Royal College of Art students collaborate with London hospice to 're-style' the experience of death
Lauren Razavi @LaurenRazavi Wednesday 17 February 2016 from the Independent
[Here are a few excerpts from the article - see link below for full article]
What constitutes a good death? This is the question posed by a pioneering project set up to redesign the end-of-life experience, based at the Royal Trinity Hospice in Clapham, south London. A group of service designers (bear with me) and design students have spent the past eight months investigating the experience of death and dying in Britain, and how it might be improved.
[Photo caption] Care values: a patient and nurse at Royal Trinity Hospice
For Royal Trinity, the project has been more successful than they ever imagined. "From a hospice specialist's point of view, it was incredibly enlightening that the service-design team created this detailed flow diagram to demonstrate the role of death and dying in our lives," says Pounds. "It enabled us to understand and reconsider the services we provide, as well as to reflect on the trigger points within a lifespan that might lead people to us.
"Our tagline is 'living every moment', and the service designers took this seriously. They considered not only the 'dying' aspect of our services, but the 'living' aspect too."
By separating out services and offering new ones, the service designers believe that Trinity's House has the potential to change perceptions about hospice care and to get people talking about death and dying. "We believe by creating a space for conversations about death and dying that aren't cut off from society, Trinity can help to normalise these issues," says RCA student Lilith Hasbeck, whose group developed proposals for Trinity's House. "The centre will focus on individual need from a new viewpoint and be able to reach a wider cross-section of Trinity's community."
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