Postgraduate
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2024
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MDes Design Innovation & Citizenship School of Innovation & Technology

Xinyun Fang

(she/her)

I am a designer and researcher who is on the road to social innovation. I like to respond to macro systemic development with detailed touchpoints from my own observations and feelings about the world.

My abilities in media art design, participatory practice, and critical social thinking allow me to analyze and research questions from an interdisciplinary position, and to approach my projects and audiences with a more comprehensive perspective with a sense of social responsibility.

My past experiences made me interested in multiculturalism, inclusive societies and community development, and I am trying to improve in these directions.

I don’t want to change the world, I hope I can provide a little contribution to society’s positive development through my design research.

Contact
fangxinyun2000@outlook.com
X.Fang1@student.gsa.ac.uk
Works
StoryUs – Community Intercultural Relationship Building

StoryUs – Community Intercultural Relationship Building

The establishment and development of a multicultural society is widely recognised and appreciated in Scotland, but why are there still social tensions and negative impacts arising from the arrival of diverse residents? The co-existence of diverse cultures and residents seems to be no longer enough for further multicultural development. This project focuses on promoting intercultural development in Scotland’s multicultural communities, allowing multicultural residents to intertwine their own attributes in a respectful way, gaining deeper relationship building and mutual understanding. Through the use of personal storytelling between multicultural residents as a design method, and the empowerment of individual residents with intercultural responsibility as a delivery method, the project aims to create opportunities for intercultural interactions that start with community organisations and residents with intercultural perspectives, and gradually reach out to all people throughout the multicultural community, building a wider intercultural relationship network amongst multicultural residents.

Project outcome display and mechanism process

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Topic cards that inspire multicultural residents to start deep communicating and understanding

Resident participants shared their personal stories by picking topic cards in order. It allows residents to share personal narratives, highlighting cultural similarities and differences in a friendly and engaging way.
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Storyboard for design mechanism

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Future Possibilities - Community Display of Storytree

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Insights from field research

Community-based organisations provide space, resources and support for intercultural relations in multicultural communities and promote intercultural development. However, as intermediaries, they may have difficulty reaching isolated or inaccessible groups. On the other hand, participants or volunteers with intercultural experience have natural social networks within the community. At the most basic level of the community, they can directly engage with isolated residents, spreading intercultural ideas and complementing the efforts of community organisations to form a cooperative and supportive relationship.
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Project Vision

I want the project to have a lasting impact. Now that the multicultural community of Scotland such as Govanhill is at the stage of multicultural co-existence, I hope that my design will become a driver and a tangible point of contact for the transition from multicultural co-existence to co-intertwining. Then, with the wider spread of the project, the multicultural community will come closer to the beautiful vision like intercultural community form and residents interacting with each other in a deep intercultural way.
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Residents Facilitator Handbook

The facilitator's handbook includes encouragement and motivation for participants, notes on organising the activity, tips on warming up, examples of topics on cards, and other content that can assist resident facilitators in organising intercultural story sharing activities even if they have no experience in doing so.
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