Designing Resilience

Designing resilience connected communities event
'Head-Start' friends from Blackpool with the 'Resilient Roadmap' tool
Boing Boing team, young people and Nick from Community21 with the Sun and Clouds tool

Community21 and Boing Boing bought together teams of design students, researchers, resilience practitioners and young people from across the country to look at how to collaboratively design better tools to promote personal resilience.

The event on the 6th of November saw the presentation of the 6 month project to people from all walks of life interested in resilience. The tools presented were all developed collaboratively and provide new ways to teach young people how to become more resilient by using digital and physical tools and games.

Attendees from as far as Blackpool, Cornwall and London were invited to test the tools which ranged from outdoor games that could be played by teams of people, to a graffiti wall that houses young people's videos accessed using augmented reality and a virtual reality house and neighbourhood designed in the gaming platform Minecraft.

The collaboration continues with groups across the country testing and evaluating our prototypes for further development to final products in the next phase of the project.

Nick Gant from Community21 reports that this project exemplifies the approach Community21 take to the use of design and technology in making a difference through collaborating with the people who will best benefit from the work.

For more information contact nickgant@community21.org

The project was funded as part of the Arts and Humanities research Council, Connected Communities Festival programme.