Part 3. Policy Ideas for a carbon-neutral future of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea
In our previous two posts, we described what we developed for the participatory policy design experiment entitled, <A Carbon Neutral Art Museum Through Speculation with Future Citizens> at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art as a part of <MMCA Performing Arts 2022: The Museum-Carbon-Project>. Our first post covers the structure, perspective, approach, and intention of the entire project. The second one introduces the artifacts we designed to provoke citizens’ vivid imagination of the future society and museum. As the last one of the three posts to share our experience in the project, this one outlines how we delivered the resulting policy ideas to the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA hereinafter) derived from the citizen workshops. Now, let’s dive into it.
Phase 1. Policy ideas from the result of 12 citizen participatory workshops
Total 164 citizens participated in twelve workshops held from August 10th to October 15th. Our participants were encouraged to speculate on the future of MMCA in the context of the climate crisis and share their feelings and ideas to prevent it — critically and creatively. We used the results of the series of workshops as data — the discussions during the workshops, their letters, and our notes written after each workshop — to unearth policy ideas. After our initial analysis, we discerned 624 concerns, thoughts and ideas, and further synthesized them into policy ideas.
While thinking about how to create policy ideas from a large amount of data, we started analyzing the contents by highlighting meaningful phrases, placing them on digital sticky notes using the online co-working platform. Then, we grouped the notes based on their similarities in meaning and association. We call this process affinity diagram* and we do this as a way to analyze a large amount of qualitative data to derive meaningful relationships between observed phenomena, interview results, and other information.
After days of analysis and synthesis, we managed to discern a total of 104 policy ideas. They ranged from technical solutions, including using geothermal energy to reduce carbon emission from heating and cooling, to behavioral ones, such as giving incentives to those visitors that came to MMCA with public transportation. Perhaps more importantly, we saw many of the ideas were about fairness and making sure everyone’s voice is heard in developing policies for carbon neutrality. For instance, the citizens in our workshops demanded including artists and educators into the equation when it comes to creating restrictions for certain material or carbon emission in creating art.
Phase 2. Effective delivery of policy ideas: Government as a System toolkit
We put much effort in finding an effective way to deliver the policy ideas from citizen workshops to museum decision-makers. Simply providing a list of policy ideas would not suffice, as it will be difficult for those who did not participate in the workshops to understand the context and the meaning of each idea especially with such a high number. From the beginning, we prepared the policy ideas with a clear intention of empowering citizens — especially children — and aimed to highlight the connection between citizens’ voices and policy ideas toward a sustainable transition of the important public institution. In other words, while simple bullet points might get the information across, the legitimacy gained from empowered citizens may be lost without conveying the qualitative quality of the process.
We found the Government as a System toolkit developed by the UK Policy Lab appropriate and useful. The toolkit is published by UK Policy Lab, a policy laboratory under the Cabinet of the United Kingdom. The Policy Lab has been at the forefront of the UK government’s policy innovation efforts since 2014 and has taken a human-centered/design approach to its work. The toolkit is based on an analysis of around 50 projects that the Policy Lab had undertaken and highlights the need for proactive government that leads innovation, rather than passively following to manage changes.
The toolkit proposes 56 actions that a proactive government can take, which are categorized by two axes. The vertical axis represents the traditional role of government, including legislation and regulation (below), as well as the soft power to embrace various stakeholders (above). The horizontal axis depicts the stages of policy making, starting from necessary participation and development of the early stages (left) to adjusting resources in mature stages (right).
Mapping the policy ideas synthesized from citizen workshops onto the toolkit was a turning point, as we could directly see them with necessary policy tools. In other words, we could translate our ideas into the language of decision-makers and contextualize them within the realm of policy.
Although the toolkit was originally designed for various departments of the British government, we believed it could still be a valid tool for a public art museum in South Korea. We could see the potential and we decided to experiment with this toolkit as a communication tool with MMCA people while hoping for an impact on the Korean art scene and government bureaucracy.
Download Government as a System toolkit translated into Korean: PDF
Phase 3. Policy ideas into 3 categories: based on time and difficulty
Mapping the policy ideas onto the Government as a System toolkit, we soon realized that 100 policy ideas placed on a single toolkit could be too overwhelming for the viewers. Reviewing insights from our citizen participants and organizing them on a matrix, we group them according to their urgency and temporal characteristics. Specifically, we identified three categories: (A) those that are already in place and being done, (B) those that MMCA should consider and/or carry out in the near future, and (C) those that require long-term investigation due to their complexity or significant investment. In plain English:
(A) What MMCA is already doing well
(B) What MMCA should actualize in the near future
(C) What MMCA should consider in the long run
(A) What MMCA is already doing well
MMCA is already making progress towards carbon neutrality. For example, MMCA Seoul partially uses geothermal and solar energy to run the museum. The museum also operates a customer advisory group that consists of 40 members with diverse ages and professional backgrounds. In April of 2022, the group actively discussed the environmental sustainability of the museum, as well as efforts towards carbon neutrality. Further, in preparing for <MMCA Performing Arts 2022: The Museum-Carbon-Project>, curator Sung and his team estimated the annual carbon emission from running MMCA in terms of their emission scope. These are all good signs that show how MMCA and its core fans care about the issues around climate change and the practical ways to improve the museum policy.
