A case study report about the EU Open Design and Manufacturing (OD&M) project at Tate Exchange, in association with the University of the Arts London (UAL) Digital Maker Collective (DMC) and Beta Society. Co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union.
Download the below report here: 
OD&M x Tate 19_REPORT.pdf (1002.05 KB)
Report by: Chris Follows and Rosie Munro Kerr
Design by: Jorge García Redondo
Since September 2018 the Digital Maker Collective (DMC), a group of University of the Arts London (UAL) staff, students, alumni, have been developing a project titled ‘Beta Society’. The project aimed to establish an open and collaborative community to raise awareness and support greater diversity and equality of opportunity in technology, education and the arts.
Beta Society is a collaboration between the DMC and community/industry partners (see below))that supports projects exploring the impacts of technology on society. Working across public, private and industry sectors, it champions diversity and equality of opportunity in the technology industries, education and the arts.
This case study highlights the contribution of the Open Design and Manufacturing Project to the development of Beta Society and the launch event at the Tate Exchange (5-10 March 2019). Beta Society has been developed in collaboration with the following partners:
The focus of the week’s activity was collaborative and based on a process of exploration. As such, specific expectations and intended outcomes of the event were undefined prior to the event.
Beta Society event partners including OD&M and Digital Maker Collective all broadly shared the same aims for the Tate Exchange event:
Between 5-10 March, the UAL Digital Maker Collective, OD&M project affiliates, industry and community partners were in residence at the Tate Exchange for the launch of Beta Society. The event was structured around participatory workshops, round-table discussions and debates on the following themes:
The intention was to develop a new network of organisations, academia, industry and public to explore and reimagine a speculative society of equal opportunities. The ‘Beta Society’ network is an evolving concept and the event at Tate was the beginning of the journey.
Each day saw participatory and collaborative making activities and workshops in the ‘Action’ space paralleled by a series of programmed speakers, presentations and debates in the ‘Debate’ space.
The week was host to:
These activities were structured around the daily themes of:
See full programme link ACTION and DEBATE and Beta Society event info on Tate website.
Six students from UAL Central Saint Martins CSM MA Industrial Design who were engaged with OD&M related projects were invited to participate in the Beta Society event, all of whom are pursuing public-facing and socially engaged personal research projects. Their research projects shared thematic crossovers and interests with other Beta Society event partners:
The OD&M students each had participatory workshops and activities, previously developed in other publics, for which they were seeking public interaction and feedback. A small number of these workshops could be applied to the daily theme of the Beta Society event and the publics of the Tate Exchange used as a direct ‘test case’ for personal research.
Since the event itself was produced in the spirit of open collaboration and co-design with the other event partners and publics. All the Beta Society partners were encouraged to collaborate across agendas and interests. Cross-collaboration happened throughout the week, with all the different Beta Society organisations, groups and event agendas.
CSM OD&M students, DMC members and the event partners produced a number of successful new iterations of existing workshops through combining existing processes and co- developing new collaborative workshops to engage the public. For example CSM OD&M students 5 ‘ways’ workshop (problem solving) was combined with the DMC & LITC ‘Emoji’ workshop (collaborative storymaking). The CSM OD&M students also adapted their open design workshops to fit the Beta Society event themes of each day, e.g during the Child Rights themed day the students responded by creating a new ‘We Design it for Kids’ workshop in collaboration with fellow event partner, Child Rights International Network ‘CRIN’ team.
Image above: Dan Weil Photography
Within the ‘debate’ space a number of talks contextualised the OD&M paradigm, exploring sustainable models of open education and challenging the diversity and accessibility of creative programmes. Specific to the OD&M project were introductory and evaluative talks about the Charlton Street Market project (CSM MAID), which focused on the sustainability and infrastructural dependencies surrounding institutional/ public collaborations as well as the nature of public-student collaboration and community involvement.
The public were introduced to the OD&M card framework via a participatory workshop. The audience were encouraged to articulate a personal learning experience with a specific card from the learning framework.
OD&M talks and presentations within the ‘debate’ space:
Audience responses/ public feedback
The OD&M talks in the ‘debate’ space raised the following responses from members of the public:
How do you balance openness and accessibility with levels of attainment, varying ability/skills and varying time commitments? How useful is standardising this attainment through academic credits from the University?
Non-university and university based participants may have different expectations, motivations and aims for pursuing the project.
How do you bridge academic and industry specific language with communities/public? Is is relevant to all types of experience-based learning?
How do you facilitate or support the continuation of relationships, infrastructural dependencies and assessment framework after the OD&M project ends?
Other learnings/challenges
Student Experience
The students benefited from working closely with partners, and from working within the context of the week’s themes and provocations. The students were able to work with an outward- looking and collaborative approach, drawing out themes and ideas that were specifically relevant to their personal research:
“Our work was less insular - maybe a couple of us overlap in our projects and maybe we would have done something but we definitely wouldn’t have all been working together.” (Tyler Gindraux, CSM MAID student)
“We went in with a certain amount of expectation... we adapted to the situation...we also got new things out of it that we would never had anticipated [like] working so closely with provocations and partners in something that was external from our projects...and working together.” (Elliot Quinn, CSM MAID student)
The following impacts were reported by Beta Society event partners at the Tate Exchange evaluation session:
Following the Tate Exchange event, students from MA Industrial Design collaborated with CRIN to make a sculpture for the Human Rights pavilion at the 2019 Venice Biennale.
The event facilitated the continued collaboration, connection and interdisciplinary exchange of ideas amongst students across UAL courses and colleges: “I was following the Digital Maker Collective [on twitter] and now I interact with them a lot and they’ve been giving me references for what I’m working on.” (Tyler Gindraux, CSM MAID)
Event podcasts and video documentation from the Beta Society http://betasociety.org/podcasts.html
The OD&M project legacy will continue to inform the future development of Beta Society
Between September 2018 and March 2019 the Digital Maker Collective (DMC), met with the various ‘Beta Society’ partners to help develop and plan the Tate Exchange event. http://betasociety.org/info.html
The following workshops were hosted at the Camberwell Playground in the run up to the Tate Exchange event, directed towards participants of the Tate Exchange or the wider cohort of the DMC or MA Industrial Design students:
