You talked about timelines, and how much to engage with history, to have a meaningful discussion in the present. You’ve got to be doing that really ahead of time, don’t you, in that community?

Hannah:

Yeah, I guess it’s like any relationship, you’ve got to invest some time. I’ve been very fortunate to have traditional owner elders, and artistic associates who are first peoples, who’ve bought their knowledge, and their way of thinking to us, and it’s been incredible, incredibly expansive for me.

And one of the things that’s been most clear, I guess, is just that idea of culture being central. It’s not something that’s decorative, or optional, in any way. It is central to life. That has been something that we’re just trying to instil in all of our partners, all of our relationships, all of our stakeholders, terrible word, but, just to really try and bring that idea, and that methodology of, some great things take time.

Steve Coster:

Yeah. And you can’t just switch it off, and switch it back on when the pandemic’s finished, and still expect to have a culture in your city.

Hannah:

Yeah. And you also can’t fly it in. It is something… I’m not saying we should be cut off from the world, but there is something really valuable about working locally, and being able to really take advantage of the culture that is here. That sounds bad, but you know what I mean?

Steve Coster:

Yeah. Yeah. Build on it.

Hannah:

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Steve Coster:

Yeah.

Hannah:

And it gives people a huge sense of pride. I remember seeing Melbourne Now open at the NGV, and it was really an important moment for Melbourne. I think people really understood the breadth, and depth of artistic output because of that show, was important.

Steve Coster:

Yeah. So, Tim you’re involved, not just through your specific discipline, but the firm more broadly, are in designing large parts of our cities. Right? I mean, how do you see that that is changing? Is it responding to all these issues that have been brought up tonight in a good way? Is it heading in the right direction? The way we create our cities for the future?

Tim:

I’d like to think so broadly, but I also think that we can’t be scared to slip up. We can’t be scared to not ask a question that we’re afraid of the answer, ​“I don’t want to look stupid.” Or, even to the point where we might offend someone. We need to be obviously cautious of that, but it’s all part of learning, and so I like to think that we’re heading in the right direction.

I think that problems these days, sort of to your point as well, Ross is, that problems these days tend to be, or ones we’re solving, are too complex to do on your own. And some people might go, ​“Oh, gee, that’s too hard. Or it’s too big. Where do we start?” But like the dinner party idea, a different way of sort of brokering a problem, or a proposition, and you can see the momentum and that it’s generated, and the greatness that will come from it. And I’d actually argue that it’s more fun.

So, like I find working at [inaudible 00:29:56] across a load of different disciplines. I get to work with you guys quite often. That’s awesome. I’m forever learning. There’s Neil’s in the crowd here, working at Melbourne Connect, doing these problems, which I had one project I had to put my hand up and say, ​“It’s got no lights in it anymore. I need some help.”

And that was quite confronting, the little AV screens now, but it was cool to be able to say to my neighbour, ​“Hey, help me out here,” AV team type of thing, and I would argue that the outcome’s quite impressive for that. But I just think there’s so much opportunity, we shouldn’t be scared. Where there’s listening to the people talk tonight, there’s so many different perspectives on it. Your work, Hannah, is influencing my work. Like people going, ​“Oh, we want artistic projections.” Or, ​“We want this thing I saw at a festival.” It’s like, well, that’s pretty cool how that’s starting to influence what we can do in city shaping, because we have a great responsibility. I think it’s about actually getting the right people on board, to get those sort of outcomes that we all desire.

Steve Coster:

And Ross, you said something interesting earlier about, there was a point where you could stop pushing your idea, and people started pulling it from you. There was a question earlier about how people are responding to new ideas. How have you experienced that? Trying to get new ideas in front of the right kind of people, who could make things happen? Are you finding there’s resistance? Do people want to go there, and just need to know how? Or how are we going to get there?

Ross:

I think you can kind of design it, in the sense that, coming back to like the events type scenario, the way I see something as, from temporary, you can create permanence, and in a temporary experience, you can put something so radical forwards that none would ever build permanently, and you can pop people into that space, and you can demonstrate it, and ensure that it feels good.

And to me, basically what changed for us, was that basically the NGV pushed what we did hard, and we got a lot of press, and then that gave the project substance. It validated it, and now people think it’s a serious thing. Do you know what I mean? But, really, it’s like still just me and Will punching numbers behind the scenes, basically. But, it’s got a lot of endorsement from a lot of people, and I think that’s what I’ve learned along the way, anyway.

I think an idea could be good or bad, but I think if you are strategic about how it unfolds, and kind of bring enough… like for me, very much bringing people together was really helpful, and also, I don’t know, we kind of keep talking to people about the individual projects as the Godfather. It’s like, make them an offer they can’t refuse, and it’s kind of like, there’s something in it for everyone.

