Wellcome Collection Library
We have been working with Wellcome Collection, a free museum and library about people’s health and being human, to co-design something that makes their library more welcoming.
Over two years we got to know library staff, the library spaces and their collection of books, art, audio and video. We used creative methods to explore design ideas that could make the library more accessible until we eventually decided as a group to make a video to welcome people in.
The video features people from the project talking to each other and stop motion animations that we made together. We want visitors to feel excited about what they might find inside the library and to feel like they belong there.
Our joint aim on the project has always been to see and hear more disabled and learning disabled people in libraries and archives. Heart n Soul’s archive is part of Wellcome Collection and will one day be available for people to see and hear in the library. It is important to us and the Wellcome library staff that the library keeps improving its access.
What do we mean by co-design?
Co-design is when people design things together right from the start, equally. This is different from one group of people asking others to give feedback on a design, or to give their ideas to feed into a design. In co-design power is shared and trust is created.
Using creative methods we have been exploring:
What the library is and how to use it
How to make the library more welcoming and inviting for a range of different people (who might not otherwise go there)
How to make the library more comfortable for different people to use
What is in the collection and how people with learning disabilities and autistic people are represented
Heart n Soul first started working with Wellcome in 2018. They commissioned our project, Heart n Soul at the Hub, a two year research project funded by Wellcome’s Hub Award. It brought a group of very different people together to do research in new and exciting ways.
