Tales of Institutioning and Commoning: Participatory Design Processes with a Strategic and Tactical Perspective

Abstract

With the concept of infrastructuring as a background for our reflections, this paper focuses on two complementary verbifications have entered the PD vocabulary: institutioning, which describes engagement with institutions, and commoning, which describes engagement with grassroots communities – and by extension alternative economic frameworks that challenge the status quo. We contribute to this discourse to reflect, theoretically, on themes emerging from the triad of relationships between designers, institutions, and grassroots communities. We do so presenting ‘tales’, excerpts of our own PD work with institutions and grassroots communities. In this way, we present a nascent conceptual framework that offers analytical potential to promote pluralist understandings of PD scholarship and practices.