Paper short abstract:

The proposal aims to present the on-going case study of 'Costruire Bellezza' (Crafting Beauty), a Turin-based interdisciplinary lab focused on the topic of social inclusion of homeless people via design-anthropology-led creativity and participatory design processes.

Paper long abstract:

This proposal aims to discuss the interaction, collaboration and correspondence between Design and Anthropology in the framework of an interdisciplinary action-research toward social change.

It does so through presenting the on-going case study of Crafting Beauty (CB), a Turin-based interdisciplinary lab focused on the topic of social inclusion of homeless people via design-anthropology-led creativity and participatory design processes. CB, set up in 2014 as pilot project, is now working within public services for homeless people support.

Participants include researchers, homeless people, students in design and social sciences, social workers, educators and creative talents. Through regularly design activities, organized in a shelter, they all together experiment new projects, languages and production processes and share tacit and explicit knowledge and experiences.

CB acts as a strong relational apparatus of collaborative experiences by which all participants' biographies are also valued. In fact, the collective actions on the materiality of objects is a way to encourage a positive relation among participants that learn how to collaborate. In this way, the co-produced objects become a medium of relationship. Working on material transformation is also a way to propose, produce and visualize how some transformations are possible in homeless life.

CB is also a valuable tool, shaped by Design and Anthropology that, through co-designed artefact and processes, enables the researchers to 'stay in the field' of the social services context to better understand it and moreover stress it toward new models of personalized and community based welfare.