Making Publics examines how media, knowledge and technologies shape power relations, and designs alternatives for more open, plural, democratic societies.
At a glance
- We approach design as a generative discipline for creating more accountable public communication, democratising the production of knowledge and strengthening collective agency.
- We treat media, knowledge and participation as interconnected dimensions of public life. We position the design of alternatives and the sociocultural and material conditions of their legitimacy as analytically and practically inseparable.
- We work through practice-based, participatory and commons-oriented methods, collaborating across disciplines and with communities, civic organisations and policy making and cultural institutions.
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The challenge
Public life is increasingly shaped by concentrated media platforms, rapidly changing technologies and contested systems of knowledge. These structures influence who can participate, what becomes visible and credible, whose knowledge and rights count and how collective futures can be imagined.
Critical scholarship has established how media, culture and technology reproduce existing relations of power. Yet there remain too few spaces in which this analysis is translated into practice-led experimentation to reimagine established understandings and arrangements. Making Publics addresses this gap by bringing critical inquiry together with design research to explore, create and test alternative ways of producing, sharing and governing public knowledge.
Our approach
Making Publics experiments with human and non-human participation in media and knowledge production, as interconnected dimensions of public life. We treat meaning-making as material, cultural and political infrastructure that can be redesigned, challenging the unequal power relations through which publics are formed.
Our research is organised across three connected areas:
Knowledge Commons and Experimental Publishing explores publishing, archives and open knowledge practices as sites where knowledge is negotiated and publics are formed. It investigates experimental formats and commons-based approaches to producing, distributing and governing knowledge.
Cultural Framing and Collective Imaginaries examines how narratives, cultural codes and symbolic practices shape the legitimacy of alternative media systems, knowledge infrastructures and social and environmental futures. Through practice-based experiments, it investigates how alternatives become culturally visible, meaningful and legitimate.
Civic Futures and Intersectional Participation investigates civic and participatory infrastructures that support plural and democratic decision-making. It asks who participates, on whose terms and with what effects – including how nonhuman actors such as AI systems and ecological entities are granted or denied standing – using co-design, place-based research, futures methodologies and emerging technologies to address structural exclusion.
Outputs
Making Publics convenes researchers, practitioners, communities and partner organisations through collaborative projects, academic symposia and seminars and public engagement programmes. These activities create spaces for developing shared research questions, testing methods and building partnerships across academia, civil society, cultural institutions and public-interest media.
Our outputs include experimental publications and media formats, designed interventions, civic platforms and participatory models, academic research and policy-facing frameworks.
Active projects
- The Special Collection, Artists' Publishing and Institutional Memory – archival and collections research investigating special collections in UK art schools as forms of institutional memory and histories of publishing practice.
- Space in Mind (Helen Hamlyn Centre) – neurodivergent experiences of campus spaces and implications for public space design.
- Peri-pheral Design, special issue, Cubic Journal (HK PolyU) – exploring emerging design approaches towards resilient futures in a post-Anthropocene world.
- Mapping Socio-spatial Experiences of Teenage Girls in Urban Public Spaces, Participatory Design Conference 2026.
- Book and Toolkit: Design for Empowerment: Methods and Tools for Impact and Social Change, Bloomsbury.
- Code Ecologies: Building Cultural Legitimacy in Sustainability Transitions. Current Research in Environmental Sustainability.
Selected funded projects
- 2025 MyCity: Mapping Socio-spatial Experiences of Teenage Girls in Urban Public Spaces (RCA Community Engagement Seed Fund, with Wandsworth Council and Southside Shopping Centre)
- 2024 Your Bay, My Bay, Our Bay: Planning Street Experiments for a Child-Friendly City (Wandsworth Arts Fringe / RCA Impact Development Fund / University College Dublin)
- 2020–23 Fair Energy Campaign (LLDC, £150K): participatory framing practices applied to fuel poverty and net zero with marginalised communities
- 2018–21 Counter-Framing Design, Co-I (AHRC, £200K): collective identity formations and framing practices through design and social movement theory
- 2015-19 Self-Help Holistic Crisis Planning (SSHRC, $239K): co-design with community groups, healthcare providers, and youth experiencing crisis
- 2004–13 Sublime Magazine: pioneer sustainable lifestyles publication, distributed in 30 countries; self-funded, £200K; non-commercial governance as an experimental model for public-interest media
Archives and collections
Publications, bookworks and artists' books are held in a number of UK and US collections, including: Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford; Joan Flasch Artists’ Books Collection, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago; Metropolitan Museum, New York; MoMA, New York; Special Collection, Royal College of Art, London; Artists’ Book and bookRoom collections, University for the Creative Arts, Farnham; Special Collection, University of Kent, Canterbury; Wellcome Library, London; Special Collection, Wimbledon College of Art, London.
