Designing Possible Future in The Uncertainty

Figure 1: My interpretation on my progress

Through design, we can lead the future by creating simulations and examples that help people feel encouraged and assured because they’re experiencing the future they preferred. I believe that wandering while walking toward your aim doesn’t mean you’re lost; it means you’re shaping a path—one that others may follow as they look for a beacon toward their own future. That is exactly how I feel as I work on this project.

As an Indonesian, being manic and perpetually anxious about the future has always been embodied in Indonesian culture. Consequently, we naturally tend to conform to societal norms for safety, as radical and daring actions were never feasible in our upbringing. Many Indonesians still live in middle-lower economic conditions, which provide physiological sustenance. As Prof. Sohail Inayatullah (2025) rightly points out, our ability to perceive the future is influenced by our financial and sociological circumstances. This is evident in the number of residents in Cipadu who are helpless and resigned to their current circumstances.

Yet during my third intervention in Cipadu, an unexpected moment shifted this narrative for me. After the workshop ended, a young boy and his mother approached us. The boy held a meticulously drawn graphite sketch depicting one of Cipadu’s narrow alleyways. With surprising confidence, he gave us a brief “elevator pitch” about his drawing and his love for art. His mother nodded, affirming his words: “He loves to draw every day. He’s a good artist, in my opinion. And I wonder how to help him grow this talent for the future.”

My jaws dropped. Never in my life had a Southeast Asian parent—especially in a context of urban kampung like Cipadu—asked me how to support their child in becoming an artist. She even added, almost shyly, “Maybe he can pursue an international career or education… like you, miss. In London.”

This was an outcome I never anticipated. The workshop was never designed to steer or impose anyone toward a particular profession. Yet here was a mother daring to imagine a different future for her child; one that felt radical, creative, and global. It made me realise that even in places where futures feel constrained, imagination can quietly unlock possibilities people didn’t know they were allowed to consider.

From this experience, my imagination has been refined. It allows me to visualize the future as a path that is yet to be discovered, inspiring and motivating others to follow and aware.

This moment also changed how I understood the workshop and its deeper purpose. Rather than producing a fixed or predetermined outcome, the workshop revealed emerging issues, new perspectives, and unexpected insights. These learning edges became valuable signals or guiding lights that can shape the blueprint of the social futures we aimed to co-create.

Paving The Path and Acknowledging Privilege

Although I grew up in an urban kampung, I recognise the privilege of having an academic background and more stable housing conditions than many residents in Cipadu. This does not make me feel superior; instead, it makes me more aware that systemic socioecological problems touch all of us, directly or indirectly. I genuinely want to use this privilege to contribute more meaningfully, starting from my own community.

In trying to “create a path” toward the future, I realised that we must first build a secure foundation so that people can remain comfortable enough to keep moving. Futures work cannot bypass this step: imagination only becomes plausible when people feel safe, emotionally and materially, enough to look beyond today. This insight is shifting my project from being purely speculative toward one that designs sense-making steps, realistic “ladders” that connect the present to preferred futures.

This reflection also resonates with Kang Qodir’s upbringing and his influence in Karasa BDG in Gempolsari. He has become a path-maker for his village, turning it into a creative kampung through his passion for both creative and academic pursuits, transforming wicked urban kampung problems into opportunities.

His passion and leadership qualities make his actions relevant to emergent strategy (Brown, 2017). His attentiveness and empathy, combined with his ability to analyze emerging issues, have enabled Karasa BDG to become sustainable and adaptable to changing circumstances.

Kang Qodir inspired me to take proactive steps in addressing the emerging issues in Cipadu and actively participating in the community. Instead of finding solution

Integrating Maslow’s Theory in Path-Making

In reflecting on this path, I integrated Maslow’s hierarchy of needs because my conversations with both residents and experts consistently highlighted one truth: people can only imagine the future when their foundational needs are secure. Imagination requires a ladder, not a leap. Without stability, physical, emotional, and social, futures thinking becomes a privilege that many cannot access.

In my visual, the small figure standing higher on the slope represents this idea. It is a metaphor for a beacon, someone who, through their own journey, becomes a visible source of encouragement for others. Returning to my earlier reflection, although I come from an urban kampung, I now occupy a different layer of Maslow’s pyramid than many residents of Cipadu. My education, mobility, and access to opportunities position me on a higher ledge. Yet I remain on the same hill as everyone else; our lives are shaped by the same socioecological landscape.

This realisation became a crucial learning edge for me. From this broader vantage point, I am able to notice emerging possibilities, hidden connections, and alternative futures that may not yet be visible from where others are standing. Instead of treating this as something that separates me, I’m learning to see it as a responsibility: an opportunity to contribute, not an excuse to detach.

From that height, I can channel the “people, ideas, and guiding light” that have shaped who I am today, and bring them back into the kampung rather than keeping them for myself. My role is to hold the light steady so that others can see their own paths forward. In this way, the climb becomes collective, and the future becomes something we shape together rather than alone.

How I Shaped My Research Journey

As my research journey going further, I realised that designing socioecological futures in urban area is not a linear process but a continuous movement between reflection, interpretation, and imagination. The diagram above visualises this journey: a flow that begins with Exploring the Past, moves into Making Sense of the Present, and expands outward into Building the Future. The tangled line on the left represents the messy, emotional, and non-linear realities of lived experience; memories, sensations, and histories that people carry within them. It reflects the uncertainty and entanglement that many residents feel daily. Yet by slowing down and honouring these experiences, the first stage allowed me to gather embodied knowledge through the five senses, community stories, and cultural memory. This grounded the work in human truth rather than abstract assumptions.

The middle stage, Making Sense of the Present, reflects the prism-like moment where everything becomes refracted: STEEP analysis, narrative insights, and lived experiences are brought together to identify core pressures and precious values that matter most to the community. This is where patterns began to surface, where gotong royong emerged as a central social philosophy and ecological vulnerability surfaced as a key challenge. These insights then branched into multiple pathways, represented by the lines extending outward.

This marks the third stage, Building the Future, where collective imagination transforms these refracted insights into plausible and preferred futures. Here is where speculative scenarios are born; where residents’ dreams, fears, and hopes begin to take shape as tangible possibilities. In this way, the diagram becomes more than a process map; it becomes a visual reminder that futures are not predetermined but continuously shaped by how we listen, interpret, and imagine together.

My Learning Edges

1. Research is not a linear journey. It is a messy, iterative and complicated journey.
2. Researching complexity with complex journey makes the journey feels like a torture. But once you got the essence, epiphany, or guiding light, it feels fantastic.
3. Once you stepped in into the social design journey, it is an endless research. New insight, new tools, new methods and many other novelties will keep emerging. Stay grounded in my social data and research design is needed.
4. There are so many social design framework out there that can be implemented. But not many of them are easy to use, especially for the marginalized community.
5. Capturing conversations can be challenging, but using reflective drawing as a tool can make the process easier. Drawing can serve as a valuable social data source that can be interpreted concretely using data visualization, speculative narratives, and emerging GenAI technology.
6. It’s okay not to be perfect, what matters is to keep exploring and open to opportunities.
7. The end of MA does not signify the conclusion of research. This realisation has inspired me to develop a timeline to explore this research further and to return it to the Cipadu community.
8. People, researcher, and designer have their own needs and motivations. We can not teach or impose them what to do or what’s better for them. But we need to find a middle ground that everyone agrees and make sense.
9. As Hannah Arendt points out, the middle ground between the past and the future lies in thinking. However, thinking requires the ability to make sense of things. To alter the future, it demands an iterative process of comprehending and understanding. Unfortunately, not everyone possesses this capacity or possesses the necessary skills. Therefore, it is important for all expertises to collaborate in order to untie complexity in sense-making process.
10. Finally, this research not only change the community, but myself personally. My role shifted from designer to facilitator/mediator, bridging citizens with supportive experts/designers. I also now able to give more understanding in people’s behaviour and my own behaviour. This is a bittersweet journey, the change is, but it refracting the lights that I never knew I had.

