ABSTRACT
Participation by way of novel, imaginative methods offers an opportunity to explore what Grant Kestler has called ‘dialogical aesthetics’. This chapter discusses a case where a set of visual methods for data collection was developed to engage community leaders in the Samora Machel township near Cape Town in South Africa. By using particular visual devices and strategies from graphic design, the form of these tools looked to foster a mode of designerly participation as a way to both demonstrate Kestler’s concept and as a means to develop stories of and from the community. The chapter places such tools into a broader context of need fostered by new ‘wicked’ problems and a shift towards the local in how such stories might be developed by way of design. Three tools were tested to develop stories of place and their results are discussed through the critical lens of a framework which was developed from Kestler’s model. The power of association and articulation emerge as significant characteristics of the tools’ use, alongside their opportunities for storytelling by way of guided or process-led writing.
