Compassionate communities Panel

Compassionate Communities: Can Art and Design Foster Care, Connection, and Belonging? Guests: Tina KM Sinclair, Christian Pagh, Amy van den Hooven, Eamon O’Kane Moderator: Jérôme Picard, Greymatter book launch: Elida Mosquera

Title:
Compassionate Communities: Can art and design foster care, connection, and belonging?

Guests: Tina KM Sinclair, Christian Pagh, Amy van den Hooven, Eamon O’Kane
Moderator: Jérôme Picard, Greymatter book launch: Elida Mosquera

Held during the Generasjonsfestivalen in Bergen in May 2025, “Compassionate Communities” brought together leading voices from planning, design, and the arts to explore how care can be integrated into the fabric of everyday life. The conversation focused on the urgent demographic shifts in Norway, particularly the rise in the aging population, and the inadequacies of current institutional and sectorial responses.

Tina KM Sinclair spoke about the challenges of implementing cross-sectoral cooperation in regional planning and the need to align infrastructure with local community life. She described the ongoing development of a “network for growth” in Vestland to ensure equitable access to services across small and remote communities.

Christian Pagh emphasized the neighborhood as a critical scale for societal transformation, arguing that mutualism and shared space are key to designing compassionate environments. He criticized modernist planning for its lack of connection and generosity, proposing a return to relational urbanism.

Amy van den Hooven presented her participatory design research in healthcare, where she uses tactile objects to help communicate experiences of pain and care. Her work, rooted in collaboration with medical professionals and patients, aims to expand how care is understood and delivered in clinical and social contexts.

Eamon O’Kane shared projects from dementia care homes, where artist-led workshops and creative toolkits offer new pedagogies of care. He highlighted the importance of building long-term structures that support creative and intergenerational engagement.

The panel closed with a discussion on the fragility of relying solely on volunteerism and the importance of shared responsibility. Together, the speakers advocated for a deeper integration of culture, design, and care in how we plan and sustain compassionate communities.

Transcript

After a welcome introduction, the panel starts with a short individual presentation reflection on their practice in relation to the theme.

 

Tina Sinclair:
So it means that they’re (the elderly) kind of outside of the system that runs everything. And I think it also places older people in a position of shame in a way. You know, we favor youth, we favor young, healthy, productive bodies. And we don’t really want to think about the idea that our bodies have their limits and they grow old and they don’t function the way they should.

So I think it’s a good framework for discussing ageing because I think like you said, Jérôme, it really is like a kind of societal cultural change—almost like revolution—that we’re talking about. Because we’ve been dealing with aging since my career started, and yet we’re not succeeding. And why not?

So I’m an art historian as well as an architect and urbanist. I could never make up my mind. And I’ve also practiced within architecture and planning, and gone from area planning and further up, until I’m now doing regional planning for the whole of the county, which is just societal planning—it isn’t really to do with areas, just to do with how to develop society. And I manage these strategies for the politicians—what they do once every four years. So that’s what sets up the politics for the region of Vestland.

My whole career I’ve had this interest in these value-based tensions between what we talk about and what we don’t talk about—that is underneath everything we do. Everyone enjoys the wonderful welfare state based on the oil and gas economy, but it’s impossible to reach our goals for climate and sustainability if we don’t start talking about it.

These kinds of conflicts are always at the core of my work, and I want to bring them to the discussion. My world normally looks like this, because I deal with complexity and mess all the time. If I try to think about any issue that we have in all of Vestland for the next four years, it’s always related to everything else. It can put you in a position where you don’t know what to do about it.

So more and more, we think about systems—how every little issue or possibility also hangs together with everything else. This is a mess map showing the different actors involved with cultural education. It happens to be from England because it was in English, but it looks like my reality. So I think we need this kind of attitude also when approaching aging.

And how do you affect change? Why aren’t we succeeding?

Well, in my world, which is regional government, we are very sectorialized. There’s people there from every profession you can imagine—it’s very exciting to work cross-sectorally. But during my first year there, I heard everyone talking about “we need to cooperate, we need to cooperate.” And coming from architecture, I thought, what’s there to talk about? Just do it. But the fact is: in the public sector, no one cooperates. Everyone looks right down at their own sectorial work. We’re organized sectorially. The economy is sectorial. And that’s one of the barriers for being able to affect change.

So to affect change, you need to co-create across sectors. That’s one very good recipe for innovation. And in my world, it makes sense to not just do the sort of well-known collaborations that we have in Norway, but to be much more radical in how we co-create—with other professions and sectors. And that includes architects and designers too.

I’m going to stop here with this one. These are the kind of wicked regional challenges that I’m trying to map and make people work together on. There are six of them. I haven’t translated them here, but you can see that number three—life quality and equal opportunity—is one of them. And there are some indicators we can work on quite specifically in order to effect change.

So this is at the forefront of politics for this period. And that’s the bigger framework I think we work within—on a national scale.