Thank you, MA Applied Imagination.

Bibliography:

Brown, A.M. (2017) Emergent strategy: shaping change, changing worlds. Chico: AK Press.

Cherry, K. (2023) Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Verywell Mind.Available at: https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-maslows-hierarchy-of-needs-4136760 (Accessed: 28 November 2025).

In this big world, I recognize that I am not alone in doing this project. Some people have initiated and maybe already building something that is similar to what I have recently been doing.

On the beginning of my research, there are already some thriving urban kampungs that are developed collaboratively with designers and government on the other part of Indonesia. Such as Kampung Kollektief and Karasa BDG.

And during my prototyping and analysis stage, I found a speculative platform who also built a future narrative storytelling based on utopia future: https://livingfutures.org/

Here, I would be like to analyze the differences between my practices in Berimajinaria with Cipadu residents, with Kampung Kollektief, Karasa BDG and Living Futures based on their practices and methodologies.

Berimajinaria x Kampung Kollektief

Figure 1: Kampung Kollektief’s Co-Design Workshop for Making Rujak Plaza taken from Kampung Kollektief’s archieve

Berimajinaria x Karasa BDG

Berimajinaria x Jatiwangi Art Festival

Berimajinaria in Kampung 2050: Universe of Possibilities x Living Futures

Living Futures: Scenario Kit is a combined listening experience and practical toolkit designed to help people navigate complexity, uncertainty, and feelings of low agency by offering a safe and engaging space to explore and shape possible futures together. The kit presents four alternative futures set in 2050, each brought to life through narrated stories told by fictional characters, allowing users to understand what everyday life might feel like in different societal conditions. These scenarios are not predictions but imaginative, extreme-yet-plausible “what-if” worlds that show how flexible the future can be. Developed and maintained by the Danish Design Centre with support from the Danish Industry Foundation and the Danish Agency for Development and Simplification, the project draws on insights from more than 130 global experts and is freely accessible. As a living, evolving resource, Living Futures invites ongoing contributions from those interested in its future development.

My Two Cents

Figure: Project Positioning

You can probably tell by now how much I enjoy using four-quadrant analysis. Building on the comparative review above, this diagram maps the positioning of Berimajinaria and the Kampung 2050 project in relation to other similar initiatives.

Through several cycles of inductive research, the Kampung 2050 project has begun to move beyond product-driven problem-solving and into the spectrum of behavioural and cognitive engagement with the future through speculative narratives. This speculative orientation becomes a guiding light for designing future creative interventions, events that simulate preferred futures to understand what residents hope to experience. Press et al. describe this as experiential futures: immersing people in possible futures to expand their comprehension, agency, and readiness.

In this sense, Berimajinaria shares a conceptual kinship with Living Futures, which also builds future literacy through simulation. However, unlike Living Futures, Berimajinaria grounds its speculative work in real social data, the emotions, drawings, and lived narratives contributed directly by residents, allowing emerging trends and drivers to be analysed more contextually.

Because my engagement with the community has been conducted remotely, it has been challenging to maintain continuous, on-the-ground immersion in the way Karasa BDG and Kampung Kollektief have achieved. For this MA phase, my priority is to establish a strong methodological and conceptual foundation. Once I return and reconnect with the community directly, I will iterate the next stages of action-based work with deeper immersion.

Bibliography:

Press, J. and Celi, M. (2024) Designing Sustainable Futures: How to Imagine, Create, and Lead the Transition to a Better World. 1st ed. New York: Routledge. Available at: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003451693.

A Quick Catch Up

From my previous intervention, I developed a way to synthesise the community’s imaginative drawings. My initial plan was to publish these narratives on Instagram as an open archive, an invitation for wider participation. However, I soon realised that being consistently active on social media is far more challenging than simply scrolling through it. Part of this difficulty comes from time constraints, but part of it, maybe because I was tied to my own hesitation as a busy MA student.

But trust me, it is none of them.

This became clearer after listening to Mel Robbins’ audiobook Let Them (2024). She struck me in the head with the idea that the reason we hesitate to post or share our work is often rooted in the fear of being judged, especially by the people closest to us: friends, peers, colleagues. This resonated deeply. Shifting my practice into the realm of urban futures is something I have never done before, and naturally, it made me question whether I was “good enough” to speak on these topics publicly.

But that realisation also pushed me forward. Instead of holding back, I decided to take a leap of faith and allow myself to be challenged beyond what I’m used to.

“Let them judge, and let me invite these experts directly so they can hear and validate my projects”.

But beforehand, I would love to share the context of my data analysation from my previous co-design session.

Kampung 2050: A Universe of Possibilities

The reflective drawings from the previous intervention provided a rich and multifaceted set of data, revealing many community insights and aspirations. However, as I mentioned in my earlier reflection, I felt a responsibility to elevate these voices and share their messages with a wider audience. After discussing with my tutor, Diana Donaldson, and reading Design for Sustainable Futures (Press et al., 2025), I decided to transform these stories into a speculative format, through visual and narrative archives, to spark broader conversations about the future of urban living. Afterwards, an idea of Kampung 2050: Universe of Possibilities came out.

Using design fiction, I synthesised the drawings into four narrative matrices, each representing alternative future scenarios. These scenarios help people imagine and anticipate the kind of future they wish to create, based on two intersecting axes of emerging trends: status quo vs. progressive environment, and human-centred vs. nature-based conditions.

From my previous design talk in Hanover Street for London’s Art+Climate Week, the panel from Datasonica discussed how data can more than just numbers. It can be experiences, visual, auditory, and anything that can inform researchers about the situation. This aligns with Cecilia’s session two weeks ago, which focused on visualizing data. Inspired by this, I conducted an experiment using colour drops to count the number of colours used by participants in Cipadu. This data provided insights into the desired future they envision for their neighbourhood, based on their colour choices. Interestingly, natural colours like blue and green dominated the data, suggesting a strong preference for an eco-friendly future in their community.

These data is formed as an anticipation guideline which hopefully can communicate the desires, needs and aspirations from bottom-up to create a future-proof development by the urban developers.

What makes these narratives especially meaningful is how they demonstrate the role of communication designers as a bridge between communities and experts. Through drawing and co-design, citizens were able to express their visions, and communication designers translated these expressions into clear visual narratives. This project involved collaboration with:

• Graphic designers – Yudhistira, Daffi, Syafira and Qonita teaching how to draw for the co-design session
• Copywriters – Harits for tailoring the speculative visions with new narratives and Seno for handling the co-design session
• Motion designers – Glen for animating the story

This respond to what Lorusso (2022) highlights: communication designers are often trapped in an industry-centric cycle, rather than contributing directly to real-world social challenges. In this project, their skills became essential in connecting citizen imagination with expert interpretation, showing how communication design can support participatory, future-oriented urban development.

One of the communication designers also come to realization in the feedback form by saying: “The activity gave me a new perspective that the community does have problems, but they don’t have solutions. And no one is initiating the process of finding solutions together.”

External Verification

My first feedback was actually coming from Dragons’ Den Session with Kate Matlock and Will Medd. Their feedback suggested that this research has the potential to evolve into a tangible development blueprint for future urban planners, possibly even in collaboration with government stakeholders. They highlighted that the spirit of gotong royong—as revealed throughout the project—could serve as a powerful foundation for a new model of community-led urban development.

However, at this stage, I do not intend for the project to directly support or legitimise government agendas. My primary focus remains on nurturing the community’s agency to imagine and shape their own futures. Nonetheless, the experts’ suggestions opened a pathway for considering how this work could eventually be translated into a longer-term framework for policy dialogue. To begin moving towards that direction, I recognised the need to validate the emerging insights with experts who understand the dynamics of urban development.

