The promise of technology to provide solutions to the global concern of ageing populations has largely been unfulfilled. We argue that this is, in part, related to design processes that fail to take ...account of the rich material lives of older people, and that often adopt stereotypical views of older people as frail, vulnerable and unskilled. We draw on empirical data from two co-design projects, to suggest the contributions that material gerontologists could make to design teams creating technologies for ageing populations. We suggest material gerontologists bring three key elements to interdisciplinary design teams: (1) making visible the intra-action of humans and non-humans in co-design processes; (2) reconfiguring co-design response-ably with older adults; and (3) reimagining possible outcomes of technology design. We believe that this approach can result in the design of products, services and innovations that respond better to the heterogeneous needs and life-worlds of older adults.
Learning to be a smart citizen Manchester, Helen; Cope, Gillian
Oxford review of education,
03/2019, Letnik:
45, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
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The international Smart Cities and the Learning Cities movements are not often linked. However, there are learning questions at stake here. Smart city agendas are often criticised as being ...technocratic and instrumental, prioritising market-led solutions to urban issues. Such criticism has led to moves to place the citizen at the centre of these discussions. This raises educational challenges: what theories and forms of learning are required for citizens to play a role in the development of digital, urban futures? This paper adopts ethnographic methods to study the assumptions about learning in a Europe-wide smart city project that included a component of citizen-led development. Our argument provides important messages for smart city planners and developers keen to include citizens in smart city development. It suggests that the current 'banking' models of learning adopted in relation to citizen participation are not fit for purpose and that a new model is needed. This needs to recognise citizen learning as situated in social and material contexts and embedded in unequal relations of power, knowledge and resources. We make the case for smart city initiatives to offer city inhabitants critical, creative learning opportunities that begin to address the inequalities that constitute the contemporary smart city.
This article draws on an AHRC/EPSRC funded project called ‘A Sense of Place: Exploring nature and wellbeing through the non-visual senses’. The project used sound and smell technologies, as well as ...material textures and touch, to ask: what does ‘wellbeing’ mean for people in relation to the non-visual aspects of nature, and how might technology play a role in promoting it (if at all)? This article takes recorded sound as a case study. It argues that recorded soundscapes should be understood on their own terms rather than as ‘less than’ or a simulation of natural environments. They have specific value in creating space for imagination, particularly when delivered with care and as part of the co-creation of sensory experience. Overall, the article argues that the value of emerging immersive technologies is not to simulate nature better. An ‘immersive experience’ is richest when it allows for – and reveals – the nuances and complexities of individual responses to natural environments.
•A case study of nature and recorded sound indicates that there is no simple relationship between ‘nature’ and ‘wellbeing’.•Individual responses to natural environments are personal and complex, shaped by life history and experiences.•Recorded sound is a specific kind of auditory encounter, not just a diluted or diminished version of ‘real’ experiences of nature.•The value of recorded soundscapes lies not in their ability to simulate nature, but in their capacity to stimulate imagination.•Personal care is a crucial part of the delivery of sensory technologies and allows for the co-creation of sensory experiences.
Concepts of school 'ethos' or 'culture' have been widely debated in education since the 1980s. This is partly as a consequence of marketisation, partly because ethos has been identified as a low-cost ...route to school improvement. Corporate, authoritarian, and most recently 'military' models of ethos have been widely promulgated in the UK. Another significant strand of educational thinking, however, has emphasised ethos for and as learning: how schools might prefigure alternative, more socially just, worlds. This article argues that accounting for such divergent notions of ethos demands greater attention to the intellectual resources mobilised in interpreting educational processes. We discuss schools that used their work with the English creative learning programme, Creative Partnerships, to develop what we describe as 'considerate, convivial and capacious' school ethos. We aim thereby to value their achievements, provide tools to contest dominant discourses around ethos, and advocate more critical, reflexive approaches to researching school cultures.
