The RSD Movement | Moment

Wait, I’m not saying systemic design is a movement— at least I see it as a dynamic interdiscipline and practice field. And we do hold the symposium to high levels of academic quality. Yet the creative expression of the methods and learning has spread everywhere with the unrestrained innovation of a movement, with the energy gained from a constant flow of new ideas and participation, and the vitality of the relationships expressing it. RSD14: Arcs of Impact acknowledges that we are at a stage of evolution where the impacts of the field-fusion of systemic design are showing up everywhere—in projects, publications, public affairs, and research. It is apt timing for hosting at OCAD University. Known for creativity, interdisciplinary research, and community engagement, OCADU has an arc of impact going back to 1876 when a movement led by artists and philanthropists founded the Ontario School of Art. In 1966, 90 years later, Ontario College of Art and Design added “Design” and then gained university status as OCADU in 2002.

OCADU is one of the founding schools of the RSD movement thanks to the new graduate programs that were developed from a Faculty of Design framework, emphasizing interdisciplinary approaches to complex problems and impressing designers toward social impact of design. The School of Graduate Studies launched transdisciplinary MDes degrees, including Inclusive Design, Strategic Foresight and Innovation, and since 2016 Design for Health. I chaired RSD12: Futuring in 2023, and OCADU was the site for one of 12 hubs hosted by universities with systemic design programs (and a handful of lab groups) in Canada, Colombia, India, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, the UK, and the USA. In 2016, RSD5: Systemic Design for Social Complexity was  co-produced between our OCAD team, mainly SFI graduate students, and the MaRS Solutions Lab, with Joeri van den Steenhoeven, Jerry Koh, and Vanessa Toye.

Finally, with RSD14, we return to Toronto and OCAD University. I am serving as lead chair (with my longtime collaborators Greg van Alstyne and Cheryl May as co-chairs). I’m encouraged by OCADU’s new Dean of Design, Lesley-Ann Noel, who was the keynote at RSD11. She engaged with RSD14 even before she arrived in Toronto, and we are thrilled to have her energy and experience in the planning and vision. Looking at the contributions and registrations, we can already see the shape of the energy implied in the idea of Arcs of Impact. Ontario is also home to many longtime RSD contributors, including OCADU MDes alum, Systems Thinking Ontario, the Flourishing Enterprise Institute, and the Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation and Resilience (WISIR). And OCADU hosts several labs doing adjacent work: Health Design Lab, Inclusive Design Research Center, Resilience Design Lab, Strategic Innovation Lab (with notable synthesis maps), game:play Lab, Interactive Futures Lab, and the Super Ordinary Lab.

If the indicators of a social movement are the activation of experts, leaders and citizens toward social-political outcomes not achieved by other means, then we have one in RSD. People are inspired to engage and take action independently of direction, connecting their asynchronous, independent projects with systemic design. While systemic design is research-driven, RSD is about the “relating,” and this year at RSD14, we celebrate the relating. I optimistically anticipate that the theme of relationality in complexity will animate all of this year’s contributions and create arcs of impact across all our relations. We intend to cultivate relationality at RSD14 in Toronto, across Canada, and with an international community of systemic designers. Foremost, RSD14 promises to be a memorable and wholly engaging festival of ideas and conviviality.

Photo: Inside a class at the Ontario College of Art in 1931. By M. O. Hammond. Archives of Ontario, Black and white negative I0016547, Public Domain.