Revisiting Cybersyn: A participatory framework for information design as cultural practice

This article reactivates the interrupted legacy of Project Cybersyn by reconfiguring Stafford Beer’s Viable System Model as a participatory infrastructure for information design. Through workshops with twelve Latin American diaspora participants in the UK, we demonstrate three methodological innovations: (1) cultural citation, which reactivates 1970s visual materials alongside contemporary institutional documents; (2) an approach that privileges affective and relational engagement over data extraction; and (3) the workshop-as-deliverable, which reconceptualizes participatory encounters as legitimate design outputs. Counter-visualizations produced through collage and collective annotation challenge universalist conventions while remaining accountable to situated knowledge. This work positions information design as a cultural practice grounded in specific trajectories, offering methodological alternatives to extractive research patterns.