Creative Workshops

Designed and co-facilitated with Creative Facilitator, Hefin Jones, the creative workshops enabled participants to feed into and co-design key aspects of the new brain scanning technology.

Young people with epilepsy (aged 5 – 8) and their parents and guardians took part in one of two workshop streams:

  • Helmet Stream: One group explored how they would like the scanning helmet (worn during the scan) to look and feel.
  • Task Stream: The second group explored the type of activities that they would like to do during the scan.
  • Throughout both streams, we also captured key questions and concerns from young people and their parents, which allowed us to consider how to best prepare young people and their parents for an OPM-MEG scan.

They attended weekly creative workshops, over a three week period. Each workshop had a theme: MAKE, CHANGE or SHARE. Every week, the groups were given a takeaway challenge – to create something which they could discuss the following week.

The ‘MAKE’ stage familiarised the young people with the project and tasks, encouraging them to think about how they would like the helmet and activities to be designed.

By introducing three mystery envelopes in the ‘CHANGE’ stage, we brought in new rules which are key to ensuring a good quality scan in the OPM-MEG room. This prompted the young people to adapt their designs, taking into account the new rules. For example, OPM-MEG scanning rooms cannot contain any metal, so the young people and their parents had to consider how this would impact their choice of activity.

Finally, the ‘SHARE’ stage allowed us to evaluate the challenges, workshop design and young people’s experience in the project, as well as what aspects of the helmet or activities were most important to them.

Held online, the workshops and takeaway tasks were supported by a project website hosting a range of bespoke films, project booklets and a digital journal designed to support the young people and parents to input into the research in the method that best suited them.

We posted out specially designed Creative Boxes, which contained all of the activities needed in the workshops. These boxes were designed and created by Mark Lim at Chalk Studios.