Cardiff metropolitan University | CARIAD

Wales Millennium Centre – Hand i Pocket Funshop

Posted on October 3, 2015 by Wendy

CARIAD researchers collaborated with Age Cymru and Alzheimer’s Society to host a creative ‘funshop’ to coincide with Age Positive Week (27th September – 4th October 2015). The Hand i Pocket Funshop was a free public event held at Wales Millennium Centre on Saturday 3rd October led by Prof Cathy Treadaway from the CARIAD at Cardiff Met.

People who dropped in to the Hand i Pocket Funshop were invited to make and decorate a pocket for someone with dementia, using an enticing array of cloth, thread, buttons and beads, with plenty of help and inspiration on hand. The idea was to create textile pockets that are visually stimulating, interesting or soothing to touch and fun to fiddle with. They might have things hidden inside or be a place to put things. Pockets could be made for specific people and include things personal to them and their life story. Continue reading Wales Millennium Centre – Hand i Pocket Funshop

Arts & Humanities Research Council fund design research for dementia

Posted on May 15, 2015 by Wendy

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

Somatopia lab

Posted on April 23, 2015 by Wendy

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First ever Cariad Interactive Somatopia Lab in Cardiff FabLab. Four teachers, two pupils and a technical demonstrator joined us for a rich mix of acting, moving, paper prototyping and storyboarding based on five Somatopia themes. Everyone set up their own Raspberry Pi, Pi camera and microphone and learnt how to use openframeworks to create a range of interactions triggered by sound and motion. The best part was getting to work up some of the ideas that emerged for learning some basic code.

Dr. Cathy Treadaway and Dr. Gail Kenning presented a paper about the CARIAD Sensor e-Textile project at the International Conference of Design Creativity in India

Posted on January 16, 2015 by Wendy

Dr. Cathy Treadaway and Dr. Gail Kenning presented a paper about the CARIAD Sensor e-Textile project at the International Conference of Design Creativity in India on Wednesday 14th January. The conference was held at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, India. The ICDC is an official conference of the Design Society promoted by its Special Interest Group (SIG) on Design Creativity http://www.cpdm.iisc.ernet.in/icdc2014/#/overview.php

The Sensor e-Textile project is part of the HANDS collaboration with University of Technology Sydney investigating design to support the wellbeing of people with late stage dementia www.handsproject.info.

Breaking Bread Christmas Special a success!

Posted on December 22, 2014 by Wendy

A special festive thank you to all our participants who attended our Breaking Bread Christmas Special at Chapter Arts House this Friday. The team hosted their second official workshop and in partnership with the Trinity Project, Splott, Cathays Community Centre and the Dalton Street Centre. We were part funded by the Tesco Charity Trust which enabled us to host a truly special workshop. Focusing on the mobility of the service we set up in a ‘white space’ with an oven hired from M&M Catering Wales. The recipe was a simple cinnamon loaf divided into mini tins for sharing. We also provided icing materials to let the group add festival decorations.

The workshop focused on testing what was possible with very limited facilities, cooking times with a hire oven, health and safety, practical issues, as well as continuing to establish key links with Community Services and key protagonists across South Wales. The degree of ‘sharing’ provided by the workshop and the possibilites to connect with people in creative and exciting ways was also monitored.

A massive thank you to everybody who helped make the event possible, Happy Christmas from the team and looking forward to seeing everybody in the new year for more events and workshops.

CARIAD presents at CEWN showcase event in Trefforest

Posted on December 9, 2014 by Wendy

Thanks 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.

CARIAD contributes to Children In Need day

Posted on December 9, 2014 by Wendy

Thanks 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

Posted on December 9, 2014 by Wendy

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

Posted on December 9, 2014 by Wendy

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

Posted on October 30, 2014 by Wendy

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.