Last Friday I had the chance to attend Greater Good’s
Restorative Design Conference. In the
before-world, I likely wouldn’t have attended an event taking place on a different continent. And although I probably would have had a glass of wine, it wouldn’t have been from the comfort of my couch. The introvert in me is thriving these days.
Couch-wine in hand, it also happened to be an incredible evening of talks. Today, I thought I’d talk about just one.
Sarah Fathallah, a social designer and researcher, and
Rachael Dietkus, a social worker and designer gave a talk about
trauma-informed design; in which they
unpacked
how we define ‘trauma,’ how it might manifest in a research setting, and what it means to be ‘trauma-informed.’
The title of this issue, in fact, comes from their talk. Both Sarah and Rachael challenged the default practice of “building rapport,” urging us, as practitioners, to instead move towards cultivating relationships. At its core, participatory design is relational, it involves people. What might we learn from trauma-informed practices? How might this shape our practices moving forward?
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