Domestic Production 1: means of production

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BACKGROUND: ‘Domestic Production 1: Means of Production’ investigates creative printing production, collaborative community practice and design responses to the COVID pandemic and the ensuing lockdowns. It connects to the practices of alternative economic models (Healy 2020), design for the commons (Martilla 2014) and public pedagogy (Charman & Dixon 2021). Commoners Press is an experimental letterpress and a site for research into printing, collaboration and community creative activation.

CONTRIBUTION: This research explores the concept of domestic production, which was always an ambiguous term but is especially now after the experience of lockdown. This is seen as a new mode of production, one that offers opportunities to consider home as central to the conceptualisation of design work. The blurred line between home and work offers ways of designing that are separate from market constraints and client pressure. Home becomes a source of material and materials both inspirationally and physically. Commoners Press own both old and new means of production and use them to create work that is future orientated but made on old things. This work involved printing 3D printed type of a ‘Commoners Press statement of intent’ on a small printing press at the home of Neal Haslem during lockdown and distributing the work via the ‘Designers on your doorstep’ project as part of Design Fringe and Linden New Art Gallery.

SIGNIFICANCE: This work was selected by Linden New Art as part of Design Fringe for 2021 and exhibited online and via street posters in Melbourne. Design Fringe has been running for 35 years as part of Melbourne Fringe Festival. Due to lockdown Design Fringe was moved online and became the online exhibition and street-poster based project ‘Designers on your doorstep’.