As I said, engaging people through social media proved challenging, so I took the initiative to personally invite experts—many of whom are part of my Indonesian network in London. These new community-created narratives then became a conversational artefact for discussions with urban and environmental professionals, whom I invited to collaborate in this idea-proofing session. These collaborators are:

• Service designers – Andrina and Nabila
• Urban designers & planners – Hasna and Madina
• Urban architect – Sarah from Studio Pppooolll
• Urban risk planner – Ihsan

The online co-design session (via Miro and Google Meet) began with a presentation of the project context and aims. Through these conversations, several key insights emerged:

1. Designers as Bridges
Designers and researchers play a crucial intermediary role, acting as facilitators and translators. According to Sarah, the architect, she said this role of communication has been something that can help us facilitate community imagination “as the foundation of the development”. The role of communication designers also can turned informed data from residents expression, into visual ideas. Which she said can help to ensure these ideas retain their nuance when communicated to architects, urban designers, or policymakers. This prevents the community’s aspirations from being oversimplified or detached from their lived realities.

2. Building Trust
Facilitated workshops and open dialogue help cultivate trust between residents and external experts. This interaction provides community members with a safe and supported space to articulate both their concerns and their hopes for the future. This idea is also related to what Ismal Muntaha from JAF said, how acting like a guest with Cipadu residents as a host can immerse further in the conversation.

3. Synthesising as the Entry Point for Development
After aspirations are collected, often as colourful, layered, and sometimes abstract drawings, they are synthesised and categorised. This step makes them more actionable, allowing planners or designers to identify priorities and development opportunities.

4. Providing Experts with Concrete Context
Synthesised insights offer experts a more precise understanding of what the community implicitly wants. For instance, if residents draw high-rise buildings, an ambitious or radical visual expression experts can translate that desire for density into workable solutions, such as resilient green spaces or elevated public shelters that support flood mitigation and evacuation needs.

5. Leveraging Existing Community Strengths
The discussions reinforced how powerful the existing culture of gotong royong (mutual cooperation) is. Experts noted that this social infrastructure can and should be embedded into future development strategies, as it is already a natural mechanism for community gathering, bonding, and resilience.

6. Reinforcing Ownership and Local Identity
Documenting muatan lokal (local stories), family histories, and imaginative drawings strengthens the residents’ sense of ownership over their environment. These archives can serve as cultural anchors—or even political leverage—if future tensions arise around evictions or land rights.

7. Navigating Welfare and Political Realities
Some residents initially seek quick or monetary solutions due to economic precarity, which shapes how they imagine the future. The experts validated that the process offers a counterbalance by proposing phased, long-term strategies. Structuring outcomes into intervals (e.g., every three years) aligns them with political cycles and increases the likelihood of continuity across changes in government leadership.

8. Recommended Separation
Nabila from service design suggested that separating the user base by demographics is generally preferred because different demographics have different experiences. Andrina also added, this separation allows researchers to track and understand whose aspirations are represented. From their feedback, I acknowledged this feedback and indicated an intention to categorise drawings per demography, recognizing that different generations have different stories.

9. Building A Space Where Nature and People Can Gathered
Urban designers and an architect strongly recommended considering building a nature-based space like a park, where people can gather and engage in community activities together. Sarah mentioned that her studio has a blueprint of RPTRA (Ruang Publik Terpadu Ramah Anak) that could be helpful in initiating the construction of a park. Based on their observations during the proof-of-concept phase, they observed a strong desire for community gatherings in the area, as evidenced by the value placed on social interactions. Parks and public spaces, such as RPTRA, are crucial because they serve as essential community gathering points for people of all ages.

Image: External Verification with Cipadu Residents and Local Officers

I recently realized that I missed the most crucial step after contextualizing and shaping this research: reaching out to the residents. To enhance the ethicality of this research, I did contact them, even though I had already submitted my evaluative report.

However, I understand that it’s better to be late than never, as the residents are invaluable collaborators in this project. I may have inadvertently forgotten to include this aspect in my evaluative report as well.

Dear residents of Cipadu, I want to express my sincere gratitude for your invaluable collaboration!

Due to this oversight, I have reached out to the Cipadu Residents group to conduct external verification with me using Miro and Speculative Future Videos that I uploaded on YouTube.

Time differences actually the hardest part on doing participatory action research, but I managed to make times with the people in Cipadu during the weekend by prioritising and valuing their time before me.

The people who were joining the online conversation are:

1. Nur Hayati – Cipadu resident
2. Asla Laila – Cipadu Senior Officers
3. Ade Ruhiyat – Cipadu RW 05 Community Leasers

Hence, the conversation we had was really interesting. They were fascinated with how the residents’ drawing are moving now, making more clarity on how to imagine the future.

The four scenarios and underlying research were presented to a panel of external experts, including urban planners, developers, and architects, for verification and feedback on feasibility. Here are the key takeaways:

1. The stakeholders implicitly concluded that the most viable and impactful starting point is to focus on realizing the Social Future /Gotong Royong by strengthening and formalizing the practice of gotong-royong.
2. They argued that a strong, collaborative social foundation is the essential precursor to achieving more complex and capital-intensive goals, such as the widely desired “Eco-Future.”
3. The panel’s most critical recommendation was the creation and activation of a dedicated public space (“tempat berkumpul”). Such a space is seen as a physical catalyst for strengthening gotong-royong, serving as a central point for community interaction, idea sharing, organizing events, and reinforcing a shared identity and purpose. Especially, when Mrs. Laila mentioned that they will soon have a community space called GKB in Kavling Setiabudi, Cipadu for people to gather.
4. It will serve as the physical embodiment of the expert-recommended gathering space, providing a tangible venue for community-building activities.
5. Community stakeholders in the discussion expressed full agreement with the expert analysis, confirming that rebuilding the community’s spirit is the foundational priority.
6. There was a strong consensus that focusing on the “software” (people, mindset, social systems) must precede focusing on the “hardware” (physical infrastructure). As articulated by Bu Asla, “pondasi dulu kita kencengin orang-orang yang dulu kita kita kencengin…” (“First, we must strengthen the foundation; we must strengthen the people first…”).
7. And the key strategic pillar is to target youth as the primary agents of long-term change.
8. The goal is to provide motivation, role models, and a sense of agency to a generation perceived as being particularly vulnerable to resignation.

Next Steps

After the discussion, they pointed out for Berimajinaria to make use of their new space to initiate youth activities, which in summary

1. Community Screening: The animated videos depicting the four futures will be screened for residents, particularly the children who participated, at the new space.
2. Feedback and Visioning: The screening will be used as a tool to spark imagination, facilitate community discussion, and gather feedback on a preferred collective vision.
3. Playful Education: The GKB will become a hub for ongoing programs that are both engaging and educational (“belajar tapi playful”). These activities will address key community issues like environmentalism (e.g., waste management via the bank sampah) and social cohesion.
4. Knowledge Hub: The space will be used to invite external practitioners, academics, and designers to transfer knowledge and skills directly to the community.

The long-term success of transforming Cipadu rooted on several critical factors identified during the discussion.

• Combating Resignation: The central strategic challenge is overcoming the prevailing sense of hopelessness. All project activities must be intentionally designed to inspire hope and build positive momentum.

• Consistency and Long-Term Vision: Stakeholders recognize that this is not a short-term project. It requires consistent effort and maintaining momentum over a long period. The “Cipadu 2050” framework provides the necessary 25-year horizon for this ambitious and essential transformation.

Reflection

This whole journey on finding the way in order for people to be able to envision and later design the sustainable future has been a wind whirling path for me. But I do believe in the statement of Daoism by “we made the path by walking.” Regardless how slow or steep the roads are, they are still making a way out of something.

As a reflection I summmed up the external verification onto this table:

Bibliography:

Lorusso, S. (2023) What design can’t do: essays on design and disillusion. First edition. Eindhoven: Set Margins’ (Set margins, #26).

Press, J. and Celi, M. (2024) Designing Sustainable Futures: How to Imagine, Create, and Lead the Transition to a Better World. 1st ed. New York: Routledge. Available at: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003451693.

I learnt about autoethnography this afternoon with Zuleika, and I can tell you how much it changed my perspective on seeing my research that are both ethnography and autoethnography.

