Product design and research with children: supporting children in care

Tickets available on EventBrite, or at the door on a first-come basis.

This lecture will present an AHRC REACT funded sandbox project that I have been involved in this year. The project involves a collaboration between academics at UoB and Bath, and a creative designer and technologist at the Pervasive Media Studio in the Watershed.

The aim of the project is to develop a physical keepsake that allows children to tag and record narrative to their precious and loved objects using Raspberry Pi and RFID technologies. As such, this is an unusual research approach as it involves both product development and research.

The lecture will report on the process of co-production with three groups of children, adopted children and children in care, that we believe the product has particular relevance to. The children may have strong attachments to objects from their birth history but lack familial reminders of the significance of treasured belongings. Beyond product development and testing, this project provides insights into the co-productive role of children in research and development processes, the challenges of interdisciplinary research, identity maintenance for looked after children and the role of material culture to identity processes.