DBA Inclusive Design Challenge 2009
A campaign encouraging teenagers and elderly people to get together and grow food. Through a national network of community gardening projects based at care homes, the campaign will provide an opportunity for residents to get involved in a more active way of life.
How it works
Get up and Grow responds to the burgeoning national interest in food cultivation and research indicating that gardening can deliver multi-generational benefits. It is proposed that community allotment spaces will be designed in care home gardens to encourage residents to spend time outside.
Supported by their carers, elderly people will be offered different ways to get involved, with each season culminating in a celebratory event. From tabletop planting to simply sharing a cup of tea, they can decide how they would like to help. The allotment will incorporate seating and raised beds to maximise opportunities for older people of different abilities to get involved.
Each project will be guided by a standard information pack of seasonal templates and ideas, activity cards, stickers and recruitment posters and flyers.
The project team will consist of a community coordinator, local gardener and teenagers recruited through local youth and community initiatives. They will be encouraged to keep ongoing visual records in the care home through photo albums, wall displays and stories inspired by seasonal events from garden parties to Christmas seed catalogue evenings.
User input
What the designer said:
‘The challenge of this brief was to make people think differently - with tangible benefits. We've used the project to interest clients in the scope of our work. Through a six-minute DVD they get a good idea of our approach, our skills and what we do in our spare time. We've also met up with our local Transition Town food group to talk about taking ideas forward.'
Catherine Barr, BWA Design
What the judges said:
'A wonderful inter-generational idea focused on behaviour and founded on robust research. The judges felt that the campaign would probably take on a life of its own, centred as it was on the popular activity of gardening and would bring different things to different. For the young, the core motivation would be reduction of their personal carbon footprint; for residents of care homes, it would reconnect them with the natural world and act as a mechanism for essential social interaction. The word 'garden' is an anagram of 'danger' yet the team has turned that on its head and transformed it into a place for mutual discovery'.
