Strategies of Design for Social Innovation and Design Activism in the Promotion of Positive Social Capital During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Brazil

Journal article, 2020

This case study aimed at mapping initiatives of social innovation that have promotedpositive social capital during the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil. To this end, informationabout the actions and their developers were collected online and further described using theforms "Light Format" and "In-Depth Format", from the toolkit developed by the Design forSocial Innovation and Sustainability (DESIS) Network. In addition, interviews with thepeople involved in the projects were carried out in order to obtain further details. From thepromising cases mapped, 15 were selected and categorized according to their field, coveragearea and target. Finally, the initiatives were assessed based on the concepts of design forsocial innovation (Manzini, 2008) and design activism (Fuad Luke, 2009; Thorpe, 2012). Theanalysis showed that whether the actions proposed had the design framework conceptionsas a theoretical basis or not, the projects indeed adopted design strategies to reach theirgoals, leading to positive impact in the social, economic and environmental areas and thuspromoted positive social capital.