I have had an intense curiosity about the evolution of culture and tradition, particularly in the present age of globalization where societies are becoming increasingly interconnected.  Additionally, it is fascinating to witness the interaction between culture and globalization, even in seemingly small acts such as people saying „Hello“ when answering a phone call, regardless of their knowledge of the English language.

But what exactly is culture today? What is all this fuss about it?

And why is it still a significant factor ‘to vote’ in most countries, further deciding their political systems? Is it that important and relevant now?

Also, what happens to this ‘culture’ when so many diverse communities all over the world are creating a globalized culture, enabled by connected media?

Research questions -

• How can socially relevant knowledge and ideas be introduced and exchanged within a community who have strong cultural influence over their thoughts, reasoning and lifestyle?

• How can traditional and new/fresh incoming knowledge interact symbiotically?

To carry on further, I created an iterative design process inspired by the Double Diamond framework, which was improvised to align with the specific project requirements. The project starts with an existing Literature review followed by a preliminary interview, Then a collective insight analysis which helped in the formation of a design brief. From here various aspects of the design process, Brief specific research and audience personas lead to conceptualisation. After this, there is a prototyping stage followed by a final insight analysis and conclusion.

The first paper that caught my attention was- Cosmopolitan Localism which brings these two ideas of cosmopolitanism and localism together by suggesting that we can be both globally aware and locally engaged. It means recognizing that global challenges and opportunities require cooperation and understanding among different communities, while also acknowledging the importance of local decision-making and community empowerment.

The second book designs for the plurivese suggests that instead of assuming that there is only one „correct“ or „normal“ way of doing things, it is important to recognize and celebrate the richness and diversity of human experiences. It promotes the idea that there are multiple valid ways of approaching problems and that solutions should be tailored to the specific context and the people involved. The core idea behind designs for the pluriverse is to move away from a one-size-fits-all approach and embrace diversity, equity, and inclusion in the design process.

As a little step closer to the answer, The book “ The Map of Knowledge”, by Violet Moller tracks how knowledge of influential fields like Astronomy, Mathematics, Medicine, etc. travelled across continents to finally evolve into what we know about them today. She narrates how places like Baghdad in the middle east became centres of translation and helped knowledge to travel from one part of the world to another. 

The writer highlights an example of today’s number system, the knowledge that first originated in the Indian subcontinent took centuries to become popular among Western scholars because zero as a number that was widely used in the Indian subcontinent was thought to be connected with satanic ideas among strict religious societies which hampered the mathematical development in the region for a long time.

So what we can see in this chart is a representation of knowledge history which clearly shows that knowledge that we know today is a result of a collective cultural knowledge of many communities of the world. We could easily find other similar examples in Medicine, Chemistry, linguistics, literature etc.

But you can ask here that there were so many other cultures between these places which are mentioned above, what is it that makes sure that knowledge develops at some particular place and not on the others.

The writer noticed a repetitive pattern in the history of evolution of knowledge in different parts of the world. Summarizing that knowledge travels to places where there is :

• Political stability
• A regular supply and funding of new literature
• A pool of curious and talented people
• Most striking of all where there is an atmosphere of tolerance and inclusivity towards different nationalities and religions.

And none of these factors are stable, rather they might change within decades. So, these knowledge hotspots are also not stationary rather they move wherever facilitated.

Let's compare the above conditions to today’s scenario. There is a large number of people who have democratic access to the Internet. The Internet has proven to be a widely accepted stable platform. New ideas, experiments, and innovations are added every second to it and there is a large amount of people getting exposed to it. Considering the last point, there is not always an atmosphere of tolerance and inclusivity as a whole but it certainly exists better in some areas than others. That means this decade is witnessing and will further witness a large exchange of knowledge.

But coming back to my initial question- why is then such rigidity among people in even getting exposed to a new idea, when it comes to culture and tradition, especially in the era of the greatest knowledge exchange?

After giving some time to this thought, I found a chapter in a book called ‘Designing Regenerative Cultures’ by Daniel Christian Wahl explaining that today’s society is witnessing a rise in ‘Solipsism’.

A few decades before the overall view of society was something like - we, our family, our society, our culture, our way, our lives, etc which is now shifting to me, my way, my life, etc. This shift in perception of a life is changing our society drastically. It is evident from ‘radio for my family’ to ‘an air bud with active noise cancellation for me’, from ‘ a television for us’ to ‘smartphone for me, maybe us’ and now ‘AR-VR headset just for me’. The shift from ‘we to me’ is evident today and we are a part of it right now.

So, this is where I wind up my literature review with two questions. Firstly what is a local culture and what is the global culture? Or I can also say What is Local knowledge and what is global knowledge and what is their role in a person's life today? The core belief of solipsism is that one's own consciousness is the only thing that can be directly experienced and known to exist. Solipsists argue that all knowledge is ultimately based on one's subjective perceptions.

So by the interviews, we understand that within a single cultural community or even family, across different generations, the core meaning of that one culture was very different. These differences have arisen due to a variety of factors, including changes in technology, education, societal norms, and cultural influences.

Each generation grows up in a different historical context and experiences unique events that shape their worldview. For example, silent generations grew up during world wars, baby boomers, grew up during a time of economic prosperity and social upheaval, while millennials, came of age during the rise of the internet and globalization.

These different experiences can lead to different perspectives and approaches to life, work, and relationships. However, it's important to recognize that not everyone within a generation thinks or acts the same way, and there is always diversity within any group.

