Radical Uncertainty Webinar | Radical Methodologies

Radical Uncertainty: Design beyond solutionism was a webinar hosted by Tom Ainsworth, Sally Sutherland and Ben Sweeting.This event opened up questions, exploring ways of acting and designing in situations characterised by changeability, conflicting values and uncertain boundaries. The event took place on 23rd July 2021. This was a transdisciplinary event, attended by people from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds.

The event hosted guest speakers Mihir Bhat, Shilpi Srivastava, Zoe Sadokierski, Chris Rose, and Claudia Westermann. These speakers were invited as their work and ideas have influenced our framing of the event. Each guest presented personal reflections informed by their work in response to the ideas and questions outlined below.

Please click on the name of the speaker to take you to their pre-recorded presentation: Mihir Bhat, Shilpi Srivastava, Zoe Sadokierski, Chris Rose, and Claudia Westermann.

We collaborated with four practitioners from our postgraduate community to produce a creative responses to the event. The varied and exciting responses come from Mathilda Gouin, Lauren Dark, Jordan Whitewood-Neal and Rachel Wilson. Please click on the name to see, view or hear the response. Please see this link for collaborator bios.

Radical Uncertainty: Design beyond solutionism

The term ‘radical uncertainty’ can be characterised by extreme complexity, instability or disagreement about what is considered known or knowable. As such, the event will discuss diverse conceptions of uncertainty and seek to identify modes of working that embrace rather than eliminate complexity.

The event seeks to identify and discuss situations characterised by changeability, conflicting values and uncertain boundaries. These include embodied, emotional, and tacit ways of knowing and representing the world (Mehta, Lyla, and Shilpi Srivastava, 2020) and ideas of responsibility, accountability and ethics.

Design is situated within the rich, shifting, complex and relational systemic situations as both discipline and practice. We, therefore, seek strategies that enable us to ‘stay with’ the unknown and the unknowable without becoming bound by cyclical exercises in rhetoric.

How can we embrace practices and deliver strategies that better engage with global challenges characterised by their radical uncertainty?

This short film presents an edited selection of clips, conversations and ideas taken from a University of Brighton webinar that took place on 23rd July 2021. This was organised by the Radical Methodologies Research Group, with support from the Centre for Arts and Wellbeing. The webinar was hosted by Ben Sweeting, Tom Ainsworth and Sally Sutherland. The guest contributors were Mihir Bhat, Shilpi Srivastava, Zoe Sadokierski, Chris Rose, and Claudia Westermann.

This short film also includes visual material produced as a response to the webinar by Lauren Dark, Jordan Whitewood-Neal, Mathilde Gouin, and an audio response from Rachel Wilson.

The event was generously supported by the Centre for Arts and Wellbeing (CAW) and the School of Architecture and Design.

If you have any questions about the event please contact Sally Sutherland via email at S.C.Sutherland@brighton.ac.uk