School Ethos and the Spatial Turn Manchester, Helen; Bragg, Sara
Qualitative inquiry,
12/2013, Letnik:
19, Številka:
10
Journal Article
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This article argues that specific spatial imaginaries are embedded in current debates about school ethos and research methods. It takes the reader on a journey around an English multicultural primary ...school supported by the creative learning program Creative Partnerships, exploring how creative arts practices (re)configured sociospatial relations within the school community over a 3-year period. The article proposes the metaphor of “capaciousness” to illuminate aspects of research and practice in schools concerning space, learning, and the significance of the connections of schools to other spaces, places, and networks. Recognizing these connections enables us to take account of issues of social justice particularly in relation to schools located in areas of socioeconomic deprivation. A spatial theorization of ethos also questions the concept of boundaries in case study research, and highlights the role of researcher interpretation in constituting what can be recognized as “creative” school ethos.
The world population is ageing. In the UK alone, it is projected that by 2035 those aged 65 and over will account for 23 per cent of the total population whilst the number of people aged 85 and over ...will account for 5 per cent of the total population. At the same time, the digital transformations of the last few decades are leaving behind many older adults who, for reasons ranging from accessibility issues to work biographies to personal preference, are less likely to engage with digital technologies. Research undertaken in this area to date has largely been policy led and concerned with providing hardware access and basic skills (e.g. Race Online in the UK).
In this article we are concerned with the powerful capacities of digital technologies for communication, archiving, and self-representation, which are under-used by this group, meaning that their cultural histories and experiences are often less visible in the digital world (Loe, 2013; Potter, 2013). While large digital companies such as Google are beginning to consider and provide resources to help people to plan for their ‘digital afterlife’ (Graham et al., 2013) – mainly restricted to issues of specifying what happens to social media presence and email accounts after death – there is little work that examines older people’s experiences of attempting to use the digital to tell stories that will leave a personal and public legacy towards the end of life.
This article begins to examine the challenges and the opportunities that might characterise this area. In doing so, it explores two research studies with ‘third’ and ‘fourth’ agers that have examined, in very different settings, the diverse challenges of knitting together the fragmented and scattered ‘data’ of life experience into private and public narratives. The first study is a case study of three community filmmakers working with an artist to create a film based on their peers’ experiences as first generation Caribbean immigrants to the UK; the second is a study comprising three workshops and five detailed case studies examining how older adults use existing ‘data’ to recollect, to curate and to reflect on their lives and learning for personal purposes.
This article draws on an AHRC/EPSRC funded project called ‘A Sense of Place: Exploring nature and wellbeing through the non-visual senses’. The project used sound and smell technologies, as well as ...material textures and touch, to ask: what does ‘wellbeing’ mean for people in relation to the non-visual aspects of nature, and how might technology play a role in promoting it (if at all)? This article takes recorded sound as a case study. It argues that recorded soundscapes should be understood on their own terms rather than as ‘less than’ or a simulation of natural environments. They have specific value in creating space for imagination, particularly when delivered with care and as part of the co-creation of sensory experience. Overall, the article argues that the value of emerging immersive technologies is not to simulate nature better. An ‘immersive experience’ is richest when it allows for – and reveals – the nuances and complexities of individual responses to natural environments.
In contemporary accounts of cultural value, young people's perspectives are often restricted to analyses of their encounters with formal cultural institutions or schools or to debates surrounding the ...cultural implications of new digital spaces and technologies. Other studies have been dominated by instrumental accounts exploring the potential economic benefit and skills development facilitated by young people's cultural encounters and experiences. In this paper we examine the findings of a nine month project, which set out to explore what cultural value means to young people in Bristol. Between October 2013 and March 2014, the Arts and Humanities Research Council "Teenage Kicks" project organised 14 workshops at 7 different locations across the city, with young people aged 11-20. Working in collaboration with a network of cultural and arts organisations, the study gathered a range of empirical data investigating the complex ecologies of young people's everyday/"lived" cultures and values. Young people's own accounts of their cultural practices challenge normative definitions of culture and cultural value but also demonstrate how these definitions act to reproduce social inequalities in relation to cultural participation and social and cultural capital. The paper concludes that cultural policy-makers should listen and take young people's voices seriously in re-imaging the city's cultural offer for all young people.
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