Cuckoo
We were presented with the brief of Scottish Soft Power and an assigned context of Scottish Ways of Life.
More than ever, with the Brexit situation, Scotland has the need to create and strengthen international relationships. This is where the Soft Power plays a role.
We began the project by establishing ‘Soft Power’ as a noncoercive power that uses culture, traditions, political values and foreign policies as economic currency.
In this project we aimed to focus on a more ‘cultural’ discourse.
As such we thought these social practises can change other people’s opinions and perception about the country and its people, while also building a way to create new relationships between countries based on this form of the Scottish Soft Power.
This combination of Scottish Ways of Life and Values lead us to the theme of ‘welcoming’ as a form of social practices.
Therefore, the group of people that best fitted our concept, given these reasons, were immigrants in Scotland.
For this reason, we sought to understand why Scotland would need to welcome immigrants. In particular we found that Scotland is a historically under-populated country, where the latest population growth is due to migration, from those people 86% were born outside of the country. This figure shows that Scotland needs immigration to function as a nation.
The aim is to allow Scotland an opportunity to exert Soft Power by providing an experience for immigrants that shows the values behind Scottish social practices and helps new people integrating into the Scottish Ways of Life.
Our argument for Cuckoo spawns from Scotland’s dwindling population.
In a country that is underpopulated and needs more people to function independently, immigration could be seen as a positive force for Scotland’s future. Hence, Soft Power is generated with a more accompanied experience for immigrants in moving and integrating in Scotland.
As such, the Scottish Ways of Life are represented by the social practises of integration. This shows Scotland’s different position regarding immigration by caring and supporting people who choose to live in Scotland and helping them integrate into Scottish culture.
Master in Design Innovation and Service Design
Project done with Mar Castelo, Silvia Cantalupi, Ross McIntosh and Xiaofei Huang.
