This project brings together LGBTQ+ University students and older LGBTQ+ Brighton & Hove community members with aim to tackle loneliness and social isolation through intergenerational community building. The principal aim of this project is to encourage LGBTQ+ intergenerational community ties that promote communication, solidarity, and in-person knowledge exchange following the isolating effects of Covid-19 pandemic. Statistically, LGBTQ+ people are less likely to grow old than their non- LGBTQ+ counterparts, and they are a group more likely to die by suicide. At the same time, the covid pandemic has disproportionately affected the mental health of LGBTQ+ students at Universities in the UK. A recent study by student minds shows that these students are more likely to struggle with mental health due to a sense of loneliness and isolation at University. The project will take place through in-person befriending meetings (weekly or bi-weekly), visual arts design workshops (once monthly), and 'knowledge cascading' research workshops (once termly). The project will run over university term-time (1 September 2023 - 30 June 2024), in two 16-week cycles, with opportunity to adjust workshop models and content. The aim of the workshops is to use visual arts to create empowering narratives that picture local LGBTQ+ history, identity, and community. In the workshops, we will use comics, zines, photography, and other visual storytelling mapping exercises to think about LGBTQ+ identity and what resilience looks like. This project develops a knowledge cascading community model where knowledge flows down from older LGBTQ+ participants to LGBTQ+ university students, and back up again. While there will be room to talk about personal experience, the aim of the workshop is to materially visualise LGBTQ+ identity, and to create a picture of what community looks like. Alongside the workshops, the students and community members aged 55+ will also meet in pairs to encourage community building and knowledge exchange. This will be managed by the lead researcher, who has a conversation with each participant, and matches participants by age (there should be two older community members and two university students in each 'befriending pod'). These pods will then be instructed to meet in-person at least twice a month, for 30 mins to an hour during each meeting. They will be provided with conversation starter packs (which include questions to ask, short 'icebreaker' art activities) to help them along. The purpose of these meetings will be stated: to improve the community knowledge exchange, and to address a key challenge outlined in this project: loneliness and isolation. There will four other initiatives running alongside the workshops and befriending scheme: a bespoke workshop for participants interested in learning more about 'knowledge cascading' and community research; ongoing wellbeing recommendations through partnerships, as well as a 'mental health and community building' wellbeing pack which signposts mental health support routes; placement recruitment and design (various courses at the University of Sussex are interested in using this project as a placement option for their students); development of a civic engagement toolkit that can be used by Universities across the UK (including placement models, content design, partnership suggestions); and the creation of a Community Interest Company to ensure the project is sustained through a civic engagement model used by Universities.

Cognitive impairment can have a devastating impact on an individual's wellbeing across the lifespan, in both healthy individuals and patients. This is particularly true in age-related cognitive decline, which also has a large impact upon society and the economy. Fortunately, attempts to ameliorate such impairments with scientifically informed cognitive interventions have been promising. Cognitive training (practicing cognitive tasks) has produced improvements in children with developmental disorders, in older adults, and in patients with brain injury. Lifestyle changes, brain stimulation and the use of learned strategies and assistive technologies are extremely encouraging interventions but the time is right for a review and forward look. The field now faces several challenges. In order to develop useful cognitive interventions, they need to be tailored to individual needs to maximise transferable benefits, but also user-friendly to promote compliance. The proposed seminar series will meet this need by bringing together leading scientists to offer insights from neuroscience and psychology and AgeUK to offer insights into end-user needs. The seminar series will also foster collaboration among researchers in different disciplines, who adopt different approaches to cognitive intervention, and target different types of cognitive impairment. It is anticipated that this knowledge sharing will lead to demonstrable impact, for example, in changing guidelines regarding the role of multi-approach cognitive interventions that take advantage of the latest neuroscience methods.

Proto-policy is a three month pilot project running from June to August 2015, which aims to investigate how 'design fictions' -provocative visual texts (artefacts, images, films) that materialise scenarios about, or provide clues to, future ways of living-can be used to help politicians and community groups imagine the future implications of policy initiatives in creative ways. Proto-policy is part of the Arts & Humanities Research Council-funded project ProtoPublics, which aims to support researchers and community partners to become active participants in 'crafting new services, experiences, projects and policies that address contemporary issues' (http://protopublics.org/). For the purposes of this pilot, Proto-policy will focus on issues of ageing in place (people remaining in their homes rather than move to institutional facilities) and isolation. Imagining alternative ways of living in old age has become a cultural preoccupation, hence the extraordinary popular success of the 'The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel', yet talking to older people about the future (particularly the 'older old', those aged 80+) is virtually taboo. This project uses design fictions to address that taboo by inviting older people to imagine and, with the assistance of a designer, create visual texts (artefacts, images, films) that materialise scenarios, or provide clues to, future ways of living in compelling ways. Proto-policy will run a series of creative workshops with residents in Miners Court, an assisted-care housing complex in Redruth Cornwall, and the second with elders living in their own homes in Lancaster (in conjunction with Age UK Lancaster), respond to the 'Ageing in Place' policy agenda by co-creating future design fictions that envisage what a future of 'flexible living' - a third space that has the benefits of independent living without the downsides of loneliness, fear and vulnerability - might look like. These would be shared with politicians in a 'design fiction provocation' event to be held in Westminster in order to help negotiate political questions. Through its project partners, the All-Party Parliamentary Design and Innovation Group (APDIG) and Age UK, this project seeks to build a shared understanding of the constraints and opportunities of political issues around Ageing in Place and loneliness through design fictions. The APDIG is a cross-party coalition of parliamentarians and design sector organisations that works to develop new design policy ideas and critique existing government decision-making around design.

