Arts & Humanities Research Council fund design research for dementia

Cardiff Metropolitan University’s CARIAD research centre has just been awarded an AHRC research grant of £500,000 over three years for its work in designing for people with dementia.

The LAUGH (Ludic Artefacts Using Gesture and Haptics) project is an international collaboration with researchers at the University of Technology Sydney and Birmingham City University and is led by Professor Cathy Treadaway from Cardiff School of Art and Design.

This international research collaboration addresses the call by the WHO and the G8 nations for international collaboration in order to address the global challenge of the ageing population.

The research is being partnered by Gwalia Cyf, one of the largest providers of residential social care in Wales, and will bring together people with dementia, their carers and a range of health professionals, technologists and designers. The work is also supported by the leading charities in the field: Age Cymru- My Home Life, Alzheimer’s Society and Dementia Positive.

The LAUGH research project will develop innovative playful devices that amuse, distract, comfort, engage, bring joy, and promote ‘in the moment’ living for people with late stage dementia.  It builds on wellbeing research that shows that happy people live longer, have fewer falls and require less medication. It will propose non-pharmacological approaches to improve the wellbeing of people with dementia and their care. Continue reading Arts & Humanities Research Council fund design research for dementia

Noah’s Ark at artsdepot

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We had a great time co-designing interactive artworks with young people from the Noah’s Ark children’s hospice at artsdepot. Using the fabulously accessible Touch Boardfrom Bare Conductive. The participants collaborated in teams to bring their favourite things to life by adding their own sounds to drawings. The culmination of the workshop was a set of paper-prototype “happiness machines” that included tickling, laughter, jokes, music and other references to the things in life that make us happy.

Leah connects with Communities First Clusters across Cardiff

Continue reading Leah connects with Communities First Clusters across Cardiff

CARIAD presents at CEWN showcase event in Trefforest

664801_origThanks to the Creative Exchange Wales Network for hosting their latest showcase event, experts from industry, Welsh Government and the BBC attended to give advice and support recent projects.

Leah presented on several of her projects which have received CEWN support, including iMagine, Breaking Bread and ProFoundCoding. She spoke of scaling up plans for Breaking Bread and the video tagging project in progress, aiming to improve teachers understanding of children with profound and complex learning and communication difficulties. More details about the event can be viewed here.

 

 

Daniel Marshall wins prestigious Elektra Award

Congratulations to recent Cardiff Met graduate Daniel Marshall for winning the rising star award at the prestigious Elektra Awards in London last week.

20140812_154858Daniel worked with CARIAD on his award winning Empathy project – designing for children with autism. The full project can be seen on his website.

Daniel impressed the panel with his enthusiasm, originality and overall commitment to designing for real
people and real world problems! Well done Daniel and best of luck for the future, we hope to work with you again!

CARIAD contributes to Children In Need day

DSC09993Thanks to everybody at Trinity Project Splott for hosting such a special event for Children In Need day last week. CARIAD gave a mini Breaking Bread session and connected with the Communities First Cluster in Splott and Adamstown and the legendary No Fit State Circus to discuss additional collaborations and projects.
The event was a huge success and preempts the emerging Trinity Project as a crucial community based hub for creativity, arts and intergenerational activities and events in Wales now and in the future. Exciting times ahead

Final workshops underway for ProFoundCoding

Thanks to AnalysisPro and teachers Andrew Walker and Rachel Woodhouse for working with us over the past few months to develop our latest video tagging templates. The project won additional funding from CEWN to create new templates based around concepts of engagement to tag video sessions of children with profound and complex learning and communication difficulties. We will be releasing the template shortly along with instructions on ways to use and interpret the template for teachers in special schools. We will be adding the latest templates and information to our resource and website, ProFoundCoding which we released over the summer.

We spoke about the project at a recent CEWN special showcase event at the University of South Wales, Trefforest where we pitched the next stages to create new employment opportunities in special schools for Performance Analysis. Watch this space 🙂

 

Showcase event at the Wales Millennium Centre

Thanks to everybody for attending our showcase event at the Wales Millennium Centre especially the staff and service users from the Gladys Resource Centre at Aberdare for creating such a memorable performance. Thanks also to Touch Trust, CEWN, SIP and all of our other supporters for making the past two years so memorable and successful.

 

 

 

 

Leah connects with ACE (Action in Caerau and Ely) and Communities First Cardiff West

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Thanks to Rachel and Katie for talking to us about the extensive range of community projects on the go as part of Communities First Cardiff West – http://www.aceplace.org/#!communities-first/c8hd . Our meeting discussed many of the amazing work being undertaken and the ways CARIAD might contribute in the future. We talked about energy saving projects, food health, public health, connecting communities and much more. Looking forward to working with you in the near future.

Leah visits the inspiring Trinity Project

Thank you Chloe for showing us around the church and telling us about The Trinity Project today. Established by Cardiff Methodist Circuit, the project aims to strengthen and support work with refugees and asylum seekers. The space itself acts as a hub for hive of community activity and events ranging from English classes, to drop in centres for Asylum seekers, offering craft classes, tea, coffee and food. Read more and follow the project here.

Plans for much much more are underway and Breaking Bread hopes to host a session there in the near future. Space4U also works in the church, providing comfortable spaces for those in need. We are looking forward to working with you soon, thanks for having us 🙂