Last year I was approached by Chemistry to contribute to a tender they were working on to develop a new service offer for a new later-life player Guild Living UK on the market. This would be delivering together a series of service blueprints for a new type of later life option being developed and since then I was hooked! The bid was successful and it was such an exciting opportunity for Ageable to influence and contribute to this collaboration.
‘We create communities in the heart of towns and cities designed with one core purpose in mind: to empower people to live better. That means a community open to all generations… A place where independence is promoted at every turn and wellbeing improved at every opportunity.’ Guild Living
Guild Living are really trying to push the boundaries in what care looked like and where it took place. Their visual design is impressive, at every opportunity they are embedding a fabulously diverse and age — positive through the images and media they are using to reach out and spread their message. The role we played in the work was Alice brought her experiences of designing in the ageing — well/design/care/activity/dementia space to the project and the Chemistry Team who took on the responsibility of the design work itself.
I’m so tired of care homes being on the edges of our society — both physically and metaphorically. I was impressed by Guild Livings ambition to develop and design a very different type of care set up; rooted in town close to peoples networks and places. Too often at the point of severe care needs we are forced to move into a care setting away from the places and people that matter to us and this can cause loneliness, isolation and a lack of belonging in a new place.— Alice
I loved the opportunity to be able to influence at such an interesting level of the design work — I’m used to walking into care settings where so many design decisions have already been made are already built. This was such an interesting journey to contribute to the imagine and create the experiences that people want to experiences within it.
You can read more about Chemistry’s case study here and see their write up of the work. It was a dream project for me — I loved seeing the clients passion and strategic intent transformed into an experience with care and consideration, an incredible opportunity for me to see how we can embed the care we want to see in the world in every step of our collaboration and design decisions.
If you are interested in learning more about how Alice can be part of your design team to bring her inclusive, dementia, age-positive, dementia, care, design to your project. We’d love to hear from you.
