Abstract
As a society, we are confronted with polycrisis. An epistemic shift, that means shifting our way of knowing and changing our ways of looking at complex societal issues, is necessary to be able to transform our practices. Tim Ingold offers such an epistemic shift through the concept of ‘minor key’, fostering open-endedness, imagination, and experimentation. Designing for transformation in the minor key requires different forms of co-creating and communicating. In contrast to a major key, closed style of visualising, minor key drawing might fit, due to its potential for imperfection, open-endedness and imagination. In this pictorial, I’ll reflect on a 4-year journey exploring minor key drawing in different multi-actor ecosystems. I discuss two topics that emerged: its qualities for affording commoning, and the relationship between the medium and the message. Overall, drawing in the minor key affords pluriversal eco-systems to experiment, collaborate and learn in vulnerable, open-ended and imaginative ways.
Keywords
drawing in the minor key, design for societal transformation, open-ended imagination, commoning in multi-actor ecosystems
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.2484
Citation
Hummels, C. (2026) Drawing in the minor key: An approach for multi-actor designing for societal transformation, in Simeone, L., Gray, C. M., Verhoeven, A., de Götzen, A., Bakırlıoğlu, Y., Zohar, H., Stead, M., and Buwert, P. (eds.), DRS2026: Edinburgh, 8–12 June, Edinburgh, United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.2484
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Included in
Drawing in the minor key: An approach for multi-actor designing for societal transformation
As a society, we are confronted with polycrisis. An epistemic shift, that means shifting our way of knowing and changing our ways of looking at complex societal issues, is necessary to be able to transform our practices. Tim Ingold offers such an epistemic shift through the concept of ‘minor key’, fostering open-endedness, imagination, and experimentation. Designing for transformation in the minor key requires different forms of co-creating and communicating. In contrast to a major key, closed style of visualising, minor key drawing might fit, due to its potential for imperfection, open-endedness and imagination. In this pictorial, I’ll reflect on a 4-year journey exploring minor key drawing in different multi-actor ecosystems. I discuss two topics that emerged: its qualities for affording commoning, and the relationship between the medium and the message. Overall, drawing in the minor key affords pluriversal eco-systems to experiment, collaborate and learn in vulnerable, open-ended and imaginative ways.