In 2023, my community interest company, A Brilliant Thing, worked with nearly 100 community organisations and Public Health teams in Bolton to understand how to become trauma informed as a place. We learnt a huge amount about how community organisations respond to trauma and support people to heal.
The aim of the project was to “Create a trauma responsive place, with a strengths-based and community asset approach to building local resilience”.
As social change designers, we began with a design question.
How could the community sector prevent, protect, and support individuals while mitigating trauma's consequences and developing a supportive place to live?
The first big community conversation was tough, I felt pressure to ‘qualify’ myself as someone who understood trauma. The word trauma felt medical and scary for other people. ‘Dont open the can of worms’ was said to me repeatedly and we had to get really clear about setting up the conversation, managing expectations and creating support around our interactions.
We had conversations in organisations and spoke to voluntary sector networks to promote the programme and raise awareness. We had approximately 89 conversations with VCSE sector organisations and volunteers specifically about this work.
The conversations helped us shape a design programme, a series of creative and conversation based workshops with people working in communities, to explore topics connected with trauma informed working and to codesign resources for our toolkit.
We showed an illustration to the groups, which identified trauma informed practices leading to healing centred practices. Lightbulbs pinged across the room when we shared this. The workshops were about ensuring how we work, helps people heal, repair and recover from the bad experiences and things that have happened to them. Most people expected these sessions to be filled with statistics of how trauma is prevalent and how it impacts people. Instead we shifted the focus, starting from the assumption that most people will have experienced trauma, personal, social or societal, and that this causes pain. Our energies then focused on creating workplaces and communities that supported healing rather than creating more pain. We explored language, planning, leadership, physical environment and safety.
We distinguished between therapeutic work and work that enables a therapeutic process. I remembered the many conversations I have had in other jobs identifying the difference between art for wellbeing and art therapy. Making art is therapeutic and can support wellbeing and self expression alone, or with others. Using art to address psychological issues is art therapy, and a medium between a professional and a client. Similarly healing centred design is an approach that brings together creativity and wellbeing to support people whilst designing new things or experiences, rather than an approach that is about designing therapeutic healing interventions.
On the design programme, we used design thinking and co-created an accessible toolkit and support programme, with resources codesigned by charities, community groups and volunteers, people with lived experience of trauma and creative practitioners. The toolkit helps equip the sector to adopt trauma-informed ways of working that help everyone feel safe and supported.
Healing-Centred Design Through the project we developed principles that supported things to progress in a healing centred way. These are
Rhythm and Ritual - practices and processes that create patterns and certainty
Filter - clarity to help sort, prioritise and choose - what is okay? What is not okay?
Collide and align- bringing together ideas from different sources and blending to create something new - widens perspective and creates opportunity for new thinking
Transition - pauses for processing, making connections and reflection -enables decompression
Contribute and benefit - balancing giving with receiving to encourage equilibrium (across all domains, energy, finances, relationships, work, family, health etc)
Embedding Reflective Practice in combination with these principles was useful for both participants and practitioners. One facilitator reflected:
“We know that creating a culture of reflection at work is crucial, one that fosters personal growth and continuous improvement. In this session, it was encouraging to see participants actively embracing the idea of exploring their own growth mindset and learning from their mistakes.
This eagerness to engage in discussions and participate in design thinking activities is a positive sign that people are open to self-reflection and collaboration. It's crucial to nurture this enthusiasm and build upon it. I felt reassured that participants were getting the idea of the importance to reflect, not only about their own mistakes and successes but also their organisation.”
Reflective Practice
How might you use these design principles in your work or life?
Rhythm and Ritual - What do you do that creates patterns and certainty?
Filter How do you sort, prioritise and choose - what is okay? What is not okay?
Collide and align Can you find ideas from different places and blend to create something new?
Transition Where do you pause for processing and reflecting?
Contribute and benefit When are you giving? When are you receiving? (consider energy, finances, relationships, work, family, health)
