Commemorating Race and Empire in the First World War Centenary

International audienc

Design implications of feeling playful: Play moods + atmospheres in dialogue

Based on a research project Play Stories about play design and embodiment, the aim of this paper is to explore how a fruitful combination of theories about play moods and concepts of atmospheres can enrich the field of play design. The paper explores the implications of this conceptual pairing through two design experiments. It shows how, while it is possible to design for different moods, play’s atmospheric qualities insist that designers attend to how these moods emerge, and the shifts that happens when the moods emerge. The main contribution of the paper is to point to the following design implications: Atmospheres help us understand the dynamic of moods, and we therefore have to design for several moods; atmospheres show us the multiple elements that can configure when designing for several moods; and atmospheres orients us to emergence, and show the importance of designing for fluency, which does not mean that the design itself has to be fluent. The focus on atmospheres hints at ‘the space intentionally left blank’, the ineffable and felt qualities that always evade precise description

Establishing a new service role in tuberculosis care: the tuberculosis link worker

Aim.  This paper is a report of a study to develop a social outreach model of care, including the role of a link worker in developing collaborative care pathways, for marginalized groups with tuberculosis. Background.  Social risk factors such as homelessness and substance misuse are associated with poor treatment outcomes. Models of interprofessional practice to address the health and social care of patients are needed to improve outcomes. Methods.  A process evaluation involving a prospective cohort study of 100 patients and interviews with eight agencies involved in their care was conducted in London between January 2003 and April 2005. Outcome measures included a profile of patient need to guide service development; referrals to care providers; goal attainment; social improvement and treatment outcomes; and agencies’ views on the benefits of link working. Findings.  The median age of the sample was 32·4 years and 62% were males. Reasons for referral to the link worker included housing need (56%); welfare benefits (42%); immigration (29%) and clinical management issues (28%). One-third of the patients were referred to other agencies. Goals, as agreed in the care plan, were attained totally or partially for 88% (59/67) of patients and 78% of patients successfully completed treatment. Barriers to attaining goals included service criteria which excluded some groups of patients and, in some cases, a patient’s inability to follow a course of action. Conclusion.  Link workers can mitigate some of the social risk factors that complicate the treatment of tuberculosis by enabling integrated health and social care

Advancing policy design through creative engagement with lived experience:the Tomorrow Party

We consider how lived experience might actively inform policy design. Good policy design calls for analysis of problems, how they might be addressed, and likely outcomes. Policy scholars and practitioners have devised methods that bring rigor to policy design through problem framing, assessment of potential interventions, and prediction of outcomes of those interventions. This pursuit of analytical and predictive rigor has often given short shrift to the insights of people whose lives are affected by current challenges and who will be impacted by policy change. Our theory of change is that creative engagement with citizens can generate insights of high value to the process of policy design. We introduce the Tomorrow Party–a design method for generating novel stakeholder insights regarding desirable future states. We then discuss initial findings from a series of pilots. Those findings suggest the Tomorrow Party is a broadly applicable creative tool for advancing policy design.</p

Transforming futures together: time travelling with the Tomorrow Party

We need new methods for generating policy insights that ensure people's lived experiences are not flattened and fixed to a moment in time and that visions of possible futures are not curtailed by a 'crisis of imagination'. In response to this challenge, we have developed a creative, play-based method called the Tomorrow Party, which invites participants to travel forward in time and share co-created stories of the desirable futures they find themselves living in. As a future story-making process, the Tomorrow Party generates novel ways of sharing affective perspectives on possible futures so we can collectively anticipate what is at stake and work out what policy responses would contribute to the futures we want. We present the method as well as key findings and insights from a series of Tomorrow Parties commissioned by thePolicy Lab at the Wellcome Trust

Togetherness after terror: The more or less digital commemorative public atmospheres of the Manchester Arena bombing’s first anniversary

