In Sept 2018 I attended the Design4Health conference at Lab4Living – Sheffield Hallam University.
This conference has been running for the last 8 years – its aim being to explore ‘how design practice and processes meet the challenges of health and wellbeing in the 21st century’.
D4H was an incredibly insightful event, connecting a diverse set of skills and perspectives from experts within design and health contexts and beyond.
Prominent themes occurring throughout the conference included interdisciplinarity, empathy, collaboration, participation and facilitation.
The vast array of methods being developed by speakers at the conference was inspiring and also very helpful in situating and reflecting on my own research and practice.
Opportunities and barriers for both design and health sectors and for specialists and researchers operating within this field were rigorously discussed.
I took inspiration from speakers whom placed emphasis on the materiality of the tools of the designer to bridge communities within complex design scenarios, through talks delivered by Clair Craig (Co-Director – Lab4Living) Daniel Wolstenholme (Visiting Research Fellow and Associate Lab4Living), Jayne Wallace (Professor of Craft and Wellbeing, Northumbria University) Jo Langley (Senior Research Fellow – Healthcare Innovation – Lab4Living) and Lucy Melville-Richards (Practice Educator – Bangor University) and many more who have consequently become new reference points for the PhD.
I will most definitely be looking to attend the next D4H conference in Amsterdam 2020.