Abstract
Social Design is increasingly called upon to address new forms of wealth and poverty related to data, cultural capital, and social inequities, requiring tools that can reorganise capital and privilege for systemic transformation. To this end, we present and reflect on Value Matters, a discursive tool we designed for eco-social enterprises to strategically reflect on their value generation and social organising activities. Informed by systemic design frameworks and transformative economic principles, and employing a Research Through Design approach —including expert interviews, value taxonomy analysis, and participant focus groups—the toolkit opens up critical thinking on the design of the economy in a visually and participatory way. It challenges what an economy is and is supposed to be good for by inviting narratives of value creation from participatory fieldwork conducted with three eco-social initiatives based in [place/region]. The paper discusses the radical critiques of neoclassical theories of value, outlining exemplary models informed by theoretical stands of eco-feminism, ecological economics, diverse economies and commons research that guided our framework and workshops. By adopting a playful process and prioritising visual storytelling over the quantitative language typical for social impact reports, the toolkit enables initiatives to identify, describe, and communicate their core values, the values they produce and the practices that go along with it. This helps to clarify a shared understanding: to communicate for themselves as a group, and to convincingly promote the values produced to stakeholders and the public.