Dr Lesley-Ann Noel’s new book, Design Social Change, looks at design as a personal tool for a more equitable and thoughtful tomorrow
Any Trinbagonian knows that a local recipe is less about following the exact measurements on a piece of paper, and more of a fluid process of gauging what your dish needs and what you have available. There’s history and structure, yes, but the best cooks often embrace the improvisational nature of the kitchen.
When Dr Lesley-Ann Noel began writing the first draft of what would become Design Social Change: Take Action, Work Toward Equity, and Challenge the Status Quo, it was cooking that she turned to for a guide on how to approach writing on how we can utilise design to envision a more equitable, thoughtful future.
“This book has a cooking metaphor running through it,” says Dr Noel at her book’s Trinidad and Tobago launch on March 18, 2024 at NALIS. “I’ve been using cooking as a metaphor for action, as well as a metaphor for flexibility for a little while.”
The final book removed some of the cooking references from the first draft, where the ideas were presented closer to recipes, partly because the editing team felt that a recipe metaphor might give the wrong idea to readers— that Dr Noel’s words are a strict guideline to be followed, rather than a jumping-off point for people to find their own ways of approaching social change. But, perhaps it is her Caribbean background that encouraged her to view “recipes” as more fluid than static.
Dr Noel, a former visual arts lecturer at UWI St Augustine for almost two decades, is now an assistant professor at North Carolina State University, with a focus on design studies in the Department of Media, Arts, Design, and Technology. She will join the Ontario College of Design as the Dean of Design in July.
Living and working in different parts of the world (like Brazil, East Africa, and around the Caribbean) has shown her that the needs of a community depend on the culture of that space. She talks in her book about “listening and seeing others”— a concept that may feel more natural in Trinidad and Tobago than in the US.
“I live in North Carolina, and we cross paths with people, and we don’t tell people good morning,” she says. But in the Caribbean, walking down the street to a flurry of good mornings from neighbours and strangers is commonplace. For us, to find our way to designing the social change she speaks about, we may have to lean on some of her other “recipes” for building community and changing the world around us together.
The book is a visual treat, with colourful pages and a series of vibrant illustrations by Trinidadian artist Che Lovelace. Lovelace recalls their first encounters at The UWI St. Augustine Campus:
“She was running the Visual Arts Programme at The UWI and I remember her as somebody always open to ideas.”
When the team was looking to find the right artist to collaborate with for the visuals of the book, Noel kept coming back to Lovelace’s work. She recalls saying to the publication team at the school, “All of this work that you’re showing me is not better than work from Trinidad and Tobago— and not better than Che’s work in particular.”
For Che, the collaboration was an immediate yes: “I feel this book really addresses this sense that we are located somewhere, but we are affecting the entire world.”
Although both writer and artist have a connection to academia, this book is intentionally meant to be more accessible to readers from any space, rather than having a purely academic focus.
“Actually, all of us are designers,” says Noel.
Her goal was to get any reader to consider the impact they can have on the world around them. The book is part of a series of works that pushes readers to use design outside of the world of design with questions like “How can we get more people to think about design for belonging? To use design to make spaces inclusive? How can we get people to understand prototyping in ordinary life?”
She explores many tools for people to use to help foster change in their own lives, community, and the world at large. She asks you to think of ideas sometimes as simple as reframing how we look at our own emotions.
“Anger can provide necessary cues on change that is needed in the world,” she says. “Anger is like an additional spice that is needed for change. Don’t be afraid of it.”
Making the future a more equitable place is not about one individual changing everything. It is about more people imagining the ways that they can come together and find that space that they are passionate about, what can be improved, and what their role can be. With this book, Noel asks you to think about what is important to you, and how you can change it for the better.
