The Dérive An unplanned journey through a urban landscape

A dérive is an unplanned journey through a landscape, usually urban, on which the subtle aesthetic contours of the surrounding architecture and geography subconsciously direct the travelers with the ultimate goal of encountering an entirely new and authentic experience.

Guy Debord, a French Marxist, who lived in Paris in the 50s, initially developed the practice of the dérive.

A dérive is an unplanned journey through a landscape, usually urban, on which the subtle aesthetic contours of the surrounding architecture and geography subconsciously direct the travellers, with the ultimate goal of encountering an entirely new and authentic experience.

Guy Debord defines the dérive as “a mode of experimental behaviour linked to the conditions of urban society: a technique of rapid passage through varied ambiances.”

Credit: Wikipedia

Dérive literally means drifting.

In a dérive, small groups of people wander through an urban area in groups of 2 or 3.

They are driven by curiosity, observing, reflecting, and conversing about the things that they stumble across.

A dérive can last from an hour or so to a day or more.

Clive Holtham’s Learning Dérive

Purpose: A vehicle to develop curiosity, creativity, and, more critically, reflection.

Prof. Clive Holtham of Cass Business School and Allan Owens of the University of Chester developed the practice of the learning dérive as a learning vehicle to promote curiosity, creativity, and, more critically, reflection in the postgraduate education of their students.

• One way through which time, space, and place can be created to generate a form of person-centered, informal, dialogical learning.
• Seek to promote learning as an active process in which learners construct the world through dialogue, action, and reflection as they interact with other people and their environment.
• Collaboration and deliberate movement through an urban environment generate dialogue that participants find professionally and personally relevant and stimulating, often arising from the psycho-geography of the area being experienced and the personal stories that are prompted by it.
• Seeing a familiar area a new or making an unfamiliar area familiar is one of the ways in which new insights are generated.
• Stimulus arises not only from oral interaction but also silence and reflection.
• Dériving leads participants to talk about the experiences with others who have not been involved.

Learning Derivé process

• the host describes the process
• the host poses a question
• the participants break up into small groups of 4 or 5 people
• the small groups leave the building and drift around exploring the locale, observing and conversing about the question posed
• they take photos of what they discover on their digital cameras or smartphones
• the small groups return to the building
• one person from each group takes 5 minutes to report back to the other groups, sharing the photographs that they took

David Gurteen’s Knowledge Café

Purpose: Primarily a vehicle for conversation and learning from each other.

Although the Knowledge Café can be put to a variety of purposes depending on the topic and the question, its fundamental strength is to bring the participants together to learn from each other, to strengthen their relationships, make connections, glean insights, and surface ideas and opportunities and encourage new ways of thinking.

The Dérive Café

Purpose: A vehicle to develop curiosity, creativity, and reflection.

David Gurteen has adapted Clive Holtham’s Learning Dérive to create the Dérive Café – a variant of Clive’s work formed by merging the Knowledge Café process with the dérive process.

Dérive Café process

• the host describes the process
• the speaker gives a short talk on the subject to be explored
• the speaker poses a question
• the participants break up into small groups of 2, 3 or 4
• the small groups leave the building and drift around exploring the locale, observing and conversing about the question posed
• the small groups return to the building
• three rounds of small group conversation take place at small tables
• a whole group conversation takes place to share insights (in a circle if possible)
• finally, each participant shares one actionable insight with the rest of the group

Instructions to the participants of a Dérive Café

• I want you to wander around; I want you to observe.
• I want you to be curious and inquisitive.
• I want you to look up, I want you to look down, and I want you to look around.
• I want you to look at things large. I want you to look at things small. And I want you to look at people.
• I want you to wonder where things came from. Who designed them? How long have they been there? What is their purpose? How much longer will they be there? What will replace them?
• Observe, reflect, and be curious.
• I want you to share your thoughts and insights, and unanswered questions with your group.
• Talk about the things you discover.
• But I want you to do one more thing.
• I want you to reflect on a question I am going to ask you.
• I want you to connect it with the things that you observe.
• I want you to use your observations and insights to throw light on the question and provoke your thinking.
• You are using the environment to stimulate your creative thinking.
• Let what you observe drive your thinking about the question.
• Try not to let the question drive what you observe.

Resources

• Using the Urban To Span the Boundaries Between Diverse Disciplines: Drama Education and Business Management
• Theory of the Dérive by Guy-Ernest Debord
• Wikipedia: Dérive
• The dérive as a tool for learning programmes – SparkNow
• My Take on “Theory of the Derive” Christopher DeBose
• Slow knowledge work – designing space and learning (off-topic)
• Stanford study finds walking improves creativity by May Wong
• Give Your Ideas Some Legs: The Positive Effect of Walking on Creative Thinking  by Marily Oppezzo and Daniel L. Schwartz
• The slow death of purposeless walking

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