This article examines the forms and feelings of togetherness evident in both Manchester city centre and on social media during the first anniversary of the 22 May 2017 Manchester Arena bombing. To do this, we introduce a conceptual framework that conceives commemorative public atmospheres as composed of a combination of 'more or less digital' elements. We also present a methodological approach that combines the computational collection and analysis of Twitter content with short-term team autoethnography. First, the article addresses the concept of public atmospheres before introducing the case study and outlining our methodology. We then analyse the shifting moods of togetherness created by the official programme of commemorative events known as Manchester Together and their digital mediatisation through Twitter. We then explore a grassroots initiative, #LoveMCRBees, and how it relied on the materialisation of social media logics to connect people. Overall, we demonstrate how public atmospheres, as constituted in more and less digital ways, provide a framework for conceptualising commemorative events, and how togetherness is reworked by social media, especially in the context of responses to terrorism.</p

Mundane data: The routines, contingencies and accomplishments of digital living

This article develops and mobilises the concept of ‘mundane data’ as an analytical entry point for understanding Big Data. We call for in-depth investigation of the human experiences, routines, improvisations and accomplishments which implicate digital data in the flow of the everyday. We demonstrate the value of this approach through a discussion of our ethnographic research with self-tracking cycling commuters. We argue that such investigations are crucial in informing our understandings of how digital data become meaningful in mundane contexts of everyday life for two reasons: first because there is a gap in our understanding of the contingencies and specificities through which big digital data sets are produced, and second because designers and policy makers often seek to make interventions for change in everyday contexts through the presentation of mundane data to consumers but with little understanding of how people produce, experience and engage with these data

Policy design, lived experience, and speculative futures

Good policy design calls for analysis of problems, how they might be addressed, and likely outcomes. Policy scholars and practitioners have devised methods that bring rigor to policy design through problem framing, assessment of potential interventions, and prediction of outcomes of those interventions. This pursuit of analytical and predictive rigor has often given short shrift to the insights of people whose lives are affected by current challenges and who will be impacted by policy change. We consider how lived experience might effectively inform policy design. Our theory of change is that creative engagement with citizens can generate insights of high value to the process of policy design. We introduce the Tomorrow Party – a design method for generating novel stakeholder insights regarding desirable future states. Initial findings from a series of pilots suggest the Tomorrow Party is a broadly applicable creative tool for advancing policy design

Reified monuments, counter memorials and anti-memorials: contested colonial heritage in Melbourne – commemorating John Batman

This paper contributes to recent debates about memorials and the persistence of outmoded forms that commemorate figures associated with slavery and colonial depredations. The focus is on John Batman, often considered to be the founder of Melbourne, and a subject that has been commemorated in numerous forms. We explore the ways in which reified understandings of Batman were consolidated by these memorials. We argue that they provided a basis for the rampant settler colonialism that was initiated by his arrival in what became Melbourne. While the power of the Batman myth has endured for many years, we show how more recently it has been challenged by a range of art-inspired memorials that provide oppositional and alternative meanings and forms. We especially focus on the potency of counter-memorials, forms that directly address these older modes of commemoration, and anti-memorials, inventive installations that seek to dissolve singular meanings and continue the work of decentring outmoded commemorative forms and narratives

Wandering Fests: Relational Orientations in Academic Writing

Based on a number of PhD workshops called Wandering Feasts, in collaboration between Monash University and Design School Kolding, this article explores academic writing as both a mode and a method of inquiry. The article both points to and performs five creative-relational orientations to alternative academic writing: Performativity in challenging dominant ways of knowing and representing knowledge in the academy; emergence as mindfully holding open ideas of purpose and destination in favour of not-knowing; reciprocity in collectively creating charged encounters that spark new ways of knowing; improvisation in building social space where we felt comfortable jamming and givenness as a fundamental playfulness in which an academic community nurtures the courage to give–of ourselves. The article is in itself a manifestation of exploration writing in a playful and loosely defined process