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PPP project NEW CANTERBURY TALES has launched

CLICKNL strengthens public-private partnerships in research and innovation for the creative industry with PPP surcharge. We can split this into PPP project allowance and PPP program allowance. The PPP program allowance application for the research 'New Canterbury Tales' has been honored earlier, and the research has meanwhile started. Avans is the principal investigator of this research project. Principal investigator Nina Kramer provides more information and a status update regarding the project.

  • Get to know the research

    This research focuses on the use of immersive storytelling to arrive at new shared images (visions) for a sustainable living environment and resilient community formation. How can specific media and contexts be used to reach the public and promote the desired exchange?

  • NEW CANTERBURY TALES

“The doors of the Mapping Center slide open and I am greeted by Mc Cass, our ever-friendly Mapping Center Computer Assistant. I follow it to the central mapping room, which holds a huge-scale representation of the city of New Canterbury, a combination of 3D-printed buildings, parks, and landscapes, layered with Augmented Reality representations of all sorts of data. I ask Mc Cass to show me how the city is feeling today, are we happy?”

  • Morvyn

  • The story above is part of the story of Morvyn, a fictional city consultant living in the year 2070. This story is based on an interview with Perica Savanovic, in his position as a lecturer for the Avans Lectureship of Built Environment. He was one of eight lecturers Nina Kramer interviewed for the project "New Canterbury Tales. All interviews focus on looking ahead to 2070. Trends for specific fields are translated into characters with their own stories.

    • Picture: the character Morvyn

Slowly The New Canterbury Tales grew into much more than just a collection of stories: it became a research project funded by CLICKNL.

The research project
The New Canterbury Tales' research focuses on imagining different perspectives in the built environment on this everyday existence in the future (around 2070), just as the original 'The Canterbury Tales' described perspectives on everyday existence in the 14th century. By immersing the audience in those imaginations through immersive storytelling, we can collectively develop new visions of that not near future from there. "The New Canterbury Tales" project emphatically focuses on designing WITH people rather than designing FOR people. And in particular, dialogue about what is and is not desirable. It is not about what is desired according to the designer or policymaker, but rather about that dialogue between the user (of the future).'

  • New Canterbury 1
  • New Canterbury 2
  • New Canterbury 3

Why this project?
We are dealing with major transitions such as climate adaptation and energy and materials transitions. Our built environment must be resilient to challenges. The use of design methodologies provides tools to embrace the complexity of these tasks and approach them with a greater chance of success. From design practice, including in the built environment, user research is a widely used approach to get a better grip on the impact of design decisions on the user/citizen. In addition, co-creation is an approach to involve the user/citizen in the design process itself.

Looking further into the future, however, that user does not yet exist. The project The New Canterbury Tales aims to explore how we can use storytelling to engage the imagination of the public, stakeholders and designers. And how we can use this imagination for this user participation, at the same time working on possible improvements. In this way the designer gets a better grip on the consequences of (design) decisions made now, for the citizens of the future.

  • Project partners

    KOP Foundation - Stedelijk Museum Breda - ARU Cambridge School of Art - Zerow - AVANS Lectorate Built Environment - AVANS Lectorate Situated Art and Design - AVANS Lectorate Palliative Care

  • Samenwerken

By doing this with a large group of citizens collectively, we can help people to unlock their creative powers to come up with big ideas

Antoin Linssen, Zerow: "“Humans are good problem solvers in short-term challenges. But we lack the imagination and problem-solving skills to solve big challenges that require large system shifts. Climate change is a big
challenge of our time.

As Zerow - where we create playful interventions to adapt human behaviour in making the best choices for a healthier planet - I’m proud to have joined this initiative. Here we plan to enhance human imaginative powers to create possible urban futures around the year 2070. By doing this with a large group of citizens collectively, we can help people to unlock their creative powers to come up with big ideas that we normally would not have thought about.”

Definition
Work is currently underway to narrow down the very broad scope of this study. It has been decided to focus on two main areas:

  • Compassionate communities
  • Living with nature

Both issues affect the way we should think about, and build, the environment we live in. These issues have a major impact on designing cities for now and the future.

Source: online magazine Centre of Expertise Security and Resilience Avans University of Applied Sciences

Images created as part of project with AI image generator Midjourney, portrait Morvyn created with Meta Human'