Design Activism/2018/11 min/Reel № 18.001
ByTomo Kihara
The designer of the Street Debater on fostering human connection through design
Embrace the Unknown/Recorded 2018
A close reading, kept within reach.
Tomo Kihara takes design activism as a lens on the larger question the festival keeps returning to: what design owes to the people and places it works among. The talk moves from specific projects toward a broader argument about practice.
Recorded in Japan in 2018, the conversation is grounded in Tomo's own working method — the compromises, the constraints, and the moments where the work taught them something they didn't expect.
The closing turn is characteristic of the archive: less a conclusion than a provocation, handed to the audience to carry into their own disciplines.
“I realised that Street Debating not only addresses the problem of begging but something much bigger. It’s addressing the problem of social segregation.”
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