Christian Pagh:
There’s a perfect overlap of complexity and scale, moving it from regional to the neighborhood scale. I bring up this book because, as the director of the Oslo architecture Triennale 2023, I edited it with among others Thomas Cook, who happens to be here today. The book explores scale. They put it very clearly: scale is a particularly interesting level at which to solve some of the societal issues that Tina just brought up.

It’s about combining interests in source infrastructure, mobility, sustainability, and system design. I’m going to go into this neighborhood scale a little bit and give some examples. But perhaps a more simplified version of what we just showed is this:
Good places—places where we come together—are made up of:

• The hardware: physical infrastructure, walls, streets
• The software: culture and social codes
• The organizational infrastructure: how things are run and maintained

And I guess the trick is that, very often in systems design, we fail to understand the meaning of place. Not only whether it’s ugly or nice, but:
To what extent does the physical environment constitute our life opportunities?

One of the main aspirations with this book is to show that there’s a huge societal potential if we take places seriously—especially the way places connect at the neighborhood scale.

Now the rest of my presentation is images, because it makes it more real.
Here’s a photo I took myself in Shanghai 15 years ago: you see elderly people dancing on the street. It’s not so often that you see that.
So what does it say to see them dance on the street?

Of course, you can tell—it’s quite an articulated square. It’s beautiful. There are old trees. It’s connected to a local context, to a place with intention. It has a kind of public feel.
It would be weird to stand and dance outside Kiwi [a grocery store]—but here, somehow, it makes sense.

There’s a certain temporality and functionality to the place. And that has a lot to do with urban form.

…So I would argue that this has a lot to do with urban form.

That’s a bit too romantic, maybe. So I have a new example—from Melbourne. It’s one of the few recent urban planning projects—maybe 20 years old—that works with a rich diversity of typologies, and a good mix of public and private. That’s actually a big feature of Bergen, by the way. The way that private life subtly connects to public life. You kind of collide without noticing—into someone else’s space. As opposed to when you’re in a car, where that’s simply impossible.

Now, my most romantic slide: let’s imagine a beautiful southern European city. A neighborhood fabric formed over centuries.
There’s something about it that refers to what you mentioned in your presentation, Tina—this idea of mutualism. That everything is connected. Each new building is a response to the one before, and the one next to it.
Lives, too, are intertwined. And the buildings respond to the landscape—they shape it and are shaped by it.

One of the biggest problems with contemporary or modernist planning is that it tends to start from nowhere. Or from a spreadsheet. Let’s build 250 units here. The car can go there. Done. It’s connected to nothing. It responds to nothing—except numbers. And sure, numbers are important. We can count. We might need apartments. But that’s not enough.
It’s certainly not enough when it comes to aging.

Let me end with that: the street is where we move. I have this little video—it’s a movie now. It shows Bergen’s streets. They’re fantastic.
What we see is, again, how public and private are layered.

I keep wondering—who put this up? I took this image three years ago, and it’s still there.
Who takes care of it? It’s not the city—they don’t have time to fix it.
So the neighbors do. And suddenly, you have an occasion to come together. And act. And do something.
As it happens, kids and the elderly are the most dependent on the neighborhood. Because they might not have the same ability to move around.

So it’s not just about street design. It’s about all these layers of potential connection.

And here’s maybe a final, even banal point: it’s also about simple generosity.
Some buildings… I quite like the idea that buildings are like people. And some are just assholes, right?

So I would call the building on the left—an asshole. It gives nothing. It’s just saying: what the fuck do you want?

Whereas the one next to it—there’s a bench. I can sit. I don’t need to buy a beer. I can just sit.

And that relates to manuality. How far can I walk? What are my limits? When do I need help—or just a place to sit?

So in summary: I love this image of this older Japanese man. Of course, it’s about care.
But it’s also about productivity—your word, Tina.

His productivity is my joy. Because it’s on display. I can access it. I can be part of it.
And that’s about culture—but also about the character of the street and how it’s managed and designed.

So I think we all agree, and that’s why we’re here: there is an incredible amount of untapped potential in linking spatial design and societal aspirations.

Let me end there—with these two romantic images from a celebration I had, where I ended up playing music with this elderly clown for hours. Simply because it was possible—thanks to the design of that place.

Amy van den Hooven:
Hello. It’s really nice to be here. Thank you.

So I’ll tell you a little bit about my past design work. And with that, I’ll also weave in a bit of a personal story—why design, and why I’ve gone down this specific path. I thought I would start with a project from 2010 when I studied Environmental Design in Vancouver, Canada. That program was more focused on architecture and landscape architecture.

This project here is called Sweet Refuge. It was inspired by my work in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver during one summer. I don’t know if anyone’s heard of that area, but it’s been known as the most densely populated area in North America for people who are homeless. In that population, there’s a lot of addiction, mental health struggles, and just a lot of pain overall.

So I worked there one summer and got to know a lot of women living in that area. I wanted to use that experience and what I learned from their stories to explore what care could look like for them. For many, it seemed like care was about refuge and meaningful work. That’s where Sweet Refuge came from.

It’s “sweet” because it’s also inspired by cacao—by chocolate—because that’s something wholesome and warm.

