Trust is the invisible substructure of society – and, in an era of digital atomisation and political instability, these foundations are cracking. How can we design systems, spaces and organisations that reinforce trust rather than erode it?
Drawing on her Roots of Trust installation at London Design Biennale and her acclaimed 2017 book Who Can You Trust? designer and author Rachel Botsman, will explain how trust is fundamental to every action, every relationship, every transaction, and why it matters now more than ever before. Urbanist, writer and producer Nabil Al-Kinani will explore the spatial politics and policies that shape trust in cities and neighbourhoods, from London’s It Took Another Riot strategy to the contracts and agreements underpinning the built environment – and his own anti-gentrification manifesto Privatise the Mandem. Kathy Peach, director and co-founder of the Centre for Collective Intelligence Design at Nesta, the UK's innovation agency for social good, will discuss the importance of involving the public in decisions around climate adaptation, as well as the Situation Room, a simulation it will be running at the Biennale.
The panel will be chaired by Rama Gheerawo, President of EIDD Design for All Europe, Director of Instill and author of a new paperback, Creative Leadership, which argues for a new, more flexible and empowering and less top-down approach to leadership for the 21st century.
Location: The Great Hall, King's College, London
This edition of the Global Design Forum is supported by our Digital Media Partner, STIR.
Should you have any access requirements, please contact us at rsvp@globaldesignforum.com to accommodate your visit.
This talk is talking place at part of the Global Design Forum at London Design Biennale. View the whole programme here.
SPEAKERS
Rachel Botsman is an author, designer, and lecturer renowned for her work on trust and societal change. She has written three influential books – What’s Mine Is Yours, Who Can You Trust?, and How to Trust & Be Trusted – translated into 14 languages. She has been recognized as one of the world’s top 30 most influential management thinkers and honoured as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. As a former Trust Fellow at Oxford University, Rachel teaches leaders and entrepreneurs how to navigate trust in technology, work cultures, and society. Her TED Talks have been viewed over five million times, and her insights regularly appear in the media, including The New York Times, WIRED, Harvard Business Review and The Financial Times. She also engages with over 90,000 subscribers through her popular newsletter, Rethink with Rachel. At the London Design Biennale, her ‘Roots of Trust’ installation reimagines a historical design artefact that forever changed people’s working lives.
Kathy Peach is the Director and co-founder of the Centre for Collective Intelligence Design at Nesta, which explores how human and machine intelligence can be combined to develop innovative solutions to social challenges. Kathy was the lead author of the Collective Intelligence Design Playbook, and leads the Centre's partnerships with UNDP and the International Federation of the Red Cross & Red Crescent Societies - applying collective intelligence design to address the Sustainable Development Goals and improve local humanitarian response. She also oversees the Centre's grants programme, which has supported 30 different experiments around the world. Her Nesta publications include Collective Intelligence for Sustainable Development, Collective Crisis Intelligence for Frontline Humanitarian Response, Our Futures: By the people, for the people, Participatory AI for Humanitarian Innovation, and Combining Crowds & Machines.
By day, Nabil Al-Kinani is a built-environment professional and strategist with a keen interest in urbanism, placemaking, sustainable development and place vision. By night, he is a writer and producer that uses creativity to deliver works that draw focus on the relationship between spaces and stories. Other strands of his work includes the exploration of spatial politics, psychogeography, identity, culture and migration. His works include Privatise the Mandem to Free the Ends, a manifesto proposing a roadmap for the Mandem to collectively acquire land in the Ends using legislative tools such as Collective Enfranchisement and the Right to Buy, as a strategic counter to gentrification. Naming Pains is a campaign addressing the legacy of the 1924 British Empire Exhibition and its ongoing celebration in the built fabric of Wembley. Castles is a photo essay using 35mm film to reframe inner-city social housing estates as modern-day castles, celebrating their residents as kings and queens.
Rama Gheerawo (chair) is one of the world’s leading experts on design and creativity. A sought-after speaker, author and designer, he is dedicated to creating a more equitable and empathic world for people of all ages, genders, abilities and races. He has worked internationally on over 100 projects with governments, academia, communities and businesses that include Samsung, Panasonic and Tata Consultancy Services. In 2018 he was named a Creative Leader, alongside Paul Smith and Bjork, by Creative Review, and in 2019 won a ‘Hall of Fame’ award for his work at the Design Week Awards. He has also sat on the advisory boards for the UK Design Council, the Bhavan Centre, UX India and the International Association for Universal Design, among others, and was until recently Director of the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design at the Royal College of Art. He lives in London.
