|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||
We design social interventions that engage populations in imagining and designing new solutions to social problems. For us, social interventions are actions taken to reconfigure social habits, unspoken agreements or arrangements that, prior to the intervention, add to the durability and normalcy of a social problem. We focus on social interventions because we believe they can affect both formal hierarchical systems like school systems and complex nonlinear systems like cultures.
For example, an unspoken agreement that commonly leads to escalation of violence among youth in Boston is the “grill” or glare. If someone “grills you,” you have to grill them back, and tensions and escalation go from there. The grill caught our attention because in our methodology for designing social interventions, we look for an entry point, a less explored angle with potential to interrupt social problems. The grill was symbolic of the larger dynamic of violence, but also a literal act that we could point to, play with and make strange.