The idea is that this could be a place of chocolate making and storytelling. You could enter more privately, from the back of the building through a park. You wouldn’t necessarily need to be seen—important for women who may be facing abuse, or who are vulnerable for other reasons.
That private space would be for therapy and sharing stories.

And then, over time, the idea is that you move forward, into a more open space—where you could work in the café or the chocolate kitchen and be more visible.
It’s imagined as a transformative process—just like cacao, which transforms from a bitter bean into rich chocolate.

So for me, this was also about storytelling in design. About creating a design that meets care needs, but also tells a larger narrative that might resonate with others.
This was a school project—it wasn’t built—but the narrative was the most important part.

So after Sweet Refuge, there was a bit of a change in direction with my Master’s project here in Bergen, which I completed in 2021. It still took inspiration from my time in Vancouver and from working with vulnerable populations, but I wanted to look a little more upstream—into the root causes of what I had witnessed.

For me, the common thread was pain in people’s lives.

So that’s where I wanted to shift my design work—to focus more on this issue.
I began to explore what I now call the interior architecture of emotions. It was no longer just about spaces, but about designing for what’s inside—pain, specifically.

One quote that has really inspired me is from the historian Joanna Bourke:
“Haunted by the invisibility of their own suffering.”

This new work—Reimagining Pain Communication—was an effort to make pain more visible and graspable.

It was also influenced by personal experience. I’ve experienced pain in this work, but also in my life.
During this time, I was diagnosed with an autoimmune condition that affects my joints and body.
So this work became a kind of woven experience: one of personal relevance, as well as a larger social issue I wanted to explore.

The objects I designed are co-created with people who have different mental health struggles or chronic illnesses.
The idea is that by choosing and placing these objects on a board, they can better communicate the complexity of their pain.

It’s also a direct critique of things like the 1-to-10 pain scale that we still use in hospitals. These tools are reductive—they don’t capture the reality of pain.

Here’s a little bit about the making process: you can see sketches, material tests, and different forms.
These are some of the pain objects—shown on the left. And when you see those, you realize:
There is no way that a 1-to-10 pain scale could ever express what’s going on in these forms.

With this work, the idea is to develop both a 3D language and a 2D visual language of pain.

And this also marks a shift in my work—towards care.

The question becomes: how do we respond to pain?
If my earlier work was about representing pain, now I’m also asking: what is care?
What does it look like? And how can we design for care?

So yes, looking at care: how can we help people with pain? It’s more of a responsive action—and that’s what I’ve been exploring.

What I found quite interesting in these workshops is that care was often harder for people to mold than pain. That was revealing.
We all have our basic care needs, but some of the most profound ones—like connection or nurturing—are difficult to express. One object from a workshop represents the mother–child connection. That kind of care is deeply emotional, and not easy to translate into design.

What we currently have in our clinics and healthcare spaces are standardized models of care—just like the 1-to-10 pain scale. This work tries to co-design more nuanced representations. It’s about exploring care in a tangible, hands-on way, through storytelling and material exploration.

And that brings me to my current work, which is my PhD:
Clinic of the Future – Designing Dialogues for Care

This project is again asking: What is care?

I’m working with Haukeland Hospital here in Bergen, specifically within the Neuro Systems department. That includes people with ALS, MS, dementia, and Parkinson’s. I’m working most closely with the MS group—with researchers, doctors, nurses, and patients.

This photo here shows the first workshop we did together. The researchers and physicians are molding objects that reflect what their healthcare work looks or feels like.

It starts with objects and language—and from there, these become curiosities, insights, provocations.
Together, they help us imagine what a Clinic of the Future could be.

The idea is that it’s participatory.
And we also ask: What should we reclaim? What should we let go of? And what can we reimagine for the future?

Eamon O’Kane:

This image is from an exhibition that just opened yesterday at Høyskolen Contemporary here in Bergen, at Konstradt. If you get a chance, it’s open until June 30.
Tomorrow at 13:30, I’ll also be doing an artist conversation with the gallerist Erlend Tårnesvik about the work. The show is titled Magical Mystery Modernism.

One of my main focuses as an artist is the legacy of modernist practices—across art, architecture, design, and education.

And encoded in this exhibition are references to another part of my practice: working with interactivity and installations in a non-didactic way.
The history is woven into the installations. And this history is based on Friedrich Fröbel, the inventor of the kindergarten in 1840. He started as a crystallographer and was a student of Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi. He was deeply interested in the emancipation of children through education, which later influenced Steiner and Maria Montessori.
So within the exhibition you’ll see a whole range of references to this trajectory—because many of the key figures of high modernism, like Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, Charles Eames, even Kandinsky and Mondrian, actually went through the original Fröbel education. They worked with the Fröbel gifts and experienced the original kindergarten model, which is very different from kindergartens today.

In my work, I take a critical look at that period—the trajectory from the pre-Industrial Revolution to the present day—through the lens of modernism.

Now, the work I want to talk about today is something that grew out of an early series of interactive installations. It started over ten years ago at a dementia care home in Bristol, UK, called Saffron Gardens.
There, I was commissioned to create interactive furniture for the residents and for the activities coordinators of the care home.