This novel, speculative proposal aims to chart new territory of human interface with interiors, through sensory design interventions. Designers, architects, town planners, government authorities require research based evidence to support design specifications; we want to contribute to the guidance on public and private space design, by exploring responses to two environmental sensory factors, colour and odour, with a specific focus towards their joint impact on design.\n\nThe majority of building work in the UK (around 80%) comprises refurbishment rather than new build (The Building Centre, 2005). Many environments needing refurbishment, ranging from total refurbishment to simple repainting, are public buildings such as prisons, council premises, and long-term healthcare environments. These types of environments may never be able to disrupt their functionality or day-time patterns long enough to allow for changes to the environment. Kingston University London (KUL) and Oxford University (OU) intend to explore sensory design issues that can provide remedial, short-term or even emergency environmental solutions or modifications. The multisensory design focus will be specifically on the potential for colour and fragrance to enhance environments, and to assess whether a level of congruency between colours and fragrances used is of significance and importance.\n\nAn exploration of these sensory interventions requires the expertise of two centres of excellence, KUL and OU, who have been leading research of international status in their fields for some time. The KUL team have conducted a considerable amount of environmental and psychologically focused work regarding colour preference and environmental perception (Dalke, Cook, et al, 2003; Dalke, Littlefair, et al, 2004; Dalke & Matheson, In preparation). This has now revealed a need to collaborate with the experimental psychology group at OU, who are leaders in multisensory research. \n \nThe primary aim of this project is to assess whether certain environmental sensory design strategies can be employed to raise peoples' perceptions of the quality of interior spaces. Colour and fragrance, congruency and their combined impact on sense of well-being, as well as each one's impact on perception of the other, is the main focus. Multisensory research so far has shown that odour is an important mediator in the appraisal and interpretation of visual stimuli (Herz & Cupchik, 1993; Rotton, 1983; Laird, 1932), and this speculative program aims to apply this knowledge to the area of interior design so that we can explore how this may be of benefit to a variety of establishments. Neither of the centres has had the opportunity to work through ideas in the others' area before, so there is tremendous potential for this program to break new ground in combining Science and Design knowledge, and to create opportunities for future interdisciplinary research.\n\nThe secondary aim is to examine whether certain physical responses such as pulse rate and skin conductance, can be cross referenced with subjective verbal responses regarding one's perception of an environment. Although the scientific sector has been active in the area of psychophysical measurement, designers generally lack the knowledge and skills required to collect and interpret such results in order to confidently inform multisensory design implementations. This research hopes to combine the expertise of both science and design to inform and profit holistic interior design as well as inspire similar future collaborations. It is a unique opportunity for both research centres to work with our partner at AGE CONCERN, learn about methods of psychophysical and psychological measurement of colour and fragrance. It will advance the studies of both centres, and lead to useable mulitsensory design interventions for the improvement of environments with dissemination to key professionals in relevant public and private sector organisations.

Cognitive impairment can have a devastating impact on an individual's wellbeing across the lifespan, in both healthy individuals and patients. This is particularly true in age-related cognitive decline, which also has a large impact upon society and the economy. Fortunately, attempts to ameliorate such impairments with scientifically informed cognitive interventions have been promising. Cognitive training (practicing cognitive tasks) has produced improvements in children with developmental disorders, in older adults, and in patients with brain injury. Lifestyle changes, brain stimulation and the use of learned strategies and assistive technologies are extremely encouraging interventions but the time is right for a review and forward look. The field now faces several challenges. In order to develop useful cognitive interventions, they need to be tailored to individual needs to maximise transferable benefits, but also user-friendly to promote compliance. The proposed seminar series will meet this need by bringing together leading scientists to offer insights from neuroscience and psychology and AgeUK to offer insights into end-user needs. The seminar series will also foster collaboration among researchers in different disciplines, who adopt different approaches to cognitive intervention, and target different types of cognitive impairment. It is anticipated that this knowledge sharing will lead to demonstrable impact, for example, in changing guidelines regarding the role of multi-approach cognitive interventions that take advantage of the latest neuroscience methods.