ART THAT MAKES YOU CHANGE YOUR MIND
August 30, 2020
As part of my Master in Design for Change I developed a final project to design a curatorial model design with emphasis on experiencing, questioning, and self-reflecting for behavioural change.
To do so I have developed a mock exhibition that focuses on climate emergency and aims at environmental behavioural change.
Based on the prototype outcome and research conducted, the results led to the development of a curatorial model as a framework with emphasis on experiencing, questioning, and self-reflecting. The curatorial process becomes a form of design itself that designs behavioural change through an exhibition in which materials and ideas are assembled to create a narrative that leads to behavioural change.
The framework can be adapted to various fields of behavioural change; therefore artwork is interchangeable and can be commissioned based on the rules outlined in the framework, and depending on the location and size of the curatorial work. Exhibitions whose goal is behavioural change should follow a path of three major phases, broken down in three areas to each guide the audience throughout the experience, furthermore the exhibition should include some takeaway object for the participants to become co-creators of their experience.
The phases of the exhibition should be as follows:
Understanding the issue and the threat to daily lives:
Information: the audience gathers information on the subject matter, photography must be used to add a sense of reality and concreteness. The information given must be non-bias and neutral, to allow the audience to make it their own.
Awareness: the exhibition should allow the audience to become aware of the issue by giving a temporal explanation of historical development, causes and effects. Participants are here encouraged to become co-creators and active participants by allowing them to have a takeover to carry along the rest of the experience.
Understanding: in this phase it is encouraged the use of images that project to the future and shorten the geographical and temporal distance with the future issues based on the subject matter. Participants become aware of the issue threatening their daily lives as well as others and strengthen the notion of the “usworld”.Engagement, questioning behaviour, and emotional effect: in this phase the exhibition showcases a series of multisensorial installations that aim at emotionally engage the audience but ultimately motivate them to be active citizens. The installations should include:
A piece for understanding the magnitude of the threat and engage the audience emotionally by feeling overwhelmed.
A piece to allow the audience to touch and feel the subject matter.
A piece that involves their body completely, but ultimately makes them feel hopeful.Active participation and behavioural change: the model focuses on the ascription of responsibility and awareness of consequences, and therefore on the NEP behavioural change model:
Activism awareness: the exhibition should show how the issue is and can be tackled from a global perspective, so that participants are encouraged to think globally.
Activism engagement: the exhibition must break down actions that can be taken to become active citizens and change behaviour at a community and local level, so that participants are encouraged to act locally while thinking about the global aspect of the threat.
Behavioural change: in this phase the audience is encouraged to freely reflect on their experience and think about what are the actions they will be taking to become active citizens and therefore change their behaviour.