I developed that work in collaboration with the staff and the residents themselves, through a series of workshops. I also worked with another artist who designed textile-based interactive objects.

And now, that work has evolved into a new project, which has just concluded. It was funded by the Irish Arts Council and called the Participation Art Award.
With this support, we collaborated with a museum on the west coast of Ireland—in a place called Sligo—and worked with seven dementia care homes.

The result is a project called The School for Generational Storytelling.

Here’s an image from one of the workshops. We held extended workshops over the course of a year, working closely with the activities coordinators in each of the care homes. Together, we explored the challenges they face in implementing creative programming on a day-to-day level.

This photo is a snapshot from one of the articles published in the local newspaper.

What we ended up developing—also inspired by Fröbel’s “Gaben” or gifts (his 20 educational gifts that were part of the original kindergarten system)—was a series of creative toolboxes for the care homes.
Each toolbox was curated and designed specifically for each home, and included:

• Cyanotype kits
• Linocut kits
• Puzzles
• And other creative tools

But the main focus of this project was to develop a sustainable pedagogy.

What I’ve noticed—in Bristol, but also in other care homes I’ve visited here in Scandinavia and elsewhere—is that there’s an extreme lack of support for the staff who are working on creative activities.
Yes, other aspects of care are under pressure, but in this particular area—creative coordination and meaningful engagement—there’s often very little pedagogical support.

It’s actually not that difficult to set up a kind of interconnectivity that relates to everyone’s presentations today—especially when we talk about care.

What we found was: when we brought all the activities managers together from the seven care homes (they’re all within driving distance of the town), and gathered them at the museum—
suddenly, things started to happen.

They began to share their own pedagogies, their own ideas and activities. They were able to build on one another’s work, discuss challenges, and explore opportunities.
This wasn’t just about care within a single institution—it expanded to intergenerational care:
bringing in local schools, involving music clubs, setting up gardening programs, and so on.

And then we realized:
There’s an opportunity here to create a sustainable format that can be shared more widely—not just in Ireland, but globally.

This could be open-source—shared through YouTube videos, websites, digital platforms—giving access to creative practices and resources that can be used in other care homes.

It’s something I hope to bring into the future work I’ll be doing with Jérôme and others.

This also relates to the place of the artist—or the designer, musician, or other creative—in the community.
In my exhibition, I reference the tradition of purpose-built artist studios that exist within cities. For instance:

• Near Edvard Munch’s old studio at Ekely, outside of Oslo, there’s a whole range of dedicated artist studios.
• There’s also one in Copenhagen.

I think there’s a real opportunity—through the kind of work we’re doing—to embed creative practices in communities.
Not as “parachuting artists” who come in and run a workshop—but as part of the fabric of everyday life.
As something ongoing and integrated.

That’s what I hope we can achieve.

Thank you.

Moderator – Jérôme Picard:
Thank you so much. This was a great way to introduce the topic and understand different perspectives.
It’s quite rare to have art policy, architecture, design—and we were supposed to have music too. And music is always around.

We’re also working with Wolfgang Schmidt and have the chance to be part of a department that’s called Music, Art and Design. That’s a tremendous resource—a way to build new methodologies across disciplines.

Now we’ll slowly move toward the core question of the evening. And I was thinking—maybe not everyone knows this, but it’s a new discussion we’ve been having:
What the fuck is a compassionate community?

It’s a big phrase. It sounds great. But what does it mean?

Actually, it comes from a concept developed in the early 2000s—around 2005—the Compassionate City. It’s something real. There are cities that have made this a municipal goal.
There’s even a charter you can follow.

What we’re trying to do—together with Wolfgang and Sebastian von Faken from the Verdi Center—is explore how Bergen might become a compassionate city, and what that really means in practice.

To summarize:
A compassionate city is a community that recognizes care as everyone’s responsibility.

That’s fundamental.
It’s not about relying on the welfare system.
It’s not about assuming things will just happen.

It’s about taking ownership.
And that’s not easy.

There are several key principles behind the compassionate city model:

• Shared responsibility for care
• Strategies for community-integrated support
• Public awareness and education
• Alignment between policy and practice
• Inclusion of rituals, remembrance, and death
  (Because aging and living also means dying—and dying has been excluded from public life.)

Now, before we open up the panel again, I want to give a little context—because this topic is urgent.

Tina, you mentioned a revolution. And yes, this is the kind of revolution that’s needed.

Let me show you something.

This graph represents a generic Norwegian municipality.
If things continue as they are—business as usual—the budget for health services will reach 200% of the total municipal budget.

That’s impossible.

It would mean that municipalities would have to shut down completely.
There would be no money left for anything else.

And it’s already happening:

• Populations are declining
• Birth rates are dropping
• Kindergartens are closing

It’s completely unsustainable.

We’re seeing it professionally as well: municipalities are freaking out. They’re sending out emergency tenders—asking for help in planning their next 20 years of care services.

There’s another paradox:
If we thought people would take care of us…
We’re losing those people.

