Serendipity Is Priceless A new wave of wellbeing is being fueled by tech-savvy creatives with a passion for social justice and a shared vision of a better world. Their mantra is “do good things, keep moving and stay in touch.” It’s communities doing what they do best and leveraging digital tools to accelerate impact. In …
A good time to pause This year’s Dimbleby lecture by Sir Tim Berners-Lee was extremely thought-provoking. He spoke with calm, erudite passion about the need for a mid-course correction to the current direction of travel of the internet. The technical insights were fascinating, as would be expected from the man credited with one of the …
In our experience of working with isolated older adults, a number of factors recur with notable regularity. Chief amongst them is a deep-rooted desire to be heard and to connect. People frequently tell us “no one understands me” and with that, there often comes a sense of frustration. Following on from our Happy Hub experiment, …
Beware The Bias On 20th April 2018, 8,000 Starbucks stores across America closed for a day so all the frontline staff could undergo “unconscious bias” training. Starbucks had received some unwanted, brand-eroding attention when news of an incident in one of its Philadelphia stores went viral on social media and mainstream channels. Why? A branch …
The world-wide Maker movement has become a well-established phenomenon over the past decades. Few would deny that hands-on creativity is a good thing. The visceral process of making stuff is powerful energy that affects us and those around us in equal measure. Our most recent prototype (delivered over 18 months in Kings Heath, Birmingham UK) …
It’s About Navigation In this blog, we share what worked well (and indeed what did not) about the 12-month long social prescribing pilot we designed and delivered in Kings Heath, in the form of the 7 citizen engagement “tools” that participants rated the most impactful. We also try and share “why” and “where next” in …
Just think about it for a second. How many of your neighbours would you call your friends? Do you really know what makes them smile and laugh? When was the last time you had a meaningful interaction with the very people you spend your entire lives living adjacent to, with just inches of plaster separating …
A Bellyful is Never Enough One of the main barriers we face when it comes to eating mindfully is our tendency to be distracted whilst we eat. Our busy working lives may dictate we take our lunch breaks al-desko and our breakfasts on the fly. A busy home life makes mindless eating attractive; seductive even. In …
New Outcomes Call for New Spaces When we first started to work with the SmartCare organisation and talked through the design principles of their wellbeing service, it quickly became clear they had a serious intent to do something innovative. Their Social Prescribing Lead, Dr Aftab, wanted to mesh two sets of data. Firstly, she was meticulous about what …
A Dollar Spent Earnestly in the Village is Undoubtedly a Wonderful Thing, but Why are Universal Measurement Tools as Rare as Unicorn Droppings? System Fable# 6: The Village A King summoned her three bravest and most trusted Knights of the realm and informed them she would need to go on a pilgrimage. (Yes women can …
