Designer Margot Barolo receives a City of Stockholm cultural scholarship for The Kinship Method

The Kinship Method is a project for anyone interested in artistic practice and design, and has now been recognised by the City of Stockholm.

The project was initiated and led by Margot Barolo, designer and Programme Director for Product Design at Beckmans College of Design, as part of the college’s commitment to advancing artistic practice within its disciplines.

A changing role for designers and new ways of producing design
In The Kinship Method, five designers challenge themselves and one another by testing new methods that generate knowledge and question established ideas about how design is created. In doing so, they explore alternative roles for designers and broaden the ways in which design can be produced. Ultimately, this benefits consumers through a more diverse and inclusive approach to design—one that can also reach important groups whose needs are often overlooked today.

“The attention this project has received suggests a desire to explore alternative paths within design. The role of the designer today is rooted in older structures that limit designers’ ability to influence production. If we create better conditions for designers and for design processes within production, remarkable things could happen. New technologies are opening new doors. I hope the project and the book will inspire people to see how design can be used as a means of shaping change—and that the designer’s role is anything but static,” says Margot Barolo.

The project has been featured in exhibitions at Sven-Harrys Art Museum and Rian Design Museum. Earlier this year, a book about the project was also published by Arvinius Orfeus Publishing. This autumn, the project will also be presented in a lecture series at Beckmans.

Artistic research at Beckmans
In 2017, Beckmans College of Design launched an initiative in artistic research. Since then, three research projects have been carried out, each connected to one of our subject areas: product design, fashion and visual communication. The projects were presented in various formats throughout 2020, while new research projects were also initiated.