There’s a huge shortage of healthcare professionals across Europe—about 1 million missing.

In Norway alone, we’re expected to be short 35,000 professionals by 2035.

Bergen is no exception.
Many positions are unfilled.
And 20% of nurses’ tasks are being handled by unqualified staff.

Even worse:
90% of Norwegian municipalities—especially rural ones—report major challenges in recruiting.

This is the projected investment plan from Bergen Municipality—from this year, 2024, up until 2034.

In this chart:

• Yellow represents investment in nursing homes
• Green is for housing
• Orange is for culture

So basically, what it shows is that—although there will be new waves of investment—the only planned investments are in health infrastructure, especially nursing homes.

And the question is: is that even sustainable?
The answer is: no.

What’s super interesting in this discussion—and why we need to emphasize the compassionate city concept—is that the core question is not just how much we build, but where and how.

For example, this is from a recent municipal report. It shows how they’re planning a new nursing home.
They’re spending a lot of time carefully scoping the area, trying to find the best place.

But these parameters don’t include compassionate values. They include regulation, logistics, budget—but not community integration.

And at the same time, there’s huge pressure. Municipalities are desperate to solve this problem with smarter, faster, cheaper solutions.

So if someone comes along with a plot that’s ready to build on—great. The project might move forward instantly.

But the question is:
Are these sites really part of a community that supports care?
Do they integrate societal values—or just fill a technical need?

That’s what we want to work on:
How do we support municipalities in designing care infrastructure that actually supports people?

And here’s the other crucial point:
Even if we build all the Nursing homes, all the housing, all the smart, efficient, AI-enabled health facilities—
It still won’t be enough.

Let me explain.

Today, the coverage of nursing home places is around 18%.
Even if we build 800 new places by 2040, coverage will drop to 13%—just because of the demographic shift.

So we can build the biggest nursing homes, the best facilities, filled with AI and smart technology…
But it still won’t solve the core problem.

We have to rethink how we deliver health.

And this is why we’re here tonight: to start solving that problem together.

It’s a complex question—but also an exciting one.
It means that health needs to become a part of daily life.
It needs to shape how we relate to one another.

So one can ask:

If nothing else works—
Can art, design, and music foster care, connection, and belonging?

Can empathy, mutual support, and social connection be built into the fabric of everyday life?

And with that—I’d like to come back to our speakers.

Moderator – Jérôme Picard: What do you see as the main challenges and opportunities in creating compassionate communities, from your work with municipalities?

Tina Sinclair (second round):
Yeah—well, it’s a big question.

It’s difficult to translate that massive regional scale of society into more concrete, tangible things that happen on the ground.
But, as most of you probably know, Norway is organized around three levels of government. And at the regional level, apart from responsibility for upper secondary schools, roads, and public buses, we also have a strong responsibility for scheduling and place-making.

One of the things we’ve been working on a lot is that Vestland is a new region—established in 2020. And most people in Vestland live in very small places.
There’s a very clear division between the Bergen region—which is maybe the second biggest urban region in Norway—and then the rest, where people live in tiny societies.

We don’t even have medium-sized cities. We only have these small settlements—between 200 and 2,000 inhabitants.

So the question is:
How can you ensure that everyone, wherever they live, has access to basic public services?
And how can they also have opportunities to meet others? Because loneliness is one of the biggest epidemics we face.

One of the things we’re working on is to create a kind of “network for growth”—a regional development structure.

For example, when the public sector builds a new school or a dental health clinic—which is regional—or when a municipality builds a kindergarten, we want to ensure that there’s a systematic framework that guides where these things are located.

The goal is to set out a structure that ensures that everyday necessities—like schools, kindergartens, clinics, or shops—are strategically placed so that all citizens can enjoy equal access to life quality, wherever they are in the region.

The second thing we focus on is urban quality—the actual lived quality of the places where people are.

We give out grants to municipalities, and we also work to build competence through networks.

Just last week, we had a network meeting where we talked about gender in public place-making. It was very interesting—and it led to some very high-voiced debates, which I think is a good thing.

So yes, we work on many levels—from shaping regional development structures, all the way down to improving the quality of small local centers across the region.

Moderator – Jérôme Picard (brief follow-up):
Thank you very much. I think one initiative that we’ve been a part of is Nyskapanede møteplassar—Innovative Meeting Places—originally from Vestland.
It supports small municipalities to develop active places for everyone, using spaces like youth schools and transforming them into inclusive public spaces.

 

Moderator – Jérôme Picard: if buildings were people—and people had rituals of care like waking up, stretching, having a coffee—what would be the equivalent ritual for a good neighborhood?

Christian Pagh (second round):

It’s not an easy question, but it’s a fun one.

I think the neighborhood scale is peculiar. But it also really relates to governance. Living in a neighborhood doesn’t mean we have to be friends.
We don’t expect to love everyone.

I mean—I can have utopian dreams of a big shared living community. And maybe those dreams are slowly coming within reach. But in practice, it’s not about everyone being best friends.
It’s more about what kinds of spaces and rituals already exist, and how we can strengthen them.

