Capturing scales of institutioning

The concept of Institutioning (Huybrechts, Benesch and Geib, 2017) calls for Participatory Designers (PD) to not only focus on the micro-level impact of their work, but to also understand how the institutions they are connected to are involved and impacted. This paper explores this concept within a Higher Education Institution (HEI) and local neighbourhood context, using two methods of analysis to draw out insights around the dependencies and impact of the institution. Firstly using Situational Analysis (Clarke, 2005), the context is captured at a meso-level at each stage of engagement revealing insights into the impact of PD methods. The dependencies and impact (both actual and potential) are captured through a new method called Institutional Frame Mapping, aiming to understand the different scales of connection between the institution and project. The paper concludes with potential opportunities to develop these methods and further embed Institutioning within PD practice.