Messy Futures
– Exhibition launch text by Beth McDougall and Gemma Hughes

October 2021 marks the launch of the exhibition Messy Futures, a co-produced exhibition at the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, that explores the sometimes-messy role of healthcare technologies in our everyday lives through newly commissioned photographs. Led by research and co-produced with people with lived experience of long-term health needs, artists, makers and researchers, Messy Futures brings together the Messy Realities and In Control By Design projects.

You can find out more about the exhibition here: https://prm.ox.ac.uk/event/messy-futures

For details of the launch and further general information about the exhibition email: beth.mcdougall@prm.ox.ac.uk

In Control By Design
– Text by Susan Diab, Senior Lecturer, School of Art and Media

It is more than pleasing to see the work that was carried out by all the collaborating partners of the Messy Futures project and which was interrupted by the COVID pandemic between the workshops and the exhibition stages come to its resolution as a physical exhibition in the Pitt Rivers Museum with an online presence.

From June 2019 until February 2020 I worked as artist in residence on the visionary project ‘In Control By Design’. A collaboration between the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford University’s Medical Research Council-funded Brain Network Dynamics Unit and the Oxford branch of Parkinson’s UK, its aims were to develop one or more devices or wearable technologies for people with Parkinson’s negotiating their symptoms in everyday life.

In Control By Design Workshops

At five scheduled workshops throughout 2019 people with Parkinson’s from the Oxford branch of Parkinson’s UK, provided other project partners with expert insight into which daily activities were proving problematic when living with Parkinson’s. Objects and devices which already exist and in some cases are commercially available were tested out and new prototypes developed and possibilities discussed.

Neuroscientists demonstrated to participants via informal presentations their particular areas of research in order to expand understanding of how the various Parkinson’s symptoms affect individuals and open up people’s thinking towards creating new ideas about dealing with them. From the outset the venture was been characterized as not being about ‘clinical research’ with the participants as clinical trial ‘guinea-pigs’ but as a joint collaborative one with everyone figuring in it as equal collaborative participants.

Viewing items in the PRM collections

The Pitt River’s Museum collection of cultural artefacts demonstrates how people from around the world and from different historical eras have come up with solutions to the various challenges of existence. One premise for the project was that the Pitt Rivers, as a ‘museum of comparative technologies’ might yield clues through a closer study of its collections, including objects and photographs, towards how people have faced the difficulties with which humans are presented. The idea of ‘In Control By Design’, so typical of the ingenious community and public engagement programmes devised by the Pitt River’s team, opens up the collections for new audiences and constituencies of people to engage with in innovative and interrogative ways.

Discussion boards organised around common themes of daily living

My role as project artist-in-residence was to visualise the ideas that project participants came up with and work with scientists to develop adaptations of what was already available as well as to generate new ideas arising from the group discussions. Participants pulled together commonly themed aspects of daily life, which I translated into visual discussion boards as prompts to move ideas on from one workshop to the next.

Raw materials for co-designing

Emmaus Brighton and Hove generously donated large amounts of materials to work with, which were made available to participants at collaborative co-designing sessions. As the workshops evolved my role shifted into devising and setting up a shared creative environment in which all project participants could adapt items of clothing and accessories in playful workshop sessions to address their specific movement and health needs.

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The first thing they tell you about Parkinson’s Disease when it is diagnosed is that it is ‘incurable’ which comes as a blow. Then gradually you begin to get used to the idea and realise that it is much more affirming to put one’s attention on living with the condition. Whilst a cure for Parkinson’s still lies beyond the horizon there is much that can be done to share ‘life hacks’ or tips which make life easier, to research what has already been understood about it and to retain a necessary sense of humour about its funnier side.