Taking into consideration, the insights from the brief specific research and carefully abiding by the set values of the concept, at first, the following blueprint was created. Later, each step of the blueprint was designed in detail, finally creating the concept for the first prototype.

It is to be noted that these steps are just the basic structure and must be improvised to the specific needs and interests of the place and participants. Flexibility and inclusivity are key to making this concept that fosters meaningful connections and understanding through knowledge exchange.

• So, Defining the purpose, The idea was to design a ‘Picnic for all generations as it was familiar and clearly understandable for the audience. Besides this, it was early summer and people especially in Germany are very drawn towards Picnics on sunny days.
• The venue for this prototype was selected to be schillers park. As It is a public space, well known for its greenery, small lake, and peaceful and safe energy Every day one could see people of all generations engaged in activities like walking, exercising, running, sitting on the benches talking, doing picnics, etc. As with any other place, there could be mischievous elements ruining the whole essence of the gathering, to avoid something like that happening the time was chosen to be 11 am as the cities are the least mischievous between mornings and midday. The day was chosen to be Saturday as it was a sunny weekend and people could relax on Sunday.

• The concept aimed to preserve the fundamental principle of being an inclusive platform for knowledge exchange, ensuring that it did not devolve into a mere recreational gathering. The focus was on attracting individuals who genuinely embraced this purpose, rather than simply appealing to those seeking amusement or temporary diversion.

  These activities were not rigidly scheduled but designed to encourage improvisation and exchange of knowledge during ample interactive time, among the participants.

Especially, for the first prototype in Dessau, we wanted to experiment with personal invitations. As this town had a diverse population, we also wanted to experience how would the localities react, when we talk about this concept while presenting an invitation card, which would stay with them. This way we could also get exact data on-

1. How many were invited?
2. Did they even feel hesitant during the conversations?
3. What generations did they belong to?
4. What was their response?
5. How many showed up?

Since in Dessau, a big population does not speak English so the invitation cards were designed in German primarily. To make sure that we are not miscommunicating anything, the design team included a native German student.

The prototype, named 'Picnic for Alle,' derived its name from the German phrase meaning 'Picnic for everyone,' effectively conveying the core concept while building upon a familiar idea. The overall structure of the event was shaped by insights gained from the literature review. The roles of the presenters and the facilitator, including myself, were merely titles without any power dynamics. 

Inviting

The inviting team of three international individuals, 2 men and 1 woman invited a total of 30 people of diverse age groups.  After inviting 30 people, a total of 10 people participated but the gathering was short of someone of age between 41-50.

Glimpses of the gathering- 

Two mothers joined! The thoughts about parenting and motherhood created a connection between the two, where one was native to this country and the other came from a distant land, thousands of miles apart. In the making of their connection age, nationality, profession, and wealth, didn’t really matter.

Some more people joined and immediately joined the Jenga circle. The game was surprisingly very competitive but also became the ground for knowing and connecting with others.

Interestingly all the members came from different cultural settings and didn’t really speak one language well in common. So all throughout the game one could hear phrases and slang in German, English, Russian, Kazakh, Arabic, and Hindi.

The new person in the gathering was a veteran guitarist. Of course, he could not stop himself from trying out this Indian classical instrument called Sitar. When he found that the guitar lessons and techniques were not working on this instrument. The Sitar expert helped him to figure it out. Nevertheless, this figuring out took them the entire gathering time.

This park served a vital role in making comfortable conversations with people. Earlier it was the same park where we approached these people first while inviting them. We also tried inviting people near a supermarket but soon realized that people were more resistant to communicate there as they would think we were trying to sell something to them as there is a certain money-related mindset involved in the space as well as within the activity of going to a supermarket. The overall atmosphere there was a bit hesitant and discomforting for us as well as for those whom we were inviting.

Feedback and Conclusion-

During this project when I was personally inviting people, I was astonished by the excitement and the positive response of German people towards us and the concept. While inviting thirty people of all generations we did not encounter even one person that was in any way rude or even disrespectful to us. I could see that despite, all the worries and doubt it is the compassion, empathy and trust that the community believes in and needs to practice more. This could be done by inclusive initiatives like this where we think about ‘us’ as a community keeping aside age, race, religion, money, gender, etc.

The multi-generational picnic organized for the purpose of knowledge exchange among different generations proved to be successful but this is not the end but rather a beginning. Being critical about my prototype, I realized that this was one way of designing the session and there could be many other ways too. After presenting the project to fellow students and professors, their diversity of thoughts about my approach made me think that yes, I am still trying too hard to create this framework. It could have been possible to just say on the invitation that “we are meeting here for knowledge exchange” and observe, how many and who are the people that attend without any motivation like food, games, music, etc.

With such a complex framework that took me twenty minutes to explain, it is very difficult to continue this concept as I did it because all of the forced but essential values might not convince everyone in the group. The feedback about “me trying too hard” was rather very true and the concept needs to be more open for improvisations and discussions about even the fundamental values. There have to be more gatherings so that we could get a deeper understanding of questions like - how much should the concept be open to improvise and how much should be fixed, What happens when it is totally open? But I am also very delighted that through this project my understanding of knowledge, cultural differences, the ‘local’ community, being a foreigner and the generation gap drastically evolved. Through this project, I could connect, understand, exchange thoughts and above all establish meaningful relationships with many people. I hope that this would serve as a point of reference and insight for future projects and initiatives.