Down Memory Lane : exploring memory loss

Research informed teaching is very much at the core of the MA Design Programme at Sheffield Hallam University. Students are in the first instance able to learn about research findings specific to their subject area (research led teaching). Students learn about research methodologies and processes (research orientated) and finally students are offered the opportunity to engage in real-world research projects. This is illustrated in a first semester module which uses the theme of socially responsible design. The overall SRD project strategy focused upon enabling students to participate in socially responsible design practice with a particular focus on developing collaborative interdisciplinary student-generated responses to working in partnership with people with dementia and the UK open knowledge sharing platform Fixpert.com The inter-disciplinary make-up of the teaching team, drawing on expertise from health and research (engaging with staff from the interdisciplinary research cluster Lab4Living) as well as design meant that students could be signposted to key resources. Initial sessions offered students the opportunity to hear from specialists in dementia care and on-going contacts were made contact with a large third sector organization in the form of Alzheimer Society. In this way students were supported in understanding ways of accessing communities and how to develop projects, avoiding Katie Swenson’s (2012) concern regarding some curricula, which fail to ‘teach students about how projects actually happen’. It also meant that support could be offered in relation to navigating and coping with the emotional complexities that working with people living with long-term conditions such as dementia could evoke. Key words: dementia, postgraduate design, health, inter-disciplinary, empathy, social responsibility.