Because I’m obsessed with the built environment. The question is: How do we rebuild—and not screw it up?
Because we do that all the time.

Just take nursing homes, or clinics of all kinds.
They’re often placed based on practicality—for the people working there, or because they’re easy to reach by car.
But then they’re totally disconnected from everything else.

You go out to this isolated, weird, non-space.
You get your teeth fixed.
And then you go back.

So my obsession is about how to reconnect functions. To bring things together that have been separated by planning logic.

But of course—that’s annoying. That’s complicated.
What if we need more space?
What if the neighbors don’t like it?

This is where proximity becomes the key word. Carlos Moreno—the “15-minute city” guy—talks about this a lot. He’s a great guy.

But proximity is complex.
And that’s where it gets hard for the spreadsheet.

It’s cheaper to build a school on the outskirts—on flat land—than to build it into something older, more embedded.
What if there’s asbestos in the roof? What if there are historic constraints?

So there’s something here about governance and capitalism—where the simple and efficient short-term logic goes directly against everything we actually care about:
Coming together.

Even if we don’t always realize we want it—because it can be annoying—we do like it. We want to hang out.

So what would the ritual be?

Well, in my neighborhood:
There’s a kindergarten. All the kids go there. And after pickup, there’s a playground.

We all walk. I haven’t seen a car there for a year. And that’s it: we pass each other.
And it becomes a little social ritual. A good show, in a way.

Some days you stop. Some days you don’t.
But the space allows for that kind of connection.

Moderator – Jérôme Picard: Amy, I’d like to come back to you—because you’re doing something quite rare. You’re using design to give physical form to complex, often invisible processes, and you’re doing it directly within the medical sector—which is usually focused on efficiency, routines, and outcomes. I’m curious: has there been a moment in your workshops where something surprising happened? A moment that showed how design might open up new ways of thinking, especially when people from different disciplines—doctors, researchers, patients—come together around your work?

Amy van den Hooven (second round):
Yes, this is definitely a complex process. And I’m glad you brought it up.

I wanted to reflect a bit on how design can address these intangible, complex experiences in a physical form—especially when working directly with the medical sector, which is such a hard-core site of care. It’s all about efficiency, routines, and outcomes. And then here I come, using design.

So you asked what’s been surprising—or something that’s made me go “wow”—in these workshops, where people from such different backgrounds meet around a shared table.

I think one thing that’s stood out is just how open this community has been to new ways of thinking and interacting. I’ve been working with the Neuro Systems Department at Haukeland Hospital for three years now, developing these methods.

At first, I used more pre-designed toolkits—standard shapes that participants could choose from to support dialogue. And yes, people started talking. There was potential. I was getting insights.
But I still felt like something human was missing.

So I brought clay back into the process.

Giving people—even scientists and medical professionals—the freedom to mold and shape what they wanted changed everything. Some of the biggest insights came when someone said:

“I never knew this about you.”
“I didn’t know I needed this.”
“This is a new way of thinking.”

These workshops allowed people to connect on a deeper level. They came out of it feeling like a stronger team.

At its core, research and care both thrive more when the group functions well.
And these methods—hands-on, visual, tactile—have really opened people up in surprising ways.

There’s also something that happens in the brain when things become visual and tactile.
People remember more. Things stick differently. I’ve heard that in feedback as well.

So yes, the design tools don’t just spark conversation—they leave a lasting impact.

Moderator – Jérôme Picard: Eamon, I’d like to ask you about the transition from artistic practice to something more structured. You’ve worked in care homes, where your work becomes more than just an art project—it becomes a kind of pedagogy. So how did you approach that? How does a creative, participatory process actually become a tool—something that can be sustained, managed, even taught?

Eamon O’Kane (second round):
So the question is: how did I work with these care homes, and how does that become a pedagogy? Because yes, I’m turning artistic processes into pedagogical tools—and that means they have to be managed.

I’d like to start with a quote.

The area I’ve been working in on the west coast of Ireland is called Sligo. It’s steeped in Irish mythology, history, and archaeology. One of the oldest passage tombs in the world—older than the pyramids—is located there. And the poet William Butler Yeats came from that area.

Around the early 20th century, when he was writing about Irish independence, he wrote a poem that included the quote:

“In dreams begins responsibility.”

When I first read that, I thought he meant something like:
In the pre-creative or imaginative state, we already carry an ethical responsibility. We have to think through the implications of our dreams.
You know, like: What happens if I take my theory and put it into the world?
Kind of like Einstein and the H-bomb.

But actually, Yeats meant something else. He was referring to the fight for Irish independence.
What he meant was:
Once you dream something and act on it—you carry the responsibility to follow through.
To do the work.
You start a revolution—and then comes the boring part. You have to manage it.

That’s what I’ve been trying to do with the project in Sligo.

How can we, step by step, in a space of care and listening, build something that’s sustainable?
Something that doesn’t require the initiator to be present forever, but that can still carry on.

I don’t take ownership of the project.
I’m working with a wonderful support artist, Chelsea Canavan, who is based in Limerick and works in healthcare with Helium Arts.
We’re also working with the activities managers and the residents themselves.
We’re building this thing together.

