Workshop for Workshops: How to design space for interdisciplinary projects in Scientific Research?

My name is Lena, I have worked with designers and scientists to organise interdisciplinary workshops in institutions (mainly in Europe) for over 2 years. Through the workshops I am promote the need to create space for interdisciplinary projects within scientific institutions.

All of the content we create is open source and looking forward to sharing methodologies with other people organising workshops. This can be a space to exchange workshop methodologies amongst the participants of Biohafabbing.

http://www.synbio.cam.ac.uk/initiatives/colab/view

Proposed activity in session:

I propose an activity to generate series of fiction with the participants of the workshop. Biohackers, in my opinion are already great at creating alternate narratives of science through their projects. We can archive these stories and show case them on online platforms, send it to labs or share it to the world. Speculation is not the Designer’s job alone - it requires input from both design and science to construct a convincing narrative together.

Within the context of Biofabbing I want to discuss:

  • Designing workshop programmes with people from various backgrounds
  • How to pick topics based on various cultural and social contexts?
  • What kind of platforms can we effectively share initiatives? (Social Media, journals …)
  • How can we share methodologies?


Example of narratives:

As a member biohacker at the London Biohackspace for iGEM 2015, we developed the DIY Brew Kit is a 6 pack of test tubes consisting of genetically modified yeast strains, which include yeast strains which express lycopene that turns the beer red or natural compounds that providing it with a raspberry flavour. e design process allowed the project to do the contrary of concealing the fact that the product included GMOs, and instead used the genetic modification as a unique characteristic of the product.

Project example from Co-lab Synthetic Biology (November 2015): DNAish Food: In a food demand survey conducted by Oklahoma State University in January 2015, over 85% of the people supported mandatory labes on food containing DNA. e result is shocking as DNA content does not di er between organic and GMOs. DNAish Food is project which prmotes profound discussion on DNA and its relation to modern food. Participants from the workshop created sitckers and vandalized products at Monoprix, a French supermarket.

@marymaggic @vlorenzolana @dusjagr @bethan would you be interested?

Dear @lenaa ! Great you are presenting Colab! I would be more than happy to help you shaping this. To make sure if I understood well, you wanna do more like a presentation or hands on experience? What do you have in mind? Best!

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@vlorenzolana
Thanks for your reply :slight_smile: I envision a hands on activity - as mentioned in the previous post - I was thinking of doing a narrative workshop, where we make participants create stories based on biohacking. I also posted a photo from one of workshop sessions.

At the end it would be nice if we could discuss our experience organising workshops?

At GOSH! There was an unconference session on ‘workshopology’ - it could be fun to do an extension of that session. Participants were sharing their experience.

For this specific session I would like to focus on workshop methodologies (teaching and creating programmes)

What do you think?

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i’M interested in this!

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Sure, let’s hangout/skype (multiple?) tomorrow, Monday? Best

hi, i’d also be interested in this

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@ksobecka @marymaggic @vlorenzolana yes! Super glad to find people interested :slight_smile:

For Skype,should we wait to meet in person instead?

Hey Lena, I’d be interested in taking part, which date will this be held?

@lenaa Late to the party, but definitely interested

@r.s.kim It’s for unconference so not decided yet!
@bethan yay!

Hi Lenaa,

I am interested in it too and would like to add Karkhana’s pedagogy into it. Hopefully we will cook something interesting. @ksobecka @marymaggic @vlorenzolana the unconference is scheduled today at 6pm.

Sorry, this unconference is scheduled on Saturday at Hackterium :slight_smile:

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Yeah Hackteria+ Hackuarium = Hackterium !!! :wink:

@marymaggic @Juanmagararc @lenaa @ksobecka @r.s.kim @bethan we are writing down some ideas here.

http://piratepad.net/johrz52Jta Invite yourself :wink:

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