Exhibition: "Empathy in Design, Shaping Social Change"

                              “Empathy in Design: Shaping Social Change” – an exhibition by Social Design students

What is a community? What does it mean to us? Our understandings of the neighbourhoods we live, work, and go to school range from shallow to fully embedded. Each of us, regardless of our age or how long we've lived in a place, is both a little bit knowledgeable and a little bit ignorant about our communities. Realizing our ignorance is the starting point for curiosity. How might our relationships with our communities change if we embrace our curiosity and deliberately intervene within our communities? What can we do next?

PolyU Design students are doing design and social innovation research and projects about and within communities across Hong Kong. This exhibition shows their work across three different courses and in two neighbourhoods: Sham Shui Po and Yau Ma Tei. The students, through social design thinking, principles, and concepts, work towards increasing the understanding of these communities through design methods that range from traditional to experimental, familiar to unexpected. They situate themselves within specific fields to test their assumptions, explore new approaches to community engagement, and propose new ways for social design to be implemented in Hong Kong.

Neighbourhood 1: Sham Shui Po
The goal of students across two courses this past semester was to contribute to the improvement of projects in Sham Shui Po and drive the transformation of its image. They incorporated various design approaches and shared design knowledge with individuals passionate about social innovation and with different stakeholders in Sham Shui Po. Through this exhibition, a new platform for social design practice will be established in Sham Shui Po. The aim is to address social issues in the area and promote community development. By collaborating with different stakeholders, the design solutions showcase the depth and breadth of their impact, creating inclusive, documentary, sustainable, and responsive solutions that will help establish a new image for Sham Shui Po.

Neighbourhood 2: Yau Ma Tei
This autumn, thirty Social Design students from PolyU collaborated with twenty ELCHK Lutheran Secondary School students, to think about different possibilities for exploring the community of Yau Ma Tei, where ELCHKLSS is located. Over the course of three co-creation workshops, they asked themselves three questions: (1) What do we know about Yau Ma Tei now? (2) What is yet to be known? And then based on their answers to these two questions, (3) What can we do to know more about Yau Ma Tei and at a deeper level? The secondary school and university students collectively created action plans that were doable, concrete, and interesting to the ELCHKLSS students and would potentially compel more young people in Yau Ma Tei to go out and explore to find discoveries and realize their agency to take action within their community.

Empathy in Design, Shaping Social Change 

Opening Ceremony 

Date: 18 Dec 2023  

Time: 2:15pm-6:00pm

Venue: 3/F, Jockey Club innovation Tower, School of Design, PolyU

Exhibition 

Date: 18 Dec-31 Dec 2023 

Time: 10:00am-6:00pm 

Venue: 3/F, Jockey Club Innovation Tower, School of Design, PolyU