The core question that seems to drive the Researcher in me, can often be generalised as: ‘how do systems work and (how) can I change them for the better?’ I use my graphic design skills to visualise research data and organise information.

(under construction)

United Painting R&D Program:

Developing a Digital Democratic Design Tool for Participatory Art Projects

In a world that seems to polarise further with every passing day, where competition is the norm, where success is being measured by how much you earn or possess, where exploitation is a necessary element for ‘growth’, where you are consumer first and human second – in this world, United Painting is persisting in be a dissenting voice. We do so by the way we work, with who we work and the places where we intervene with our projects. Co-creation of the artworks has always been one of United Paintings core motivators, because in this perspective it actively involves the people in the process of ‘owning’ the place. Over the years and in collaboration with a variety of artists and designers, this concept has been applied in different ways: from choosing colours (Haïti, Jeroen Koolhaas), playing with shapes on an overhead projector during a pre-painting workshop (Soza Den Haag, Anna Taratiel), stencilled carpets (Welcome Carpets, Sidney Waerts), to making your own patterns by means of layered stencils and colour combinations (Refresh Amsterdam, Marije Lytske Hester). These co-creative applications were all analogue till the project at Amsterdam Centraal in 2021/22.

During the development of the Amsterdam Centraal project, together with programmer Martin Lemaire, I had the opportunity to translate the design concept to a prototype digital tool that was immediately ready to use during the project itself. The effectiveness and efficiency that this digitalisation brought about was surprising. Besides the potential, it also evoked a lot of questions such as, ‘what are the effects of co-creation on the participants? Do they actually feel like a ‘co-creator’ of the artwork and the place because of this co-creation tool?’, ‘Does is actually hold experiential value for them? How much creative freedom do people actually want and what does that freedom depend on?’. During the projects I’ve heard many answers to these questions, after which I formulated the fundamental research question:

How and to which degree can United Painting projects facilitate creative freedom and involvement through the introduction of a digital tool in their co-creative processes?

The question is directed at locating the boundaries of co-creation within the circumstances of the painting projects and which parameters play an important role.

Sub questions

• What is co-creation?

• What is participatory art?

• What co-creation methods and processes does United Painting use?

• How did participants experiences different types of co-creation methods?

• How did designers/artists experience different types of co-creation?

• Which parameters are most important to facilitate co-creation methods in the process?

• How does the process change when a digital tool is introduced to the process?

• How did the participants experience the digital co-creation process?

The Textile Files - a continuous state of research into the future of Textiles

Driving Dutch Design & Dutch Design Week 2019

As consciousness around the world slowly grows on matters like waste, pollution, consumerism and its effect on the climate, the time for change is now. The fashion industry is estimated to produce 92 million tonnes of waste, worldwide, on a yearly basis. The selection of samples on display here (at Design Week; see image below) is from my printing technique library, used for referencing graphic artwork applications on garments to the manufacturers. This collection was the first point where I started questioning: What is this made of? And how does it affect the product it’s applied to, in the long run? With the ultimate question we all need to be asking: How can we design better?

This is a stopover on my search to answer the questions above. It shook me how little I knew about what I was putting out into the world as a designer, I was making decisions without the knowledge I would actually need - to do better. And if I had this problem, I would definitely not be alone. During this project, I collected as much knowledge as I could, in order to make better informed decisions, and since I am a firm believer that knowledge is a human right I wanted to share my findings in an accessible way with the public.