Bumping Spaces

A project for Barbican & Community Library exploring loneliness and how the library can be more of a “bumping space” for local residents.

Working with Made By Play, Karl Toomey and I ran engagement sessions with the local community and co-designed a set of guiding principles around when and how people might feel comfortable engaging with people they don’t know.

Using these principles we created a number of interactive, pop-up prototypes out in ‘bumping spaces’ in the community. Each one had a quote on one side, and on the other side a playful prompt that encouraged people to connect. Our research and findings from the 5-month project were packaged up in a report which will be used in the library’s future community work.

Made for the Barbican & Community Library in collaboration with Karl Toomey, MadeByPlay and Dean Brown.