This short pilot study, Future Thinking for Social Living (FTfSL) took place in May and June 2015 at Miners Court, an assisted care housing complex managed by Coastline Housing in Redruth, Cornwall. Led by researchers at Falmouth University and FoAM Kernow, with support from Arts for Health Cornwall, who worked with residents to explore co-creation methods to increase agency and wellbeing within the Miners Court community.
Experimenting with Bare Conductive sound board, attaching fabric patches to trigger sound clips
Miners Court management invited researchers to explore ways of invigorating the communal spaces, which it felt weren’t being used to their full potential. The project team devised the idea of a pop up research studio in various locations throughout the building so residents could join if and when they pleased. We used arts practices, co-creation, creative making and design fiction (a technique used by designers to envisage the future) approaches, to help participants re-envisage their environment by exploring the relationship between creativity, space, identity, social connectivity and emotional health and wellbeing.
FTfSL was an emerging method that combined hand-making and digital technologies to encourage active participation that was specific and situated within a particular context and community. The project mixed digital and analogue tools, craft practices and creative making. It employed Do-It-Yourself and Do-It-With-Others ethos’, paying attention to chance conversations and new narratives. It used creative practices to establish safe spaces in which people can reflect, be quiet and listen, be noisy, talk, joke, have fun, challenge themselves and each other, and find ways to potentially engage with others.
The project started with an overarching question of what home is and what makes a home. The project album documents the moments of making and talking, sharing and reflecting and showcases what participants made during the course of the nine days we were together. Miners Court houses over 60 residents who occupy their own individual flats and have access to a number of communal spaces and facilities, including a dining room, garden, hairdressers, a pool table, lounge and various spaces for activities.