In my take, autoethnography is a reflective, evidence-based research method that situates the researcher’s lived experience within wider cultural and historical contexts. And somehow it can be bias but also can be personal reflection in research. 

Because somehow we are a living proof of how we have own lived experience to explore cultural, political, or social phenomena that happened surround us. And to be engaged and immersed into the situation is apparently really important.

How Autoethnography Happened in My Research

At first, my research mainly observed the community from a distance by doing digital co-design sessions, online observations, and insights from local authorities, including my sister, who works as a subdistrict staff member.

I once asked her to help by interviewing a few residents. But when she sent me the recordings, I noticed the conversations were heavily guided, framed in a way that led participants toward certain answers. Her intentions were good, perhaps driven by a need for quick, actionable results. Which, as Irwin (2020) notes, aligns more with traditional design approaches. Yet this also showed me how challenging it is to create genuine systemic change.

That realization made me determined to return to Cipadu in person to carry out my interventions directly and engage deeply with the community. I wanted to break through the layers of assumptions and biases that often form when research happens at a distance. And it worked!

During each co-design session, I invited participants to engage their senses, to feel, see, hear, taste, and smell their surroundings. These sensory explorations became the foundation for uncovering the root causes of local issues and imagining future possibilities for their neighbourhoods.

By the third intervention, new layers of understanding began to emerge. People didn’t just talk about wanting better jobs or flood prevention, they began imagining greener environments and stronger community bonds.

This experience made me realize that biases and assumptions can come from anywhere. Even from those who are seen as “leaders” or “representatives” of the neighbourhood.

So, This Got Me Thinking..

I think I was daydreaming again when the lecture is on going. But somewhere between drifting thoughts and discussion, something clicked. When we talked about how everyone carries inherited biases shaped by cultural narratives, I began to see an additional layer: the way people assume things about other people or communities. That’s what led me to create the sketch above.

The sketch is inspired by the Multi-Level Perspective framework from Transition Design, which I find very relevant for understanding the hierarchy within an ecosystem. Because it reminds me how power or hierarchy still played a part, especially on the first time I asked my sister to record an interview.

At the core, I placed the people or community, because they are the heart of it all, the focus of any change or intervention. Surrounding them is the second layer, representing local authorities, those who are meant to serve and support the community, though sometimes only indirectly.

The third layer holds the researchers, designers, and experts. The people like me, who move between the community and the authorities, so we can navigate between the community and the government. This layer came from my previous Dragon’s Den feedback in October, when the panel suggested that designers shouldn’t just facilitate communities, but also find ways to translate those insights into the policy level.

Finally, in the outermost layer, I placed the external world, or those who are often the least connected to the community, yet the quickest to form opinions. Their understanding is shaped by media portrayals or second-hand stories about the kampung. This reminds me of what Inayatullah (2017) describes as the litany level, a surface layer of perception shaped by externalized realities.

When I put this drawing:

We can see how vibrant and abundant the ideas and drawings are. The people at the core of the ecosystem carry many worlds within one, what Escobar (2018) describes as the pluriverse. Yet, as we move outward through the layers of stakeholders, these diverse narratives begin to narrow. Those in the outer layers often cherry-pick or select only the stories that align with dominant perspectives or fit their own contexts. Let’s also see these dots as our own biases based on the position we are all in.

But as Zuleika said, the bias can be reduced by reflecting on our process and presenting evidence for our assumptions. Yeah right, it is knowledge. As a researcher who is encouraged to reflect daily, the dots are becoming interconnected, allowing us to understand things from a broader perspective. For instance:

For those operating within a system or situation (insiders), there is an intense burden caused by the external problems and assumptions that surround them. This internal perspective often feels compressed by layers of assumptions and major issues, which act as barriers that suppress positive energy and prevent change-making ideas from coming to fruition. Conversely, the image suggests that genuine transformation can also be catalyzed from within by applying focused pressure directly to the system’s core, which then creates the necessary momentum and movement for change to occur.

This Assumption Diagram Also Works As Ideas Generator

I found the similarity between assumption and ideas when it comes to thinking. And this diagram works for it as well.

We may select our own ideas from the abundance, but we connect, see and understand them from a broader perspective. Just as the heart pumps an adequate amount of blood to circulate throughout the body. The heart may produce all the blood cells and distribute them through these vessels, to every part of the body, and coming back in circle into the heart. It is interesting how the world is always work in circle.

source: wikipedia

But is this diagram is hierarchical? For me, this works like circle but moving forward and moving in. When we got inspired by people’s ideas or knowledge, we internalized it– we keep it, and we digested it. But somehow, it also can be externalized, by sharing it to the world.

Again, a very circular process.

Bias in Our Way of Seeing

The day after the lecture, I went to Sky Garden for the first time. I always love to see things from above, because everything feels enormous, and I can see details from broader views. But what I sometimes hate, I think my camera does not do me justice. I always feel like I failed to capture things that I actually want to see.

Because I feel like I want to capture how Tower Bridge looks connected to Tower of London when I saw it from up above. Instead, the camera often framed on things that it only focuses on. The whole block of City of London. But I zoomed it, it makes the whole picture went blur! I guess I am not a really great photographer, or maybe I only want captured my bias and ignoring its surrounding counterpart?

This reminds me of “Way of Seeing” book by John Berger that I just recently read. How the technology of capturing things is actually just capturing things that they want to focus on. Just like how we want to capture complexity and how we reframe it into our own context.

There is bias in our way of capturing things, just like how we want to capture ideas or assumptions. That’s why it is important to step back further a little bit and seeing things from broader view and understanding the connecting context that shaped it. Just like seeing City of London from the Sky Garden.

My Thought

Individual assumptions are just like an idea, they will remain an ick on the back of the head if it is not being done or circulated.

Bibliography

Irwin, Terry. (2018). The Emerging Transition Design Approach. 10.21606/dma.2017.210.

Wallace, N. (no date) “Using the multi-level perspective for problem articulation, leverage point identification, and systems storytelling in design.”

Escobar, A. (2018) Designs for the pluriverse: radical interdependence, autonomy, and the making of worlds. Durham: Duke University press (New ecologies for the twenty-first century).

Berger, J. (2008) Ways of seeing. London: British Broadcasting Corporation and Penguin Books.

Image: Collection of Postcard Images from Cipadu Citizen

Reflection

After the reflective drawing co-design session with Cipadu residents, we finally compiled a collage that provides a broad overview of their aspirations for their future neighbourhood. However, it seems that the images not only reflects their aspirations but also reveals some of the underlying problems that have contributed to a larger issue: the flood.

The flood is merely the visible and significant aspect of the problem. Beneath the surface, there are numerous interconnected and intertwined issues – sociotechnical, economy, and ecology – that have led to the emergence of “wicked problems.” It’s no wonder that floods have move beyond just disasters to become enormous civic struggles, ultimately leading to social resignation (DelSesto, 2022).

On the first intervention, some residents claimed that the youth in Cipadu lacked social awareness, leading to hopelessness in the community. However, when we consider the broader picture (like for real, as depicted in the collage above) the complexity and enormity of the problems portrayed, are incomprehensible to an individual, let alone an entire generation.

This social averse behaviour rooted from the uncertain contemporary world, prompting the urgent need for quick fixes rather than confronting the uncertainty as a solution (Akama et al., 2018). Consequently, the third intervention challenged the residents’ assumptions and also the status quo by gathering civic imagination and exploring how we can transcend the present problem to envision possible futures through Indonesian cosmopolitan localism, a regional-based lifestyle known as ‘gotong royong’ (Irwin, 2015).

In accordance to this, maybe we are not supposed to solve the problems. Because the complexity may be unbearable for an individual task. Why can’t we ‘gotong royong’ to facilitate a civic transition by empowering imagination to be comfortable to face uncertainty, thus, create possible, desirable futures for the Cipadu residents, even more, similar urban villages landscape in Indonesia?

Therefore, How can the philosophy of ‘gotong royong’ spark collective imagination to reimagine regenerative futures in Greater Jakarta’s urban villages?

