Designers, pedagogues and chefs
gather around kitchen stories
The care home Skansebakken, Vejle Municipality and Design School Kolding continue the work of finding out how professionals and designers can come together and design a better life at Skansebakken. Over the past couple of years the focus has been on designing relationships and with such success that the project won the KL Innovation Award 2013. This time the job is to design better food experiences for the severely physically and mentally disabled citizens. The project is called “Kitchen Stories” because it’s about so much more than food. A few days ago the project was launched with a workshop with the participation of the kitchen staff at Skansebakken, the pedagogues, relatives, and designers from Design School Kolding.
Wanting to create better experiences
The staff at Skansebakken wants to create better food experiences and a greater sense of joy for the residents. But how? Many of them only get tube feeding formula, and others only blended foods. The workload is heavy and the staff has a lot on their hands. ”There is a huge contrast between what I experience when I eat at home and what our citizens are experiencing. That really affects me”, one of the social workers said after having performed the initial exercises that focus on pleasant food experiences at home. The starting point of all the discussions was to have a positive approach and many are already able to share nice experiences.
–“One of our citizens yells a lot which makes one off our other citizens very uncomfortable. Now we have arranged for them to eat together and that went really well. I think it helps”, one person said. Another person talked about the Saturday brunch tradition that is being established and seems to bring a lot of joy.
A male citizen around the age of 30 all of a sudden decided he wouldn’t eat. The pedagogues asked the in-house sensory-motor specialist for help and she suggested two things: That the person feeding him withdraws from his field of vision after handing him the spoon or fork and to also place a grass mat underneath his feet and let him eat barefoot. The change was instant: He can feel. This awakes his mind and now he is eating and putting on weight.
Observing and proposing
Design School Kolding Designers Laila Grøn Truelsen, Joan Pedersen and Lærke Thorst Balslev will in the course of the next few months make observations and propose suggestions for how to create positive stories and relationships that are embedded in everyday life in relation to e.g. food experiences at Skansebakken.
-"The project employs a holistic approach to kitchen stories and food experiences and the goal is to discover the potential purpose of and connection between all the Skansebakken kitchens", says Laila Grøn Truelsen.
