Helping young people meet their challenges

More than 10,000 people are expected to visit the Utopian Fair between 24 and 26 June at Somerset House, the centre for art, culture and creative exchange. The fair aims to “celebrate projects flourishing in the margins”.

University of Brighton designs will include a Resilience Tower, created as part of a research project on applying resilient therapy led by Professor Angie Hart, Professor of Child, Family and Community Health.

Prince Harry tried his hand at the tower at a recent event in London. The tower was developed by Professor Hart and collaborators at boingboing, which works with children, young people, families and adults experiencing social disadvantage and inequalities. Researchers at the University of Brighton are part of the boingboing network.

The tower was created by Tadgh Crozier, a resilience practitioner who is part of boingboing and is implementing resilience-based practice ideas. It is one of a number of games developed by the group to support children and young people’s resilience. Community21, the community of practice between University of Brighton researchers, students, community practitioners and communities, are also key partners. 

Resilience tower

Creators of the Sun and Clouds game

Professor Hart said: “This game helps us think about and chat through the things in life that we need to help us when things get tough. Resilience includes being able to bounce forward after something difficult has happened, or when life is generally tough. Finding ways to challenge bad things that others might do to us is part of this. We all need things in place to help us do that.”

Simon Duncan, who works for boingboing, said: “There will be a pop-up shop at Somerset House, developed with input from design academics and students at the University of Brighton. It will be selling various products to help young people develop resilience. In terms of utopian ideas, pop-up shops can be a creative space offering hope for the future when life is very tough. These will be product development evolutions of prototypes we have developed including Sun and Clouds game, Resilience Tree, Resilience boxes, Resilience Towers, Resilience Roadmap and Talking Heads interactive wall.

University of Brighton PhD student Anne Rathbone added: “We will be selling these products, all of which have been developed by young people with complex needs and/or practitioners supporting them. They will be marketed through our pop-up shop and sold online after that via boingboing on a not-for-profit basis. If we ever end up making any money from this we will feed it back into supporting young people.

“People facing challenges in life make up the membership of the boingboing community, as well as supportive academics, students and practitioners. In fact, we all find the resilience-based approaches we’ve developed useful to help us get through tough times.

“We run training programmes, develop tools, write books and articles, run meetings and forums, provide advice and do research to support people having particularly tough times. Come and join us at Somerset House to see what we are up to and play a few games with us.”

Design academic Nick Gant said: "It's been great working in collaboration on these products and we've really come up with something that none of us could have designed on our own. It’s provided great opportunities for our design students too."

Resilience roadmap