What? The Pandora Box Found After Co-Design

Image: The Young Participants in The Second Day of Reflective Drawing Co-Design

In the third intervention, which adopted a co-design approach, I invited Cipadu residents from diverse demographics and generations to participate. Interestingly, the majority of those who actively engaged in the reflective drawing session were school-aged youth—often stereotyped as socially withdrawn or indifferent. Their enthusiastic participation, however, contradicted this assumption, revealing a genuine willingness to contribute to community dialogue and the collective envisioning of their neighbourhood’s future.

This participation reflects the living manifestation of gotong royong, the Indonesian value of mutual assistance and shared responsibility. This is where individuals harmonize their efforts towards a shared goal: shaping a better future together through collective imagination.

Image: A Designer Explaining on How To Do Reflective Drawing

While the depth of the participants’ motivations requires further exploration, their willingness to engage amidst uncertainty was deeply meaningful, and hopeful. Alongside them, the experts and designers who participated—many of whom are my professional peers and close friends—brought valuable insights, creativity, and unexpected enthusiasm. The sense of camaraderie and collective spirit that emerged during the sessions embodied the cultural essence of gotong royong, which continues to thrive as an inherent social practice within Indonesian communities.

Moving forward, this research seeks to expand gotong royong beyond its philosophical understanding, positioning it as a methodological framework for designing systemic change within complex, interconnected challenges, or “wicked problems” (Webber, 1973).

In earlier stages, my research primarily focused on design for social innovation. However, the data gathered using multi-level perspective from all three interventions, demonstrated that addressing immediate challenges is not enough.

Image: Layers of Issues Structed using Multi-Level Perspective

What is required is a future-oriented approach that questions, confronts, and reshapes the systemic roots of these challenges. This direction resonates with the principles of Transition Design, a transdisciplinary approach that emphasizes long-term, intentional transformation within social and ecological systems (Irwin, 2015; Costa, 2023), which later become my foundation for this research that required further study.

Why? Design for Transition to Empower Possible Futures Through Gotong Royong

People crave possibility, and indeed, being hopeful is not naïve. In this contemporary era marked by rapid technological change, climate crisis, and growing complexity, hope itself becomes a form of strength and resistance and no longer a vivid daydream. For those living in Indonesia’s urban villages, particularly communities within lower socio-economic groups which most vulnerable to climate change impacts (Huq and Ayers, 2007), hope is essential for survival.

Transition Design builds upon Design for Service and Design for Social Innovation. It advocates for using design as a catalyst to deliberately initiate and guide transformation processes, creating interventions that operate across both short- and long-term timescales (Irwin, 2015). Within this framework, uncertainty is reframed not as a threat but as a generative ground for possibility and growth.

However, for Transition Design to hold real meaning in Indonesia, it must be contextualized and localized. Instead of applying raw frameworks derived from the Global North, this research proposes an cosmopolitan localism (cosmolocalism) of gotong royong, embedding its cultural essence into the Transition Design paradigm (Manzini, 2016). This process allows gotong royong to act not only as a social philosophy but as a generative design method that catalyst uncertainty and complexity into regeneration and collective empowerment.

Moments of crisis often reveal humanity’s capacity for solidarity and cooperation; crisis can strengthen communities through collective care (Bregman, 2021). This mirrors how gotong royong naturally emerges as a shared response to uncertainty, transforming chaos into connection and vulnerability into mutual strength.

In the context of Cipadu, the reflective drawing intervention already demonstrated this dynamic. Residents, particularly the youth, began to visualize possible futures through their own experiences and ideas—embracing the unknown rather than avoiding it. This process exemplifies describe as “designing with not knowing,” where uncertainty itself becomes a generative condition for imagination and transformation (Akama et al., 2018).

Image: Reflective Drawing Session

To make uncertainty a comfortable and empowering process, a shared platform for collective action and imagination is crucial, one that allows people to inspire one another, validate each other’s ideas, and co-create meaning. Such a space must be liberating rather than limiting, enabling communities to envision regenerative futures not as passive recipients of change, but as active designers of their own possibilities.

How Do We Move Forward?

Image: A Child Draw a Landscape

Being reflective alone is not enough to generate concrete solutions, as most of the ideas remain rooted in everyday experiences and simple “what-if” scenarios. Several drawings appeared less reflective in nature, particularly those resembling children’s sketches, such as depictions of houses or mountain landscapes. However, this recurring pattern of drawing a generic “house and mountain” scene, though seemingly simplistic, is itself worth exploring further, as it may reveal deeper symbolic meanings or collective aspirations within the community.

When I asked the children why they chose to draw houses surrounded by nature, most of their answers were strikingly similar: “I want to see more nature in my neighbourhood,” or “This is the kind of neighbourhood I know.” Their responses reveal a longing for greener, more open environments—something absent in their everyday reality. Reflecting on the actual conditions of their neighbourhood, where cramped alleyways and dense informal settlements dominate the landscape, it becomes clear that the natural views they depicted exist more in imagination than in daily life.

It is no longer just less reflective drawing, these depiction of natures in children’s drawing are hopeful imagination that should be reflection to the community and the authority.

These ideas hold the potential to spark deeper conversations, if only we can find ways to transform these aspirations into real possibilities. Yet, this was the stage where I felt the most uncertain. I feel responsible not only to retell their stories or amplify their voices, but also to ensure that I wasn’t merely extracting their hopes and imaginations for the sake of research. I wanted their visions to live beyond the boundaries of this project, to mean something to them as much as to the world that hears them.

This led me to the next crucial question: How can I move forward to share their message and translate their imagination into collective action?

On my third tutorial with my tutor, I carried their drawings to the class with my question on what can I do to echoing their voices. Because, I believe in order to build hope, it is not just trying to find the oasis but also have a clarity on seeing the oasis, or in the other words; showing possibility.

I shared with my tutor how the idea of clarity had recently helped me in an unexpected way. Last week, while at Camden Town Station, I found myself unable to take the escalator. In that moment of hesitation, I noticed an emergency stairway with a sign that read, “This stairway has 92 steps.” I realized I had never seen such a sign before, or perhaps I had simply never paid attention to it. That day, however, I was unusually alert and aware of my surroundings, and this small detail made me reflect on how clarity in communication can provide a sense of reassurance and direction, especially in moments of uncertainty.

Image: Emergency Stairs in Covent Garden Station taken from Google

Therefore, this spark an idea between us on what about making these reflective drawings just like staircases that portray clarity of the future steps that they need to take. Making their drawing as depiction of hopes and possible futures that could lead to many conversations.

Placing imagination at the center of uncertainty doesn’t just help us stay hopeful, it allows us to think in bold and new ways about the future. We can’t face tomorrow using the same patterns and habits that created today’s problems. Imagining possible futures helps us move beyond simply surviving; it encourages us to see a more genuine, positive, and meaningful way to move forward (Lear, 2008). Thus, people need to be able to visualise their dreams, their imaginations, and their possible futures. That’s why the “92 Steps” information works to reduce our anxiety in facing the uncertain future, because we are given clarity.

What If The Future Universe Is Rewritten by The Citizens Themselves?

They already had the imaginations, and they already have their own ideas. Now, let’s frame their dreams into steps that they can create their own.

In the fourth intervention for this research, I will position myself as a designer and strategist who can inspire others to awaken and participate by facilitating their aspirations (McCoy, 2018). Furthermore, I will be the one who recounts their stories, capturing and archiving them through narrative that can evoke possible futures, akin to design fiction.

If the strategy succeeded, this intervention will spark conversation and knocking the door of possible collaboration with experts and professional who can actually capturing the citizens idea. So these flying houses, nature oriented neighbourhood and any other radical ideas by the citizens are not only mere daydream.

Bibliography

Pink, S., Akama, Y. and Sumartojo, S. (2019) Uncertainty and possibility: new approaches to future making in design anthropology. Reprinted. London New York, NY Oxford New Delhi Sydney: Bloomsbury Academic.

