Abstract
When the COVID-19 emergency raised, the entire world -and small communities with it- had to stop, adapt, find ways to face the big ongoing challenge. The article reports the reaction and the changes undertaken with an ongoing project that was, in February 2020, experimenting, inside the hospital environment, the therapeutic effects of knitting on people with physical and psychological pathologies. The project, driven by scientific studies made in universities, hospitals and research centers worldwide, had the aim to bring the intervention of designers on the topic, to answer the emerged need to promote research in what is considered a low-investigated and high-promising field. Experimental pilot actions, designed and led by designers on-field, were going on when the emergency changed the scenario, limited the environment, shifted the eye on a new, wider target of healthy people, made knitting a tool to face new circumstances and improve everyday-life quality.Observing the newly emerged scenario and the spontaneous initiatives risen on the web (and on social media in particular) to help individuals in spending the forced time at home in meaningful ways, designers involved in the ongoing project identified in knitting an activity that could be beneficial on a psychological and physical level also for quarantined individuals. The project took a new perspective and evolved in the #IOLAVOROAMAGLIA (#IKNIT) social media campaign, linked to the globally spread #STAYHOME campaign, aimed at inviting people to remain home for preventing the diffusion of the infection, while proposing at the same time new solutions for positively living the emergency times. #IOLAVOROAMAGLIA was embraced by many users and it also became a weekly scheduled live virtual workshop, with a direct reference to the workshops in the hospital of XXXX, temporarily stopped during lockdown.The two projects, on-field and online, proved how knitting can be a meaningful solution not only for healthcare, but also for the daily life of people, both in normal times and in emergency situations.Moreover, the role of the designer and of a design driven approach proved to be fundamental, for the product and service creation, improvement and consolidation and for its communication for valorization and promotion.
Highlights
The idea of using a craft for helping people coping with diseases is more ancient than people think, and the concept of knitting as a therapeutic activity started to be structured in 2005, when the physiotherapist Betsan Corkhill started to purpose knitting as a useful activity to answer the need, in healthcare, of a whole-person care approach (Corkhill, 2014), namely “the coordination of health, behavioural health, and social services in a patient-centred manner with the goals of improved health outcomes and more efficient and effective use of resources” (Maxwell et al, 2014)
Attendants affirmed never having previously encountered a similar project and this showed the innovative soul of knit therapy, at least in Bergamo hospital
The co-design of a format of knit therapy events in the hospital revealed the importance of these conditions, but design was necessary for the creation of ad-hoc information and visual language, which become fundamental both for a better conveyance of the scientific theoretical evidence, aimed at a higher validation within the scientific discourse, and as a way to a wider audience and target by exploring the potential knitting has if applied on social media, as an amusing proposal, but again as a physical and psychological beneficial support, both in emergency situations and in normal life conditions (Fig. 6)
Summary
The idea of using a craft for helping people coping with diseases is more ancient than people think, and the concept of knitting as a therapeutic activity started to be structured in 2005, when the physiotherapist Betsan Corkhill started to purpose knitting as a useful activity to answer the need, in healthcare, of a whole-person care approach (Corkhill, 2014), namely “the coordination of health, behavioural health, and social services in a patient-centred manner with the goals of improved health outcomes and more efficient and effective use of resources” (Maxwell et al, 2014) Such an approach would be a beneficial solution not just for the patients, but for the healthcare system in general, especially regarding the costs
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