Radical Gifting: Wellbeing Boxes 2023
Weaving a web of care through intimate creative sessions, making, giving and receiving, Radical Gifting fosters wellbeing and generates meaningful connections by reconnecting people to coastal ecosystems in East Kent and beyond.
For the first phase of this project in September 2023, People United commissioned three socially engaged artists; Maggie Huiming Yang, Louise Beer and Rachel Ella Taylor, to work with socially isolated individuals in their homes, to co-design objects to evoke an immersive experience of the East Kent coastline.
The community participants and the artists explored the coastal theme of the project, considering what most reminded them of the coast, what they enjoyed about the coast, and what that felt like across their different senses. The result of these conversations were two co-designed sensory objects per artist and collaborator pair. One of these objects was reproduced by the artist and the other was designed to be produced by other members of the community; culminating in 20 wellbeing boxes.
Check out the postcards from the boxes below:
