HOMESICK WORKSHOP
Referring to a longing for home; a home that we have not yet invented.
This project is focused on creating playful reconfigurations of the home, remapping its boundaries and centralising the position of young carers.
The accompanying modular table is a play tool that collaboratively investigates how we can create a home that is constantly reassessing and reconfiguring to meet everyone's care needs. Through playing with the table, the home can be made a place which is continuously reimagined and restructured, working against isolated and unsupported caregiving positions. The aim is to move beyond the separated and privatised care in the normative home and instead make it a place of joy and discovery of alternate care structures that grow beyond blood kin.
Caregiving youth is often excluded from the larger caregiving literature due to adult-centric preconceptions of care and this project seeks to empower and validate the unique view of young carers by facilitating conversations and giving them autonomy over the structure of care within the home. The outcome consequently was a workshop with the young carers at Lewisham Carers Hub, where we collaboratively investigated what the tables of our decentralised home would be like through using the play tool and supporting workbook.
The final workshop consisted of 3 activities- to provide enough for the kids that stayed the full-time, as well as options for the young carers who didn't. I also wanted to try and make it a non-hierarchical comfortable space, so I wanted the workbook and tools to speak for themselves to an extent and reduce the need for me to take a teacher-like role.
The workbook consisted of an accessible intro, starter question, space to create their own designs of the table, a space to write out their own home rules/ manifesto and finally instructions on how to build the table.