Irwin, T. (2015) “Transition Design: A Proposal for a New Area of Design Practice, Study, and Research,” Design and Culture, 7(2), pp. 229–246. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/17547075.2015.1051829.

DelSesto, M. (2022) Design and the social imagination. London ; New York: Bloomsbury Visual Arts (Designing in Dark Times).

Lear, J. (2008) Radical hope: ethics in the face of cultural devastation. First Harvard University Press paperback edition. Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England: Harvard University Press. Available at: https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674040021.

Costa, AM. (2021) Transition Design: A Future-Oriented Vision to Today’s Solutions. Medium. Available at: https://medium.com/@adamaymo/4-transition-design-a-future-oriented-vision-to-todays-solutions-26f3808d02ba (Accessed: 11 October 2025).

Ayers, Jessica & Huq, Saleemul. (2008). The Value of Linking Mitigation and Adaptation: A Case Study of Bangladesh. Environmental management. 43. 753-64. 10.1007/s00267-008-9223-2.

Manzini, E. and M’Rithaa, M.K. (2016) “Distributed Systems And Cosmopolitan Localism: An Emerging Design Scenario For Resilient Societies,” Sustainable Development, 24(5), pp. 275–280. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1002/sd.1628.

McCoy, K. (2018) Citizen Designer: Perspectives on Design Responsibility (Second Edition). in V. Vienne (ed.), pp.2-3. New York: Skyhorse Publishing Company, Incorporated.

Image 1: Social Media Invitation for The Event

After nine months miles away from home, I finally come back home. But this time, not as a local, but as a visitor. With the eyes of both a stranger and a researcher, the familiar suddenly feels unfamiliar. What once seemed ordinary and normal, now reveals its weight, its fractures, its hidden power. Paradoxically, distance makes me feel closer, more empowered to question and empathize what I once accepted as “normal.”

The people of Cipadu welcomed me with open hands, seeing my presence as a chance to make a ripple. Like many marginalized communities, they often look for a saviour. But I reminded them, I am not here to save, but to spark possibilities, to help them find power within themselves. Making emergent strategy possible by involving learning from the patterns and systems of the natural world to build adaptive and relational ways of being (Brown, 2017).

This makes me wonder about the weight of socio-ecological pressure they were facing until they were so desperate for immediate change.

The Preparation

I spent hours with fellow Indonesian designers, who were interested to collaborate in my third intervention, shaping a simple way to turn people’s imagination into usable social data. While we were still wrestling with a co-design method, I received a reply from Lucy Kimbell, Professor of Contemporary Design Practices at Central Saint Martins, to my earlier email on Social Design.

She shared a bunch of resources on design for transitions, including ‘Thinking while drawing and drawing to think: Exploring reflective doodling as a critical reflective practice in design for transitions.’ (Wallace, 2020) which sparks a new idea for the co-design method.

Image 2: Intervention 3 Plan

In this journal, the writer discusses how reflective doodling can be a unique form of thinking-drawing helps designers process complex theoretical knowledge to unpack wicked and sociotechnical problems. Drawing or doodling can be the easiest medium for co-creation between diffuse designer (the people) and expert designers, that could lead to emerging innovation (Manzini, 2015). Thus, it made me and my fellow designers come up with the idea of cross-collaboration co-design hackathon, through reflective drawing.

“Draw, Play, Reflect” Implementation

Image 3: Reflective Drawing Implementation

In this intervention, researchers and designers stepped into the role of story facilitators instead of heroes. By engaging with residents’ lived experiences, we gathered fragments of their aspirations and transformed them into visual narratives on postcards. Inspired by the idea of penpals, each postcard became a vessel for heartfelt expression, allowing people to pour their emotions into drawings.

The session was designed to move away from the typical top-down “magic touch” solutions of local authorities, but rather amplifying community voices through creative translation and uncovering their potential. The task was simple: imagining your vision of a dream home, public space, or community in Kampung or Village of Cipadu. Residents could either sketch freely on a blank A6 postcard or overlay their reflections onto curated photographs that illustrated pressing issues from the first intervention; flooding, waste, public space, and the state of gotong royong. .

Participants ranged from children to older generations, with sessions held across two days. The first day was dedicated to adults, who tended to be more reflective, grounding their drawings in both discovery and personal memory. Many linked their ideas to lived experiences from the past, enabling us to uncover deeper insights into the root causes of the challenges faced by the community.

The second day was dedicated to children, the very generation that many participants in the previous intervention had expressed concern about. For the children, the session felt more like a drawing and play activity rather than a co-design process, which was completely fine, since the aim was to capture their perspectives on the neighbourhood rather than formal aspirations. Children naturally tended to draw familiar and simple things, such as mountains, houses, or objects from their daily surroundings.

As anticipated, the drawing-on-postcard activity was seamless and easy to engage with. With encouragement and affirmation throughout the drawing process, participants became more confident in their art, and many ended up creating more than one postcard to reflect on the multiple challenges they face in their neighbourhood. It was heartwarming to witness participants sharing their reflections not only with their neighbours, but also with the local authorities who joined the session.

Participants also seemed more motivated once they learned that their drawings would be exhibited in London as part of further research. To make the process more enjoyable, snacks and drawing tools were provided so that participants could focus entirely on expressing their ideas. Interestingly, some children even brought their own drawing tools, making them more comfortable with the activity.

The Unexpected Outcome

Image 4: The Reflective Drawing Postcards Compilation

In total, more than 90 postcards were collected from both children and adults. About 70 participants preferred to draw on blank postcards, allowing themselves greater freedom to express radical and imaginative ideas. Meanwhile, around 20 chose to draw on photographic overlays, giving them a more direct way to respond to specific issues.

Image 5: A Girl Draw Her Dream to Live Far Away from Flood

As expected, flooding emerged as the community’s main concern. However, the personal stories and underlying causes revealed through the drawings were deeply unexpected, uncovering new dimensions of the problems, such as:

• “I need to move my motorcycle to higher ground whenever heavy rain comes. I’m so afraid the flood will sink it,” one young lady explained.
• “Since Covid-19, my house has sunk further with every flood. It’s so hard for me to get out,” said an old lady who lives nearby.
• “What can I do? I can’t move. No one will buy my house like this. My family and I just have to live with it.”
• “I wish I could move the entire neighbourhood to the mountains, so we’d be safe from floods.” A kid said cheerfully.
• “Some of my friends have quitted gambling. I am both sad to lose the fun with them, but I am happy that they are doing better than we were. Stop gambling!”
• “How I wish I had a mansion, maybe I would never experience anymore” a little girl said.
• and so on!

Image 6: Aftermath Waste

These reflections pierced my heart. Instead of hope, many participants expressed resignation—having endured these struggles for so long, they have tried simply to cope. This resignation has, in turn, led some to neglect their environment, as simple as not carrying their rubbish after the session even though we provide it with a nearby bin, and having some people to clean up for the event. Albeit, most of their drawings clearly showed a longing for a greener, better neighbourhood. They still have dreams and ideas for an improved future, but the surrounding systems do not support those visions.

On the other hand, is the resignation is purely because of the people fault? Or is this the systemic issue that normalise the digression behaviour that occurs for a long time?

The Paradox of The Wicked Problems

Image 7: Previous Interventions Addressed Issues

When we first did the intervention online, we thought the environment and social issues are the main problems, but on the second to the third it reveals more complex problems that intertwined.

Image 8: A Remaining Water Tank with a Sign Written “My City Program: No Slum City” On Top of Piles of Bins

To some extent, their socio-ecological challenges are deeply intertwined with sociotechnical issues, particularly economic education barriers. In terms of economic issue, for example, on the first day of the workshop, my partner noticed a water tank engraved with the slogan “No Slum City”, standing in sharp irony amid a neighbourhood marked by slum conditions and unpleasant odours. When I asked local authorities about it, one explained that the state government had indeed launched a slum-upgrading program a couple years ago, allocating £44,600 for improvements in the urban village. “However,” she admitted, “the person in charge took the majority of the funds, leaving us with nothing but the water tank for a clean water station.”

