Friday bonus: Robeson and Morris
A long-running and only slightly imaginary side-project is a fictional design research company called Robeson and Morris. I like to say that Robeson and Morris was, in fact, the world’s first design research firm.
It’s about time for a fun one again. Or rather, one of those Trojan Horse pieces that seems fun on the surface but has a serious point. This one comes from my low-and-slow artistic practice, which occupies a small portion of my time, but is the source of a disproportionate number of my favourite ideas.
A long-running and only slightly imaginary side-project is a fictional design research company called Robeson and Morris. I like to say that Robeson and Morris was, in fact, the world’s first design research firm. As with other projects of mine like When We Awoke to Our Folly (which you can read about here), it takes place in a present split off from ours at some point in the past. The history goes like this:
In the mid-1920s, American singer, actor, and activist Paul Robeson's theatrical career took him to London where, in 1928, he starred in Showboat (this part, at least, is true). Robeson and his wife Eslanda lived in the city for a time. While it is well-documented that Showboat earned Paul Robeson a great deal of fame and made him popular among London's power-brokers, it is less well-known that at the same time, Robeson befriended an ageing but still vital May Morris (this “fact” is where our story diverges into a slightly better world). Morris, a designer, socialist and publisher in her own right was also the daughter of William Morris, the famed publisher, designer, and socialist (like daughter, like father). Robeson, trained as a lawyer, was the son of a freed slave. Morris and Robeson bonded over a shared sense of the injustice and inequality in the world. By starting a consultancy together, the two hoped to bring their ideals into practice. While 1928 pre-dates what we now think of as design research, the efforts of May Morris and Paul Robeson to address injustice through interventions in the built world resonated with other movements taking place contemporaneously around the world, including the Bauhaus in Germany. In the world of Robeson and Morris, the good ideals of Modernism (which are often forgotten) played a slightly more important role, with one more set of passionate advocates fighting for a world with more consideration of equality built into its structure.
The founding story of Robeson and Morris means that projects taking place in the “Robeson and Morris” world are happening in a universe that split off from reality as we know it in 1928. That's very nearly a hundred years of social justice-led design research. So it’s a different world, to an extent, but a lot of things have turned out the same. Design research, after all, has not managed to save the world yet.
What I find pleasing about the idea of Robeson and Morris is the continuity of ideals it would represent. In the current moment, when companies are self-serving and long-standing institutions have been damaged by the seep of neoliberal logics, I like to imagine that a good and principled thing has managed to persist for 98 years. I like to imagine that something with such strong roots in justice and equality, and with real attention to both the needs of individuals, and the need for a society built on solidarity, could still be plugging away in some office somewhere, doing good work.