Like it’s kind of… Yeah, I don’t know if that answers the question, but I think to me there’s so many incredible ideas, and so many incredible things that need to happen, and can happen. But, I think particularly something in that scale is impossible. And what I found was particularly the public sector, the private sector, and the people are doing completely different things, and no one’s trying to bring that together, so that was really helpful for us, looking at it going, ​“I don’t even understand the public sector.” We work with the private sector, and we know people kind of, but I’m not an expert on it, and we just had a go, kind of like you said, we just were prepared to fail, and have a crack, and had a bit of a theory on it.

And just to be honest, I also think, just actually trying to do something, that was kind of for me… I mean, I think anyone knows that’s been involved in it, we worked really hard. It’s like my obsession. And I mean, we followed through with what we were doing, and I think there’s a lot of ideas that get put out there, but without kind of a plan of how to deliver.

And so, the way I explain the project is like, if you’re talking about why you need to do something like transform the city to be self-sufficient like, you’re having the wrong conversation. If you’re talking about what needs to happen, and I think this, kind of like the how, the what, and the why, I think also relates to, for me, democracy, and topics, I find it interesting is like it’s related to the audience.

So, for me it was like the why, skip it, we’re past that. What was a kind of a technical conversation, and I think the general public get caught up in, should we do solar? Should we do batteries? Should we have electric cars? Geothermal? Everyone feels like they need to have a PhD on the topic. Whereas, actually you could… We pretty much did this. We put the technical strategy together, and presented it to the engineers in Melbourne, and everyone kind of… We basically got consensus.

And so, to me, there was a focus of the what, and then it was like, actually the project was all about the how, and I think people could feel that in what we were doing, that they felt like, even like Ewen, from the NGV, just was constantly supporting us, because he could tell that we weren’t just talking ideas, and pitching a possible future. We were just ready to… As soon as we launched, like every night I’d just get up and be like, ​“All right, we want a site, and funds for all of these projects. We need to make this happen.” And that’s been constantly the focus.

Steve Coster:

Yeah, that’s good. That’s really good. And what I like about the sort of common theme between all these things is this role of the unexpected. Yeah? My colleagues at Hassell, I challenge them a lot to talk about what they mean by great design. Like, what does that actually mean? And one of the best answers, I think that they’ve sort of landed on a little bit, is that great design feels both unexpected, and yet obvious at the same time. It’s something that you didn’t quite expect to see, but as soon as you see it, it makes total sense, and you are prepared to go with it from there, because of that.

But the role of the unexpected, to instigate a kind of connection, or an emotional response, is something common in what a lot of you are talking about. So, an unexpected experience, so you would be arguing for an unexpected collision, or experience of sorts, in order to change people’s behaviour. What kind of unexpected experiences are you talking about? What do you mean by that?

Sue:

Perhaps we could do a little experiment and show you. In the spirit of participation, we’re actually going to do a little bit of an experiment here. So, I’d like you to stand up, and for everybody to come in to the pavilion. So, this is probably something unexpected, and hopefully memorable. So, what I’m going to ask you to do is participate in creating a soundscape. So, the sun is going down, we want to be a bit COVID safe, so we’re going to hum, rather than sing, and maybe just start off small, and get louder as we go, and see how long we want to stay there for. All right? Okay. Let’s just start with a low hum. Try and build it up, and get louder. Come on, I can’t hear you.

Okay. So, maybe that will… So that is just an example, really simple one, obviously, of just getting people involved in something, so that you do it together, and I think the key thing that you’re asking about, the unexpected, allows people to have a shared experience that they can kind of do together, and in creating sort of emotional… So it was like what Ross was saying, if you do something a bit different, then you’re creating an emotional response, and that emotional response releases endorphins, and creates that feeling of belonging together, which is what we’re trying to do. When you belong together, then that can lead to action. So that’s-

Steve Coster:

That is an extraordinary example, and not what I expected, so unexpected. But also, creating the kind of-

Sue:

Thank you.

Steve Coster:

Awkwardness that Bonnie Shore really likes to create as well, so that’s good. Thank you so much. It’s really interesting discussion. Does anyone have any questions for the panel, in the few minutes that we’ve got left? I know some people who usually have great questions in the audience. Annie, and Prue, and Andrew, and Kayla. So, a question there, Annie?

Annie:

Yeah. [inaudible 00:40:00] For Sure. [inaudible 00:40:00] For you, Sue. Aside from humming, which is obviously an excellent way to get people to come together, I wondered if you could talk a little bit about how important it is to design the process for co-creation, and what the sort of key elements are for a successful co-creation process?

Sue:

Yeah. Great, great question. First of all, I think it’s really important to frame what it is that you’re trying to solve for, and absolutely involve the people that it is impacting, if you like. So, whether, if you think about a community project, and we recently… I’ve got Jess in the audience here, who recently did a project for the City of Ballarat for Bridge Mall. So, it’s a highly public space, trying to attract a whole lot of different, and diverse communities into the centre of Ballarat. And of course, Ballarat has this incredible layered history, and layered series of stories.