This statement shook me. That amount of funding could have significantly improved the entire village, yet it was robbed away. It was no wonder that residents felt hopeless, not only battling flooding but also local thuggery (premanisme), a predatory saviourism that eroded trust and robbed them of change.

Image 9: A Young Boy Imagining A Corrupt-free City in 10 Years

Another proof of subtle local thuggery or premanisme or vrijman-ism is shown from the some local authorities in Cipadu who requested us, the researchers, to at least give the second session participants some kind of. “door prizes” or “souvenirs” in order for people to be more encouraged to come. I realized there was my fault involved in this communication, because I might not clearly addressed the invitation as a research process, therefore, many of them saw this as a drawing contest which they have known will have a reward in it.

The rewarding system in the whole process should be further study among the people. Do pressing situations or economic challenges play a role in people’s eagerness to participate? Or is it the power dynamics at play, where the involvement of local authorities creates intentional interests that shape how this research is received?

I believe that inaccessible education also plays a role in shaping the neighbourhood. Some residents endure and normalise digressive behaviours, partly due to the lack of access to education. Beyond the absence of higher education institutions, there is also a shortage of both formal and informal early childhood education.

“We often have tactical workshops whenever development program funding is allocated from the top down,” the local authority representative explained, “but they are never sustainable.”

Educational programs in the village are often created to serve government interests—such as digital marketing or barista training courses—rather than addressing the actual needs of Cipadu residents. This reveals how even education becomes corrupted, stripped of its role in giving people agency to contextualize and address the real problems in their own neighborhood.

Image 10: A Gentleman Design A Water Flow Solution to Stop Flooding

With education, empowered people can empower others, if their ideas are genuinely heard and captured. Education also liberates individuals from habits that perpetuate inequity (Anaissie, Cary, Clifford, Malarkey, & Wise, 2021). In the residents’ drawings, 13% portrayed emergent ideas on how to improve their village, most prominently around flood, waste and social solutions.

Image 11: A Gentleman Shared His Community Experience in Gambling

This is a clear signal: those with lived experience, keen observation, and contextual knowledge already carry the capacity to reimagine and redesign their neighbourhood. These are the people who understand their community best—and they deserve to be better facilitated.

Image 12: Session 2 Intervention with Children

With education, we are also seeding the younger generation to become the agent of change, by simply liberating themselves with curiosity and capability in observing their surrounding.

Image 13: Youth Inspired Youth Shown in The Artwork They Made

Conclusion: Untied The Tangled Ties

Going home is indeed both good and bad idea.

Bad because 19 hours of flight back and forth, and 10 days or relay race of doing the research is very TIRING and COMPACT. Blame on the peak season during July and August.

Had to do the research for 2 days in Cipadu, Tangerang, Banten, and doing observation on successful creative urban villages in Gempolsari, Bandung, West Java with Karasa BDG collective (which I will report it too on the next post.)

Image 14: A Young Man Shared His Thought on How To Stop Waste in The Sewers

Ultimately, this co-design hackathon in a form of reflective drawing reveals the wicked nature of the problems in Cipadu: flooding is not just an environmental issue, but a symptom of intertwined socio-technical failures.

This intervention highlights both the power and the paradox of community-led imagination in contexts of systemic neglect. On the surface, reflective drawing appeared to provide a liberating platform, because residents of Cipadu can finally voiced their frustrations, hopes, and visions through postcards that bridged generational perspectives.

Yet, beneath this creativity lies a sobering reality: their aspirations are repeatedly undermined by structural inequities, corrupted governance, and fragile socio-ecological systems.

The findings reveal that what often appears as “resignation” or “ignorance” among residents is not simply a matter of apathy or individual fault, but rather the internalization of systemic failure. It is proven from poor governance and inaccessible education, that makes the community’s voices rarely translate into tangible change.

Therefore, the systemic socio-ecological issue that has been addressed on the first and the second intervention is expanded beyond what lies on the surface and on the surface. There are bigger problems which can be drawn into multi layer perspective (MLP) from regime tier – economic to education challenges – to landscape tier – political interest. MLP is used to understand which part of the system action is taking place in the overall system of the neighbourhood.

Image 15: People are Engaged in Sharing Their Aspiration

The tension between participation and expectation also surfaces sharply. The request for door prizes or rewards reflects not only miscommunication, but also a deeper conditioning in which external interventions are transactional rather than transformational. Not to mention on how they want this research created immediate change in the near future.

Education emerges as both a missing infrastructure and a latent opportunity. When educational initiatives are designed around government or market agendas, they fail to cultivate agency or contextual problem-solving. But when people are given space to think, draw, and reflect, even in small ways, the seeds of localized solutions begin to surface.

This exposes a critical dilemma in participatory research: can communities genuinely engage in co-design when historical encounters with “development” have often reduced them to passive recipients of aid, rather than active agents of change?

Can people actually inspire people if we elevate Gotong Royong as the design for transtion?

All in all, this collection of reflective drawings serves as a valuable asset or lumbung (inspired by Documenta Fifteen) and a source of inspiration for the further development of Cipadu village. It also serves as a stepping stone in mapping out the priority issues when the government or residents plan to create a program in their village.

Bibliography

Anaissie, T., Cary, V., Clifford, D., Malarkey, T. & Wise, S. (2021). Liberatory Design. http://www.liberatorydesign.com

Wallace, N. (2020) “Thinking while drawing and drawing to think: Exploring ‘reflective doodling’ as a critical reflective practice in design for transitions.,” in. DRS2020: Synergy. Available at: https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2020.187.

Brown, A.M. (2017) Emergent strategy: shaping change, changing worlds. Chico: AK Press.

Manzini, E. (2015) Design, when everybody designs: an introduction to design for social innovation. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press (Design thinking, design theory).

Welp.

The second intervention is DONE!

Although it was rough and made me got out of my comfort zone (initiating an event, gathering people around, SCARY). But apparently, I did??

But beforehand, why zine-making all of a sudden?

This is not all of a sudden, anyway.

Publication is one of the methods to communicate our ideas and thought, and zine is one of the possibilities of capturing creativity and human experience through a visual ethnography approach (Biagioli, Pässilä, and Owens, 2021).

Historically, zines operate at the intersection of art and activism, spanning the spectrum of social justice issues such as ecology, tenant’s rights, disability and political activism (Biagioli, Pässilä, and Owens, 2021). Oftentimes, zines are typically created with affordable, everyday materials and rely on simple, low-skill techniques like cutting, pasting, scribbling, and drawing, making zines highly accessible to made by anyone. Aligned with the values of sustainability, this session encourages participants to repurpose waste or scraps from their surroundings as the primary materials for their zines.

I adapted this method because I was inspired by Karasa BDG’s approach to prioritizing efficiency by utilizing minimal resources to maximize the utilization of available materials within their neighbourhood. And also when I attend a Pulp-Fiction workshop last month. These experience inspired me to use zine as a research method which also aims to challenge Indonesian willingness to take action on their waste materials into a new product or an art form like zine.

Within this research, zine-making is positioned as a participatory or co-design method, serving as a tangible medium for collective imagination to be articulated through the format of research publication.

How did the session plan out?

On my second intervention, I tested my method for facilitating complex conversations in the urban village, specifically about the future of our neighbourhood. I used the same strategy: discovering our memories about the neighbourhood through our five senses, analysing the STEEP priorities that urgently need to be addressed, and sharing our dreams and hopes. This time, I added an extra tangible activity for the reflection session: zine-making.

As mentioned on the image above, the zine-making event was held on August 16, 2025, at Regent’s Park in London. This activity was a collaborative effort between @LondonBergerak, an Indonesian activist group based in London, and my platform @berimajinaria, a collective movement (in the making) for building utopia through collective imagination.

I am utilising the magic of social media to create a hybrid platform that can engage both Indonesian communities online and offline. This inspiration came from an alumni’s night session, which I regrettably missed because I was away for 3DaysOfDesign in June 2025. (Thanks Meaghan for your help in gathering my feedbacks from the alumni, I love you tons!)

