A 100 Years of Care: Design-based Explorations of a 100 Years of Care Journeys

Does Design Care…? is one of the initiatives of the Design Research for Change programme initially delivered under Paul Rodgers’ AHRC Design Priority Area Leadership Fellow (AH/P013619/1 and AH/P013619/2). This programme, which includes the ongoing Does Design Care…? series of events, aims to “achieve real and long-lasting transformation and impact, to enact alternative, positive, and help achieve real developments within the culture of design research that will equip it for the challenges of the future”.

Does Design Care…? is an international workshop series of design thinking, making, and acting that runs irregularly every couple of years. Does Design Care…? workshops provide a positive space for all to explore different ways to conceptualise, provoke, contest and disrupt care, and serve as a venue for synthesising future visions of care. We do not limit interpretations, boundaries, and sectors when we use the word ‘care’. Each Does Design Care…? workshop is highly interactive, with participants producing a range of outputs, including journal and book publications, working papers, and other creative outputs.

The first Does Design Care…? workshop was held in 2017 at Imagination, Lancaster University, UK. Does Design Care…? was held at Chiba University, Japan, in 2019. And Does Design Care…? was held at Ulster University, Belfast, Northern Ireland in 2023. Each workshop welcomed over 30 researchers and practitioners from a wide range of disciplines (and from a wide global community including the USA, New Zealand, Australia, India, Pakistan, Hong Kong, Israel, Iran, Sweden, UK, Jordan and Japan) to explore, discuss, and debate what it means to care. Does Design Care...? was funded by the AHRC Impact Acceleration Account held by Ulster University [AH/X003361/1], as part of Work Package 3, Humanising Healthcare.