In a new development for the Designing for the Future project, this year’s University of Brighton students were very lucky to have the opportunity to meet Bobbie Farsides, Professor of Clinical and Biomedical Ethics at Brighton & Sussex Medical School.
Given that design has the potential to dramatically change lives, it seems appropriate to pause and consider potential impacts and ethical issues such as consent, particularly when designing for people with dementia whose capacity to consent might be affected.
In one of the most stimulating discussions we have ever had at DFF, Bobbie led the students through a number of provocations, encouraging them to challenge their own preconceptions about people living with dementia and to consider issues such as the role of ethics in art and design and how dementia affects a person’s sense of self and disrupts their biography.
Finally, Bobbie posed a question : if you were about to move into a care home, what is the one fact you would want your carers to know about you?
Food for thought.