Design thinking is a participatory tool for social innovation that can be used to address complex real-life problems through empathy, collaboration, ideation, prototyping, and reflection. It is often applied in community-based and socially engaged projects where creative methods respond to local needs and encourage participation. This paper approaches social intervention as a process actively constructed through planning, relationship-building, facilitation, and delivery, rather than as a single workshop event or final outcome. It considers how the behind-the-scenes processes of moving from proposal to implementation create the conditions for artivism to take place.

Using the LightUP! Design Thinking workshop implemented with NOSTOP (NPO) and AME School in Kraaifontein, Cape Town, as a practice-based local case study, the paper examines how a creative social intervention moves from proposal development to workshop implementation and community-facing deliverables. The study asks: how does social intervention happen in practice, and what forms of creative, pedagogical, organisational, and relational work make it possible?

The paper draws on the project proposal, planning documents, workshop materials, facilitator reflections, activity structures, and final deliverables as research material. Through process-based reflection, it traces key stages: identifying the community need, writing the proposal, aligning with stakeholders, securing project support, adapting Design Thinking into child-friendly activities, facilitating the workshop, and producing community-facing outputs.

The paper argues that proposal writing, stakeholder alignment, funding language, activity design, and facilitation are not merely administrative processes surrounding the intervention, but part of what enables it to move from proposal into practice. Artivism is therefore not only located in visible creative outputs, but is also made possible through the structures, relationships, planning, and care that enable participation and community engagement. The paper speaks primarily from the position of the facilitator-practitioner and offers practice-based insight for others developing community-based Design Thinking projects.