Department of Care

Does care mean the same thing to different people? How do we imagine its potential futures? This exhibition explored the meanings of care and the relationships between formal and informal networks of support. Kindly hosted by The NewBridge Project.

Visitor statements about their relationship with care.

Context

Demand for health and social care support from the NHS, local authorities, and third-sector organizations is greater than ever. These essential services grapple with financial pressures, uncertain futures, and rapidly evolving public needs - complex, “wicked problems” that defy simple, top-down solutions. These challenges are widely recognised but large public services have entrenched ways of operating and are typically slow to respond to changing needs.

This exhibition was an opportunity to explore what it feels like to provide or receive “care” in this public service landscape. I also asked visitors to consider the future of care and how services might be redesigned to better meet public needs. This was open-ended research, aiming to gather and promote fresh ideas and diverse perspectives from a very wide sample of stakeholders in a public setting.

Project overview

I started with an empty gallery space. By the end of the 2-week exhibition, the gallery was filled with contributions from almost 300 participants, including outputs from:

Co-design workshops with participants from health and social care services, charities, informal carers, and people receiving care. We focused on how services are currently delivered, what this feels like for users, and what improved user experiences might look like
Teaching sessions for Northumbria University design students. The students prototyped interventions on themes of care, medicalization, and community. These sessions were co-facilitated with Mark Green
Poster and zine-making sessions offering creative outlets for visitors to express their thoughts
Informal drop-in chats where members of the public (many of whom identified as informal carers) received advice from Newcastle Carers support workers

A visitor responding to provocation posters

Visitors gave snapshots of their experiences and frustrations

Design students discussing ideas for “caring” products

Visitors reflected on what care meant to them

Insights

This was open-ended, exploratory research. I wanted visitors to experiment and collaborate, instead of leading them towards defined outcomes. I encouraged visitors to layer their own views and ideas on top of the co-design workshop outputs, which helped develop a collage of diverse perspectives. My aim was to generate ideas and new questions that might not be possible with a more defined, linear research approach.

01. Care is often invisibleProviding informal, unpaid care can lead to immense emotional pressure and poor physical health. Caring can be a 24/7 job, forcing significant lifestyle changes and feeding a cycle of social isolation, poverty, and dependence. Could we reframe care as a visible community responsibility?

02. Care is a process, not an outcome

Care means different things in different contexts. It can be individual micro-interactions between 2 people, or a national-scale system capable of exerting sigificant power over groups and individuals. It can be fixed interventions such as drug-based treatment, or abstract feelings of closeness and empathy. There is no fixed meaning of "care" that applies in every case.

03. Good care is proactive, not reactive

Some visitors were unaware that they were "carers" - they considered it a natural progression of an existing relationship. This echoed earlier research which showed that carers will often go undetected by services, relying instead on informal networks of peer support. Is there a way to bridge this gap without forcing people away from these valuable, informal relationships?

05. Care can be agile

A common theme was the need for more community-scale services. This could help them to focus on changing local needs instead of remits decided on national or regional levels. Many visitors described their ideal "new" service as a non-medical community space dedicated to informal discussion, education, and idea-sharing around wellbeing and future planning.

06. There is no single pathway

People felt marginalised in their own future planning. They described feeling that decisions were made without them, and that their whole lives had to change to accommodate support. This perceived lack of agency led to the Remapping Dementia project.

One workshop looked at ways to help people retain their independence

A popular idea was a non-medical community space for future planning

Visitors at the closing night party

Reflections on this approach

Open-ended research isn’t always ideal. Most people, particularly in service design, quite reasonably expect clearly defined and actionable outcomes. In this research space, however, an experimental and exploratory approach was appropriate. It was not an end point in itself, but it helped to clearly articulate the issues and opened several directions for future research.What worked well

It gave people space to talk about what was most important to them and to articulate this in whatever way they were most comfortable with. This was reflected in the breadth of their responses, which were often extremely personal and had nothing to do with services.
It cast as wide a net as possible without a budget. Attracting almost 300 participants from all walks of life, the exhibition made it clear that “care” was not simply an issue for services and carers, but something we all deal with every day. This gave me confidence that I was approaching this topic in the right way
My earlier research on this topic had laid the groundwork with local health and social care services, so they already saw the value of the research and were happy to get involved with the exhibition. It would’ve been more difficult to get them engaged with the exhibition approach had it been our first interaction
Asking for public feedback on workshop outputs meant that the ideas were much more visible. Rather than keeping these conversations in specialist (i.e. service) spaces, the exhibition was a relational platform where we were all able to learn from each other

What I’d change if I did it again

The exhibition involved 2 weeks of intense research and design activity. A slower pace may give more opportunities for reflection and time to explore different ideas
The gallery was a highly visible space in the city centre, but it came with its own gatekeeping (although this is difficult to quantify). A neutral venue such as an empty shop space, may have been a more appropriate choice
This was my first attempt at this approach and I wasn’t sure if anyone would find it useful and relevant. I wish I had been more confident in the idea and pushed it further
My approach would’ve been very different if the exhibition were longer, or even permanent. At times I felt that I put people on the spot to contribute there and then. 2 visitors contacted me after the exhibition to pass on written notes in response to the exhibition - they needed more time to process and articulate their views