Care Labs 2025

Our very first care labs were held in 2022 (online) as part of our Futures of Care programme. The labs were initiated to bring people together across distance and experience to think about how we centre care in the way we work with artists and communities. The intention was to create a space for ongoing exploration and provocation.

In March and April this year we held the next iteration of care labs, two of them in Herne Bay with local community members and change-makers working on community health and wellbeing; including Herne bay in Bloom Community Gardens, Happy Here, Herne Bay Umbrella centre, Mayas community support centre, and a community warden from Kent County Council. Before people joined us we spent time with them 1-2-1 to get curious and dig deep about their work – what keeps them going, sparks joy and the potential challenges they’re facing.

From these, 5 tricky balancing acts in doing this work were identified by nearly everybody:

• Caring for those we work with and Caring for ourselves
• Need for and belief in what we do and Lack of resource to do it
• Working from a place of compassion and Working within inequitable systems
• Making human-centred change and Navigating rigid systems
• Creativity as a way to connect to others and Creativity as a way to connect to ourselves

Following these conversations, we invited those we’d spent time with to join us for an immersive workshop, where everyone was invited to leave daily challenges and these tricky balancing acts at the door – to get creative and think about how we might keep going and do things differently.

We posed the following questions, to spark discussion and creative thinking:

‘How do creative practitioners and social care networks work together to make effective change?’

‘How do communities become decision makers and share ownership of (creative) initiatives?’

‘How do we use creativity to keep going in times of austerity, financial hardship and compound crisis?’

Facilitated by Chloe Osborne, supported by PU staff, and hosted by sherose we spent 3 hours being curious and asking ‘what if’. One of the main themes which emerged was recognising the tension of caring for others and ourselves when working in rigid systems with dwindling resources. Burnout, own lived experience of pressing issues, working in inequitable systems and the drive to be on the ‘frontline’ were all areas of commonality for the participants. In response to the provocation we worked together building and imagining futures of care with Lego and designing ‘magic wand’ scenarios where access to resources was not an issue.

Post event, Chloe designed a Zine centring observations from the group on the fundamentals which could help move communities towards a healthier, more equitable and more creative place. Collaboration and the need for new approaches were mentioned repeatedly, along with an acknowledgement of the need for a systemic approach to health and wellbeing.

The energy and creativity from the group was tangible and encouraged us to deliver another lab with them and a plus one, for a deeper exploration on 13th April.

The second care lab was held in the Kings Hall which was dressed to resemble a beach scene, complete with inflatable unicorns, deck chairs and a life sized flamingo. In groups we explored what was and wasn’t working in the town, where the sticking points were and where they felt they could create some traction.

There was consensus about prioritising young people, the cleanliness of the beach, creating places of welcome and a holistic approach to wellbeing and nutrition. Everyone acknowledged that the current frontline approach is not sustainable by so few people, so a systemic, and holistic approach would reap better and longer lasting results.

We encouraged everyone to look at the Social Change Model by Deeper Iyer, to identify which roles they currently adopt in their community. Many people were performing at least 3 and sometimes many more. We love this model as it removes traditional hierarchies and allows people to see the need for and value of interdependence.

We are continuing these explorations as we develop a long term approach to working with the communities of Herne Bay.