The Dewey Organ: a problem and public making machine is a ‘co-design’ experiment to prototype ways of making problems and publics. The research directly addresses issues central to the funding call and critical to practice-based researchers, designers and policymakers, namely: what counts as a social ‘problem’ and what publics do problems bring into being?

The interdisciplinary team approaches these core concerns by way of two key interrelated practice-based research objectives:

Make the Organ with which to render issues tangible, material and debatable in new ways.

Play the Organ in a context where members of publics can interact with, add or make their issues, problematize and customize problems and in doing so make their publics known or indicate new publics that arise around new issues.

The machine takes its name – ‘The Dewey Organ’ – from John Dewey’s 1927 book ‘The Public and its Problems’ which critically examines civic participation, relationships between citizens and experts and the nature of expertise. The ‘Organ’ is both a device for making noise, both harmonies and discordant sounds, and of bringing people together. It also speaks of the body politic, and an anatomy of publics.

https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/20287