Bounce 2025 Reflection; ‘Bucket Showers to Goose Attacks’
Studio Notes | What We’ve Been Up To
Studio Notes | What We’ve Been Up To
By Rebecca Fagan, Senior Service Designer
Last week saw the inaugural launch of ‘Bounce’, a two-day design event that took place in Trinity College Dublin which aims to provide space for design professionals to immerse themselves in the cutting edge of technology and craft. Myself and my colleague Tim Dalton attended Day Two of the event. We learned a tonne, and had lots to bring back and share with the studio.
I’d like to share my thoughts on just one of the talks from the day – titled ‘Bucket Showers to Goose Attacks’, by Fiona Ennis and Aisling Murphy.
As an animal-lover with a passion for designing towards social impact, it came as no surprise to me that ‘Bucket Showers to Goose Attacks’ was my personal highlight from Bounce 2025. Aisling Murphy and Fiona Ennis founded ‘Something Somewhere’, a non-profit design studio where they team up with community-led projects in remote corners of the globe, trading their expertise for something to eat and somewhere to sleep.
They gave an engaging and funny account of the kinds of adventures that their curiosity has led them to – from the design projects they’ve embarked on in remote communities in Malawi and Colombia, to being chased by wild geese while trying to immerse themselves in field work. What stood out to me from their talk was the scrappy nature of their design mindset. Ash and Fiona seem to embody the fun, playful approach to design that I have always aspired to – in the absence of a brief or project, they created one themselves and traded their design skills for a place to sleep and eat.
When working in design, it can be difficult from project to project to maintain the playful curiosity that’s necessary for crafting real, meaningful solutions. It’s easy to become overwhelmed with deadlines, project roadmaps, budgeting time and resources – we have to get the job done at the end of the day. However, balancing project scope with passion and curiosity is something I’d love develop more in my day-to-day, and some of the key takeaways from Ash and Fiona’s talk will definitely help me tip the scales in 2025.
Scrappy resourcing
Between conducting makeshift photoshoots for a circular fashion brand in rainy season in Malawi and trying to cobble together enough internet to successfully gather user research while navigating a significant language barrier in Colombia, the designers creatively pool what little resources are available to them when challenges arise. Seeing photos and videos of the quick, playful prototyping they did on-site in both communities remind me that there is room for more of this in our design practice.
Showing up
The pair answered a Q&A segment towards the end of their talk, where they were asked about the level of preparation they do before upping and flying halfway across the world to dive into research – the answer is that sometimes, they have to accept that they can’t know a lot of context until they land in the community they are planning to collaborate with. The act of simply showing up and doing what’s needed to create meaningful design is clearly a key practice of ‘Something Somewhere’. This reiterated to me that over-planning can often get in my own way when it comes to embarking on new research – fostering a flexible mindset will help open design challenges up to more creative, impactful solutions.
Co-design
A common theme in the projects presented at Bounce was the intentional codesign with each community on a variety of design artifacts and outputs. In Colombia, children’s drawings were used to characterize the board game the designers created to encourage education within the same community of the biodiversity and conservation of Lake Tota’s wetlands. Engaging the community in the design process in this way increases community awareness and also instills community pride in the design outcomes which they had a hand in creating. Co-designing for social impact in this way is something we practice at Context Studio, and seeing it happen in wildly different contexts like in the work of Something Somewhere is encouraging. It also helps us think about other creative ways we might empower communities through co-design in the year ahead.
Attending this talk has inspired me to explore how I might integrate more of this playful curiosity in my design practice in the coming year. Perhaps more immersive field study or experimentation in community engagement would be a good place to start. Thanks to Fiona, Ash and all of the other speakers at Bounce 2025, and of course to the organisers – we’re really hopeful that Bounce will return next year to facilitate more design discussions.