The feedback from the participants at Merimetsa was very good, both from the
clients and the staff. The clients liked the small challenges of each new garment,
and the diverse outcomes that they could affect. That the final products reached
outside the institution was appreciated, as well as that new customers came to the
institution’s small shop. The staff saw a new engagement on the parts of the clients
and was pleased that the previously unseen institution received so much publicity
and attention. They also appreciated the positive energy the project gave in the
sense of discreetly but creatively disturbing their routines.
Of course, projects like these need longer planning and execution to be more fruit-
ful. It shows how low-level collaborations between different partners can reveal
new potentials without changing much of the agendas or methods of the involved
participants. Indeed it is possible to facilitate such a process as a designer or free
agent, without the backing of a full institution. Instead, the designer facilitates and
helps the outcome to turn into something totally new by connecting and energiz-
ing already previously existing flows, in which participants also become liberated
from their preconceptions that nothing new is possible.
This small level of intervention is also useful and has certain qualities as it proves
that new ways are possible for all parts involved. The next initiative could come
from any of the partners in the project and it could be initiated by the students,
Merimetsa, or the shop – adding the small energy required to get it rolling once
again, but in another form, towards other goals and with new participants.
why participation
All the projects described above share a participatory standpoint where people are
encouraged to take part in the design and production process. Yet not all forms of
participation is positive, and it can sometimes even become a new form of “tyr-
anny”. Sharp criticism has also been aimed at what is sometimes called the “par-
ticipatory imperative” (Cooke & Kothari 2001). So it is important for a designer
wanting to involve people in the design processes to see what these obstacles could
be. We will have to argue as to why and in which type of participation we want to
engage in.
One can look at any community or participatory project and argue if it really
helps the people it tries to help, and in what way. The question is not mainly “how
much” participants are empowered but rather “for what”? As argued by Henkel
and Stirrat (2001), people in “developing” societies engaged in participatory
projects are often simply “empowered to do” what the modern state-institutions
think they should do. They should be “helped” to become good consumers in the
global economy, responsible patients in the health system, rational farmers in-
creasing the GDP or as participants in the labour market. According to Henkel
and Stirrat, the aim of “giving power” is mainly to reshape the personhood of the
participants into the great project of “the modern” (182). Of course this type of
critique becomes even harsher when regarding projects that use fashion as a tool
for liberation, and take place within an institution at the core of modernisms sort-
ing apparatus, so famously argued for by Foucault (1991, 2001). Likewise, this
type of “participation”, combined with production could indeed be a tool for forc-
ing the new “creative economy” onto people, making every single person a com-
pulsive entrepreneur, singlehandedly responsible for their life situation, even the
things that are out of reach.