Pathways out of Powerlessness

Glasgow City, Scotland, United Kingdom

Founder: Universal Recognition CIC 2025. Organiser: Doughnut Economics Scotland Network. About Me Hi I’m Rebecca (Becki). I’m a person and planet centred designer and design researcher. I work in the intersections between service, environment and policy design in relationship to social justice and planetary health. I work in civic/grass roots, participatory action research (PAR) and industry settings. My focus is on the role of accessibility (a verb for enabling equitable participation)  in how we design and nurture safe economic systems that support the life of people and planet. My practice is led by the Social and money models of Disability. I was Accessibility and Equity Lead to DEAL’s global communities for Global Donut Days 2023 -2024.  I am a visiting lecturer in Design approaches towards accessibility, regenerative economics and Social Justice at GSA SIT. I hold a first class M.Des in Design Innovation and Citizenship from GSA School of Innovation and Technology. My design thesis focused on Speculative Design Towards the Role of Accessibility in a Wellbeing Economy. This co-creative participatory action design research won GSA’s Sustainability Prize in 2022. In 2024 I founded the Universal Recognition (UR) Network (which later incorporated and became the Disabled People’s design Organisation Universal Recognition CIC in 2025).  UR supports Disabled people working or volunteering with aspirations to work in accessibility, environment, service and product design. We help service providers and decision makers to co-design their services and products with Disabled experts ensuring that those products will be sustainable and fit for our futures. Our organisation is passionate about the transformative power of accessibility in creating safer and more just economic futures. I am passionate about my work as alongside my professional experience I have personal experience of disability. I am invisibly disabled. I am a child of a hard-of-hearing parent and grew up in a lip-reading household supporting my Mum as a young carer. I was also an unpaid family carer to my Dad during his terminal cancer. This was during a time of extreme austerity cuts to welfare, social and health care in the U.K. Our economic systems needs to support the realities of our loved one’s care, life and livelihoods. How we produce and provide for one another should safeguard society against harm and disablement rather than be the cause. My lived experience and research explores ways we can recognise this and design better  economic systems that are fair and fit for our loved one’s futures. Grass Roots Organising & Research As mentioned I am founder of Universal Recognition  CIC - a design organisation and social enterprise led by d/Deaf, Disabled and neurodivergent workers and innovators. Our community work across sectors to help society build better systems and environments that are fit for people and planet. Our work helps to support individuals and organisations to recognise, value and action accessibility within their work and regenerative initiatives. Through improving accessibility we can ensure no one gets left behind in our action towards regenerative economics. Values Design and systems thinking teaches us that how the planet flourishes directly impacts and is intertwined with (much like woodland brambles and wee beasties) how society flourishes too. How we understand Disablement, Disability and health shapes how we establish sustainable planetary health and vice versa. I believe we need equitable Disabled and diverse wisdom to re-wild how we produce and provide for one another (our economic systems). This mirrors how we need biodiversity to nourish flourishing sustainable ecosystems. Our economic system will not create safe and fair circumstances for all if ‘all’ are not enabled to safely and fairly shape and take part in economic activity - improving equitable approaches and accessibility in design innovation, economic and social approaches is key to this endeavour. Curious about and researching: - The ways we might transform society/the environment/economics to meet folks’ diverse needs rather than trying to ‘fix’ people to conform to a narrow view of society that doesn’t flex to our natural and needed diversity. - How our economic systems both enable and prevent equitable economic participation - How we start to collectively enable more than we disable all life within how we produce and provide for one another #Accessibility     #CoProduction