And there’s something else I want to address, which relates a little to what Christian said, and to the space we’re sitting in right now—which you’ve designed so beautifully.

Because it’s a question of context.

It’s not about coming up with one-size-fits-all solutions. It’s about taking time to understand each unique setting.

Eamon O’Kane (conclusion):
So no—it’s not about coming up with homogenous solutions for every scenario.
It’s about taking the time to explore a particular context.
And sometimes, it’s just a minimal gesture that’s needed—something small that makes a huge difference.

Like what you’ve done here with this space. It’s existing architecture, but you’ve created something social and inviting.
That’s a gesture of care.

And I think that’s similar to what we must consider when we talk about capabilities—not only in architecture but in human beings.

Let me give you some examples:

• Mary Vet, at Bailey’s Care Home, is from the Philippines. She’s a trained psychologist, now working as an activities manager.
• Alla, from Enniscrone Care Home, is a trained engineer from Ukraine. She came to Ireland in the early 2000s—not after the war—but her education wasn’t recognized. So she retrained and became a carer.

What these women bring to the table is immense.
But they can’t do it alone.

This is where connectivity comes in. We need to really see people—to see what they can contribute.

Every care home I visited was unique. That’s something to celebrate.

And it also depends on the residents. One woman, Aoife, was an incredible singer.
If she didn’t sing, she would fall asleep. But she knew all these traditional Irish songs—an encyclopedia of music that her own children hadn’t learned.

My son—who plays trombone—came along to one of the workshops. He’s 19.

And when he played in the care home, I just burst into tears.

Because suddenly—everyone burst into song. It just happened.

Music, as you mentioned earlier, is such an enabler of connection.
Especially in dementia care, music is so important.

Moderator – Jérôme Picard: Christian, you’re about to start a major new project with space, with buildings, with people—some professional, some volunteers. How do you imagine the long-term structure of that? How do we actually manage the social life and care that emerges? What role does curation—or maybe governance—play in making that work over time?

Christian Pagh:
I’d like to respond with a broader reflection—maybe even a meta-discussion.

Because what we’re really talking about here is curation of care.
And yes—curation means caring for. It also means connecting, organizing, building bridges.

That’s what I hope to do in my own work—and that’s what I deeply appreciate about the work you’re all doing.

But I think there’s something else going on too.
The act of creation—whether it’s art, design, or urban planning—is often undervalued.
There’s no time for it. It doesn’t really fit into any of the usual boxes.

So we need to talk about that.
I’ve been reading up on David Graeber, the British anarchist, activist, and anthropologist.
He has some very interesting reflections on bureaucracy and control.

There’s a real dilemma here.

On one hand, we want to make sure everyone gets treated equally. We want rules, standards, safety. We don’t want people to die because something went wrong. So we create systems—usually with good intentions.

But at the same time, these systems create friction.
They clash with freedom—with giving people the space to just do things differently.
To act, to care, to try.

This is the elephant in the room:
How do we give more responsibility to people—but without creating chaos?

Because that’s really hard. Especially if you run an institution, or a public service.
How do you hand over control in a responsible way?

There’s a lot of governance complexity here.
But that’s where I think art and design really come in—as Eamon and Amy have both shown.
There’s huge potential in the creative process.

I studied philosophy, so I can’t draw. It’s all in my head.
But I’ve learned how powerful it is to get things out—to draw, to sing, to play, to build, to enact.

To do things three times.
To test them.
To do them again.

And that’s exactly what I’m going to push for in this new area in Copenhagen I’m working on. It’s meant to be a hub for green transition and social engagement. Hopefully an interesting one. And we’re definitely going to plan for trial and error—for pilots and scenarios, for drawing, for testing.
We’ll give ourselves a year or two. And I’m convinced that it will work.

Because what you realized, Amy, is that we don’t need that much.
It doesn’t take 50 workshops.
Sometimes, you get really far with three good ones.

A bit of preparation, some good timing, and thinking about who needs to be in the room—
And things already become so much better.

Moderator – Jérôme Picard:
I have one last question—directed first to Tina and then to Amy.

We’ve talked a lot about collaborative processes that cross boundaries—professional, institutional, social.
But once something has been created—how do we manage it?

How do we ensure that when we reach a kind of shared understanding, it doesn’t dissolve?
How do we build on it, transmit it, and make it last?

I wanted to ask you, Tina:
In your work with regional strategy and site development, how do you embed volunteers in the discussion?
Because we often place our hope in the idea that the voluntary sector will take over care responsibilities.
But that’s a fragile idea.

And to you, Amy:
You’re working across different areas of expertise—developing tools and processes that are tangible and interdisciplinary.
Do you see these tools as something that could also be used to communicate, raise awareness, and perhaps even educate and inspire volunteers?

Tina Sinclair:
Yeah, I think the voluntary sector needs to innovate and change.

This is one of the big challenges that we’ve identified at the regional level, especially when doing the analytical work behind our regional strategy.

