Reflections of Collective Design School

Alice Osborne
Nov 6 · 4 min read

I’ve been reflecting on my experience of The Collective Design School led by the fabulous Ella Britton. What a great experience that was/is. You can now see a round up on the website of the Collective Design School. I’m so grateful for all the caring and inclusive work that is happening across the week — and especially the day that I curated with a focus on care. In the morning we did a silent walk around the west end of the city with the intent on looking for the ways of being able to sit with and relate to these questions:

What does care look like?
How does it feel to be cared for?
How does it feel to care for someone else?
What does a care-filled world look like?
What should designers be caring for in our future?

In the afternoon we themed these insights in to areas of opportunities to create more caring futures with a focus on:

Inclusive Places — Spaces for people to come together, where everyone feels included and welcome (not just those that they are designed for)
Caring Behaviours— Designing in more attentive and caring ways
Shared Spaces — Designing shared spaces for togetherness
Bridging the balance — Designing a good balance of giving and receiving in care relationships
Caring People — Designing for caring people in caring settings (in traditional and untraditional ways) and self-care being integral to this
Caring Environments — Designing for caring interactions in the same way that the environments can be designed to allow for the most caring interactions?Caring world — Designing beyond buildings and things — What would we be designing if our client was the planet?

We then used this as a starting point for ideas and free space for ideas from a sustainable care home to an end-of-life centre of final experiences in the wilderness.

Whilst we imagined future possible landscapes where designers cared first about the human and ecological experience? What a different world that might be.

Something we all took away was ‘To care is an act of restoration’. Whether you are a designer, a mum, a carer or a friend. If we take that role as individuals — then we must continue to help as designers to care too.

For me, one of the biggest learnings was the need to create space for sustainability + care settings — it is not enough to just do projects that benefit society — we must also look at the impact the project has on the planet too and I want to be asking some harder questions about what the care sector is doing around sustainability.

Alice Osborne

Written by

Designer & innovator. Passionate about ageing, care homes, sustainability & the power of people & generations.

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