And so, in order to kind of bring this place to life, what we did was, actually got people in the community to design with us, if you like. So, there was people from the indigenous community, the traders community, a historian, an events person. So, people who actually did it with us, as opposed to us doing it for them. I think that’s a really critical part of the process. One, you’re actually getting that authenticity around the solution, two, you’ve got ownership, and buy-in, to the point around creating change.

Steve Coster:

Thanks Sue. Any other questions? Yes.

Speaker 10:

It’s a question for Ross. I’m really curious how you initially presented, or [inaudible 00:42:20].

Ross:

Should I repeat the question?

Steve Coster:

Yeah, you can.

Ross:

It was how I initially presented the strategy to all the architects, so it brought it to life for them. So, [inaudible 00:42:29]. We’re actually quite a communicative firm. We sort of do a lot of graphics, and are pretty high on communications. So, we did have quite a lot of diagrams, graphs, and all this sort of stuff, but to be honest, we had personal relationships with all of them, and they kind of all were… I’d probably just called them all up beforehand and said, ​“Hey, do you want to help us out, do a render?” And everyone was like, ​“Yeah, cool. We’ll come over for dinner, we’ll work it out.” And then we just brought everyone together.

I probably just poured my heart out for 30 minutes, and just got everyone to know what we were kind of pitching. And to be honest, I’m not sure if everyone fully understood what they were getting themselves into, and I don’t think we really did, either. I think it was more of an exercise of bringing… It really did… Everyone’s involvement amplified the whole thing.

And I think the crazy thing, as well, that I learned out of it was, I didn’t… I guess, I don’t know. I’ve got two older brothers that are architects. We’ve always been obsessed with architecture in my family. I’m I’m an engineer, but I think I probably miscalculated how competitive architects are, and it actually went from being a simple render, to everyone was like… Everyone started coming in to present theirs, and it built it up, and it was really… And even just getting that crew together, like some people were humming and hahing, and finally when everyone else knew everyone else was involved.

I think that’s been a little bit of the project, is gaining some critical mass, and like even where it’s going now is that, by it looking like we are working with City of Melbourne, which we’re not, we’re not really, we’ve kind of done some numbers around the city, but not formally engaged by them. Other cities now, like we’re in serious conversations with Perth, Adelaide, Auckland, and yeah. So, I don’t know, that whole kind of critical mass is probably the thing. Yeah.

Steve Coster:

Thanks very much. Bonnie, is that a signal that we’re due to wrap up?

Bonnie:

No, I was going to ask the last question.

Steve Coster:

Oh, you want the last question.

Bonnie:

I was going to bring it back to the first panel, and ask, where each of you in your various fields of work, how you involve data in your design decisioning? Ross. You’ve talked about [inaudible 00:45:11].

Tim:

So, back in the day, yeah, you’ve won a park project, you get the book out, look at the numbers, do the calcs, off you go. Now we use data. It’s the voices of women, and girls in this specific work that I’m doing at the moment, and we hope that this is just the start of the data set we can use, the one available. Your Ground is out at the moment as well, with XYX Lab. The report mentions lighting 120 times. So, I think people are starting get the message.

Accessibility is the next one for us, is to look for that universal design. Without the data, it’ll just be me ranting. So, I hear you. But yeah, it backs me up. It’s not just me ranting, it’s the voice of others. And again, it goes from being something that you do with your eyes, to something that you do actually with your heart, because it’s amazing the power of that journey, alongside others. What I learn, what they learn, and then hopefully what we can create together, without data, doesn’t exist.

Sue:

For us, we use place intelligence data. We use consumer research, and user research, and I think it is both qual, and quant, and I think that’s actually the really important piece. So, absolutely, get your range of data sources, but then understand what it means, with the people that you’re using it for.

Hannah:

Data, for cultural institutions, or performing arts is often collected via surveys, in terms of responding in a programming sense. And those surveys are largely completed by middle aged, white women like myself. So, when we started, we just really started looking at how do we collect data in the first place? How do we get real data, and how do we reflect the demographics of Melbourne more accurately within our organisation, and within our programme? So, that was really an exercise in doing our own independent research, rather than relying on tools we had to hand.

Steve Coster:

Great. Thank you so much. I think that’s probably all we’ve got time for. Thank you for coming. Hopefully that journey through the three panels is, I think a good reflection of what we can do, if we think together across data, and across knowledge, and into design, and hopefully go beyond just getting back to a new normal, and instead create some kind of, something else. The new beautiful, or something that’s a bit more powerful, and a bit more meaningful than life back to normal.

So, yeah. Thanks for coming. I’m sure all of you being here is a reflection of wanting to be part of that, as we do. So, if we can keep the conversation going, get yourselves a drink from the bar. Bonnie, is there anything you, or Bri, or the team, or Annie, or anyone would like to say to wrap things up?

Steve Coster:

Thanks for organising. Thanks for having us at the MPavilion. Thanks for coming along.

Speaker 1:

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