#001 CASE STUDY
TITLE : Trauma, remedy & reparations
This post reflects on THE ADV_’s activity at the Southbank Centre initiated by Nina Pope (Somewhere) and James Cowdery (Southbank Centre) to investigate the mental health landscape and to push the conversation forward to equip individuals and communities to view mental health more strategically and honestly.
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+ THE INVITATION
THE ADV_ was invited from 5-7 February 2016 to contribute to the Royal College of Art, MA Design Interactions collective response Design Tonic to ‘How can design, art and technology explore challenges to mental health?’ proposed by the Southbank Centre for the Changing Minds Festival.
James Cowdery (Head of Digital Arts Programming at Southbank Centre) describes the collaboration as the following: —
In the last months of 2015, students from the Royal College of Art Design Interactions were invited to develop new projects for Southbank Centre’s Changing Minds festival, through an intensive three-week collaborative workshop. The students were asked to consider how design could contribute to shaping individual and community mental health now or in future and the complex role of technology as both a ‘cause’ and a ‘cure’ in today’s mental health landscape.
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+ The Challenge
The investigation of cause and cure for today’s mental health landscape has been magnified through technology - at its epicentre, when we analyse the psyche of an individual or community we seem to arrive at a crossroad question of how we choose to define ourselves; by our traumas or our potential.
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+ THE Objective
With guests from a cross-section of global industries, our goal was to leave with an understanding of the challenging question ‘What is the value of trauma, forgiveness and moving on?
We are asking this question at four levels; individually, communally, nationally and globally to move through the stagnancy of pain and create a progressive movement using the United Nations Principles as a template :
- Cessation /Assurance of Non-Repetition,
- Restitution and Repatriation,
- Compensation,
- Satisfaction,
- Rehabilitation.
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+ prescribed scenarios & why
In the exploration of personal and communal growth, THE ADV_ staged one of our twelve scenarios between 3-5pm, in the Sunley Pavillion at Southbank Centre.
> [ Inheritance ] — Immigration / Social & Cultural Integration / National Identity
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+ OUR FINDINGS
> The clarification of restoration to ‘normalcy’ according to whom
> The personal accountability and decisive moment for redefining your own identity away from trauma but to potential.
> The exploration of compensation to equip for future independence rather than punishment to perpetrators.
In this process, we utilised the United Nations remedy and reparations principles as a way to establish bespoke formulae
for participants to state what they need to self-actualise — the strategies have begun to form — we look forward to continuing to work with NGO’s and community organisations to develop strategies for progress.
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