The ‘Story Chair’ programme is a creative collaboration between the social justice charity, Changing Lives and the School of Design at Northumbria University and is supported by the North East Probation Service. It also brings together a number of well-known arts and cultural institutions such as the National Trust and Newcastle Cathedral to question how those spaces and venues feel for the women and how they could be made more welcoming for those who might not already feel represented there.
As a part of the project, I designed a toolkit that was written by Dr Angelika Strohmayer and aimed at service providers. The process was heavily rooted in co-design, and the main decisions regarding the visual outcome were made by the women who participated in the program.
Development
During the design process, I documented and reflected on the materials created during the series of workshops by the women who were a part of the project. Each asset used in the toolkit was fully created by them. In my role as a designer, I focused first on the needs and choices made by the participants. In the early stages, I created a large set of designs and initial concepts, and I continued with the one that resonated the most with the intent of telling the story and overcoming ‘monsters’ in women’s journeys.
Collage invitation designed by the project participants
LAUNCH EVENT