The purpose of the event was to invite Indonesian diaspora residing in London to attend and engage in a discussion about their future neighbourhood in Indonesia. I had sent out WhatsApp messages to every Indonesian in the UK’s WhatsApp groups, but only five people accepted and attended the zine-making event. Most of them were students pursuing their master’s degrees.

One of the reasons that I heard from my friends is because most of the students are currently on submission week or went out for summer trip, thus, not many people were coming to my session. Which is actually fine, because at the end we had a quality conversation and more in-depth knowledge exchange.

Although, most of them are my friends who I have known before :]. (Thank you guys, I owe you a lot!)

So, who are the participants?

Tadaa! These are the changemakers, artists, and students who have visions for the future of their homes. Among 6 registrants on the form, only 5 people showed up, and among five of them are two members of @LondonBergerak.

But these are the summary of their background:

Most of them fall under the age categories of 18 to 25 and 26 to 30 years old.

All of them are currently residing in London, UK.

They all lived (or currently living) in Indonesia, either in residential areas, urban kampung areas, or housing complexes.

The various background built some diversity in the perspectives on how to cultivate their neighbourhood. Making thinking throung design (in this context is zine) richer and unveil new possibilites.

On the initial discovery questions, I also asked what are the most valuable elements in a neighbourhood. And their top choices are including mobility, community, safety and security, affordable housing and flood free environment.

From these initial questions, I recognize that most of the youth are genuinely concerned about social and environmental factors, beyond economy, education, and politics when it comes to the factors that make up a neighbourhood. Reflecting to the first intervention with Cipadu citizens, they placed economic factor as equal as social factor.

In subsequence to this, the session in the park will justify this deduction from fragmented information and data gathered from the first intervention and zine-making form.

How was the session facilitated?

Before the session, I planned a step-by-step of the discussion in order to get a qualitative research from this session.

The planned was not like this before, I need to iterate from my previous framework in order to make more sense and create a seamless journey within 3 hours session. Thus, I adapted the exact questions I asked during my first intervention with Cipadu citizens.

Inspired by the power of ‘gotong royong’, this activity requires group discussion and collaboration, albeit the zine making are created by the participants themselves.

So here is how the process of zine-making session slash roundtable session was carried out:

1. Discovery Session

The discovery was divided into two pages because we printed the framework on A3 papers, necessitating the use of two pages for five participants.

From the “Five Senses” discovery, participants expressed a deep connection to nature, open fields, and communal life. These experiences evoke feelings of calmness, security, and connection, which are strengthened by the realization of the community’s presence, helping to combat feelings of loneliness. Participants enjoy the sounds of nature such as birds, children playing, and the presence of local traders that reinforce togetherness.

However, they are disturbed by urban pressures such as gentrification, vehicle noise, crime, insecurity, street thugs, mobility and environmental problems like flooding and lack of green space. A funny story about flooding, some people found flooding like a blessing when they were a child. This mindset expires as they grew older and realised that flooding is actually a disaster. Physical discomforts like heat and unsafe spaces also reduce their sense of belonging, this is an implication of climate change that currently happening.

Overall, the findings reveal a tension between the desire for a playful, green, and connected environment and the challenges of urban development, insecurity, crimes and ecological vulnerability.

2. Defining and Analysing Priority

In defining priority, I used STEEP method again to categorise the experience gained from the five senses discovery.

It is true that many sticky notes were pasted and voted on in social and environmental categories. This demonstrates how participants consistently and persistently address these two issues since the beginning, which implying these are the priority factors that define their ideal neighbourhood.

In the social context, participants were particularly concerned about security and privacy. During the sharing session, they frequently mentioned issues of criminality and premanisme (street thuggery), such as robbery, extortion, or pungutan liar (illegal levies). This premanisme often arises from power struggles between indigenous residents and recent migrants to the area. Conflicts tend to occur because the indigenous group—the Batavianese—still feel entitled to the land that they had previously sold to migrants.

Fun fact, the Indonesian word preman originates from the Dutch term vrijman, meaning ‘free man’. During the Dutch East Indies period, this label was used for informal workers, such as non-contract overseers, and former convicts seized by the Dutch. Many of them later took on roles as informal security guards or vigilantes, often serving to protect colonial interests. And now, this preman becomes a new term for street gangster who identified themselves as the protector or the guardian of the area.

Source: Merdeka.com

Reflecting on the first intervention, the Cipadu citizen did not mention any issues with premanism. The context of safety and social security they are dreaming of is mostly on how the area is safe for children to play.

Audio experience also plays a huge sensory factor that makes the environment comfortable. “Noises” is being mentioned for three times on the board, implying that sounds build a quality environment.

The ZINES

Here goes the zines from the participants slash the artists!

The question to answer on this zine-making is: “What are your ideas and thoughts about the future neighbourhood they want to a have?”.

During the zine-making session, I observed that people were putting in more effort in thinking about the ideas and content they wanted to include in the zines. I believe that the prompt or question that prompted the zine-making process should be clearer and more structured so that people feel more directed and know what to expect.

This laissez-faire zine-making format fostered a more creative and spontaneous output, allowing the collective imagination to manifest from the people’s aspirations. The themes expanded and evolved into a high-quality ethnography output from these zines.

Subsequently, these are some of the themes that emerged:

• Safety & Security: Bila (family, environment, mobility), Ihsan (night security, disaster resilience, affordability).
• Afforadability: Bila (owning a house)
• Density & Overcrowding: Myra & Diva (too close, sensory overload, privacy).
• Environment & Health: Nafisa (pollution, community warmth, nature), Ihsan (green space), Myra & Diva (Smells).
• Mobility & Access: Bila (transport connections).
• Community & Joy: Nafisa (happy community), Bila (togetherness).

We made some video presentation but I have not yet edit them yet, but surely going to upload them soon! But from the video presentations,

Connection with the first intervention

Later, I identified two major themes from the most keywords being mentioned througout the two interventions, with subthemes orbitting around them.

From these priorities, how to make these present challenges become the possible future.

The answer I can give right now, is “gotong royong” as the catalyst of bridging the present with possible futures.

In the pressing situation, people often rely on improvisation and collective action (DelSesto, 2022). In Indonesia, we are coming together under the spirit of “sama rasa, sama rata” or a principle of equality and shared responsibility. This characteristic is deeply rooted in Indonesian culture through the practice of gotong royong, or mutual cooperation. Far from being merely transactional, gotong royong has historically been a crucial force in sustaining communities and even played a role in Indonesia’s struggle against colonial rule, as solidarity and collective resilience became sources of strength when external support was absent.

Bowen (1986) emphasize that gotong royong is not only a practical form of social organization but also a cultural ethos embedded in the Indonesian social fabric. It embodies the idea that when institutional or structural supports are lacking, people can still depend on one another—a value that continues to endure as part of Indonesia’s collective social DNA.

I experienced it myself during the process of making this research happened. I could not do this without mutual assistance I got from Indonesian back home and in the UK.

Therefore, what if Gotong Royong is not just a word or behaviour, but a design system that can be the engine for the hopes and dreams that made up our ecosystem?

Lastly, let’s close this long report with this beautiful sentence from Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino.

Bibliography

Biagioli, M., Pässilä, A. and Owens, A. (2021) ‘The zine method as a form of qualitative analysis’, in Adams, J. and Owens, A., Beyond Text: Learning through Arts-Based Research. Intellect. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1386/9781789383553_9.

Bowen, J.R. (1986) ‘On the Political Construction of Tradition: Gotong Royong in Indonesia’, The Journal of Asian Studies, 45(3), pp. 545–561. Available at: https://doi.org/10.2307/2056530.

DelSesto, M. (2022) Design and the social imagination. London ; New York: Bloomsbury Visual Arts (Designing in Dark Times).

https://jakartaglobe.id/business/preman-indonesian-thugs-become-investors-worst-nightmare#goog_rewarded

https://www.merdeka.com/peristiwa/ini-20-titik-di-jakarta-barat-tempat-preman-biasa-ngumpul.html