The Legacy of Women Designers in the Canary Islands: Articulating a Collective Voice through Visual Methodology

Una metodología visual para articular una voz colectiva

Abstract

In design historiography and its institutional archives, women’s work has been systematically rendered invisible. This phenomenon becomes more pronounced in peripheral territories due to the scarcity of bibliography and records. In the context of the Canary Islands (Spain), professional initiatives and educational programs coexist across different institutions where women have been present. However, documentation on women in the field of design remains scattered and poorly systematised, hindering the construction of genealogies and local references. This article proposes a visual and participatory methodology to collect and make visible the fragmented professional legacy of women designers in the Canary Islands.

Within a four-month timeframe, a multimodal qualitative strategy based on visual methods was designed. An initial database was created using snowball sampling, and five semi-structured interviews were conducted with leading female designers to gather individual narratives. In parallel, three online focus groups were developed to articulate a collective voice, distinguishing between professional designers and academic researchers. In two of these groups, the collaborative visual platform Miro was used to facilitate interaction and record data in real time or asynchronously.

The analysis combined manual extraction of the generated material, review of the transcripts, and an initial thematic categorisation assisted by artificial intelligence, subsequently validated by the research team. The research culminated in a participatory exhibition, which was designed to serve as a methodological tool for public engagement and archive activation. This exhibition integrated the qualitative narratives collected, as well as a representative sample of physical and digital works. It was also documented through a 360º audiovisual tour to expand its accessibility. The result of the research is a replicable model of visual and participatory documentation for research in creative practices with limited archival resources, constrained timeframes, and a focus on social transfer.