What is it about?
Two community groups worked on new design projects for eachother. A group of older men, most of whom have dementia, and a group of local childeren each designed and built new produtcs for each other over 3 months. Our groups were each able to learn new skills, and work hard to improve the lives of another community group, learning about themselves and others along the way.
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Photo by Dominik Scythe on Unsplash
Why is it important?
This work gave our participants time ot think about others (kids and older people), and in turn think about how others see them. Usually seen as the 'recipients of care', these groups were able to work to give care to someone else, which they found to be empowering. We learned a lot to question stereotypes, and about how we can excange value and engage in citizenship through creative acts of care.
Perspectives
I found working with our participants to bring their ideas to life so rewarding. Each group knew that their design work was for a purpose, and so wanted to make each element of their ideas as beautiful and functional as possible. I understand these newly created objects as embodiments of empathy and care, backed up by a tremendous amount of work all to imporve the lives of poelpe who, at the time, they had never met before.
Henry Collingham
Northumbria University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Co-Creating a Virtuous Cycle, August 2022, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery),
DOI: 10.1145/3537797.3537863.
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