(B) What MMCA should realize in the near future
The second category includes a collection of policy ideas that should be implemented in the near future to achieve carbon neutrality at MMCA. While identifying feasible ideas for this category, we sorted those that must be executed now based on internal and external circumstances and the current socio-technical state. For instance, one idea was to reduce carbon emissions by maintaining and improving aging facilities implemented when MMCA Seoul was first built. For example, noble gasses in between glass sheets for thermal insulation are largely gone, and the efficiency of aged solar panels has been dramatically lowered. Other areas for development included the role of MMCA in educating the general public and disseminating accumulated knowledge on sustainable operation of an art museum. There was also an idea that demand MMCA to establish an operational strategy to reduce carbon emissions and enhance energy efficiency.
(C) What MMCA should consider in the long run
The final section pertains to policy ideas of a complex nature that are challenging for MMCA to achieve alone. These ideas include somewhat far-fetched imaginations, such as downsizing the current large museums of MMCA to have only one or two exhibition halls while simultaneously increasing the number of locations across the nation. This idea comes from the fact that the majority of the carbon emissions of MMCA in fact come from the physical location of the museum and the frequent use of cars that visitors drive to reach the venue. With this radical approach, exhibitions will travel to where people live, not the other way around. During the workshop, participants also imagined the use of carbon credits and how people could donate these credits to support or view an exhibition. Other ideas also included large-scale investments for more sustainable buildings using cutting-edge technologies with zero energy and waste.
The above results were presented to the director and some of the staff of the exhibition team at MMCA on November 23, 2022. We asked the meeting participants to move the post-its and discuss the feasibility of the ideas. The toolkit with policy insights was effective in communicating the level of difficulty in implementation, from those ideas that are already in progress, to those that require further investigations with additional stakeholders due to their complexity. Overall, the director and museum staff were pleased with the ease of browsing all the insights at a glance and each idea mapped for the appropriate policy tools and steps, and shared their own insights on what can be done in their future steps. This was a highlight of the project, and we were happy to deliver on what we have promised to the workshop participants — conveying the voices of citizens to the decision makers with agency for change.
Reflections
Our long journey over 9 months with <A Carbon Neutral Art Museum through speculation with future citizens> finally concluded. It presented us with new dimensions of what design can bring to the table, which was a meaningful learning experience. On behalf of MMCA, we developed strategies for change, mediated across various stakeholders, and contributed to philosophical and practical discussions around what should be done to reach a preferred future and what they mean to our daily lives.
With a bottom-up approach to design carbon neutrality policy, we met various people in different contexts and elicited their needs in new ways. More specifically, we experimented with new strategies to gather ideas by helping participants to empathize with their future selves and build ideas from their own perspectives. We structured a series of workshops in relay and designed artifacts and scenarios that democratize participation. Our approach — in both holistic and detailed senses — helped citizens to understand the problem of climate change in a relatively short time and encouraged them to raise their voices. During the process participants had chances to share their own opinions and to discuss necessary changes for MMCA, which we gathered and analyzed to discern policy ideas. We set another strategy to deliver; then placed them onto the Government as a System toolkit, effectively translating the outcome into the language of policymakers. This was used not only as an effective communication method but also to spark a discussion among key people in MMCA to see what they should achieve immediately.
The last bit of this project — although it was quite satisfying already to deliver the project outcome to the director of MMCA — was not as fulfilling as we hoped it would be to be honest. From the beginning, we hoped to have a workshop with substantial action planning with a broad stakeholder group of the museum including the head of all the departments, and we promised that we would do so to all our workshop participants. Although a meeting happened with a number of participants including the director, the breadth of participation and the depth of discussion fell short compared to our original intention and expectation. To remedy this, we plan to make sure in similar projects this year that the participation of the key people in the partner organization is ensured from the get-go.
Nonetheless, we hope our work would inspire other designers to challenge themselves for similar challenges to contribute to policy change for more sustainable organizational practices, which is why we’ve put our efforts into creating these three posts in sharing our stories and reflections. Are you already on your path towards this direction? Great, and good luck!
To learn more about the MMCA Museum-Carbon-Project and all fifteen projects including ours, visit HERE.
If you want to work with us or try a new policy experiment, contact us. We are always ready to view problems in new ways and bring a healthy impact to society. To see who we are and what we do other than carbon neutrality and futuring, visit our website: www.newdesign.studio
Written by Byeongkuk Kwak, Minju Han, and Seungho Park-Lee
References
*Affinity diagram: Also known as KJ method. Kawakita Jiro developed the initial method for mixed qualitative data analysis and Beyer and Holtzblatt later helped systematize and adopt it into the design field. For its origin and development, see: Scupin, R. (1997) The KJ method: A technique for analyzing data derived from Japanese ethnology. Human Organization. Beyer, H. & Holtzblatt, K. (1997) Contextual Design: A Customer-Centered Approach to Systems Designs. Morgan Kaufmann, CA.
- Scupin, R. (1997) The KJ method: A technique for analyzing data derived from Japanese ethnology. Human Organization.
- Beyer, H. & Holtzblatt, K. (1997) Contextual Design: A Customer-Centered Approach to Systems Designs. Morgan Kaufmann, CA