Voluntary work is very strong in Norway, especially in Western Norway, and particularly in smaller communities.
But things are changing.

People are engaging in voluntary work for shorter periods.
And large parts of the population come from backgrounds with no traditional culture of volunteering.
So it’s not always accessible.

Maybe it’s the way it’s organized—or maybe it’s just not attractive anymore.

My daughter studies design in Oslo, and she did a project on this. The aim was to try to make voluntary work more attractive to young people.

One of the issues we talked about—something I think is really interesting—is this:

How can voluntary work give something back?
Can it be a way to build formal competence?

Because life is so busy—right? You have to train, walk the dog, go to work.
So if we expect people to engage in voluntary work, it has to meet them where they are.

And I think that could really engage a lot of young people—if it was also an opportunity to learn, develop, and maybe even build formal skills.

That would be a great starting point.

Amy van den Hooven:
Yes, definitely—I see a lot of potential in that.

I work a lot within the field of discursive design, using that methodology.
One of its key components is audience and context.

That’s something I’ve been exploring with these toolkits and tactile objects—how they can move into different spaces and generate different conversations.

Right now, they’re mostly focused within the clinic and the hospital.
But what would happen if we brought them into public buildings?
Could they help raise awareness?
Could they spark interest—maybe even recruit people into voluntary or caregiving roles?

I think so.

So far, yes, there have been some volunteers involved.
But I think it’s been more of a collaborative experience.
Those who participate feel like co-creators—and that’s very important.

That’s also one of the goals with the workshops:
Everyone who joins—whether they’re in medicine, research, or design—should feel like they’re part of shaping the Clinic of the Future.

So I’d say yes: the tools have the potential to engage volunteers, educate, and even mobilize them.

Eamon O’Kane (follow-up):
Yes, it’s related to voluntary work—but also a bit different.

One of the things I’ve been reflecting on, especially after discussions with the activities managers in the care homes, is the idea that maybe it’s not just about creating new structures for volunteering.

Sometimes it’s about shifting context—taking something that’s already happening and placing it somewhere new.

Because when you do that, it gains a different agency. It becomes transformative.

For example, in Sligo or even here in Bergen, we have institutions like the Grieg Academy.
There are a lot of people—especially young musicians—who need to practice.
And they often need an audience.

So what if, instead of only practicing at the Academy, they did a tour of local care homes?

It’s not about setting up a new institution. It’s about creating a bridge.
A casual, low-pressure format where both sides benefit.

One thing I found especially interesting was bringing a trombone into a care home.
It’s unexpected. You expect a piano in the corner. Maybe a guitar.
But a brass instrument like that—it triggers something new. It changes the energy.

And of course, I’m not saying this should be a weekly program. Even just once or twice can be powerful.

The same goes for gardening. Or intergenerational cooking.
These are all activities that already exist in society.

But if we create a structure where people and institutions share resources—we can do a lot more.

In Sligo, we had seven care homes.
None of them could afford a full-time gardener.
But if they had pooled their resources—they could have shared one gardener between them.

It’s about thinking together, instead of separately.
It’s about designing opportunities for collaboration and sustainability.

Audience Question:
Thank you for the conversation and presentations.
I just came from another event where we met a retired architect—she’s a pensioner, and very healthy and strong.
She found a new job volunteering a few days a week, just to stay active.

There’s a huge group of active, retired people.
Why aren’t we talking more about how to include them in society?
Why focus only on young people?

Moderator – Jérôme Picard (response):
Thank you—yes. That’s a very important point.

Actually, the book we’re launching today—Grey Matter—was conceived five years ago exactly around that idea.

We wanted to recognize and harness the intelligence of people with grey hair—to celebrate their experience, their resources, and their potential to be active contributors in society.

The project began as a vision for senior entrepreneurship.
How could we create models where seniors are at the heart of the neighborhood?

And we did document some wonderful examples.

One of them is from Fetertingen: a couple of seniors created a community hub that revitalized the street.
They made the street more alive—ran events, workshops, and welcomed people.

But three years later, it was closed.

It was just too much work.
They needed to hire someone to help, and they couldn’t find that person.

So yes—there’s a beauty to these fragile, self-organized initiatives.
But they’re also fragile. They need support, infrastructure, and recognition.

That’s what we’re advocating for.

Audience Question (student from KMD):
Hello. Thank you for the really interesting conversation.

I study at KMD—together with some of the great people here—and I’ve had Jérôme as a teacher.

I’m wondering, as a student who wants to create a more compassionate community—both at KMD and within my own education—what can I or we do to create that?

It seems really important, like Elida said earlier, that we are kind of creating our own education. And in working with music, design, and art, we should be able to build a better community.

For example, my classmate Espen and I tried to make a better network at school. And it feels like something is beginning to flourish, which is great.

But at the same time, I notice that a lot of students don’t really understand what community is, or we don’t share the same idea of it.

So how can we create a shared sense of community and responsibility?

Eamon O’Kane (response):
Yeah, I could go for it.

That’s a really amazing question, and it’s very close to my heart.

I have to be careful not to get emotional—because this is something I’ve grappled with deeply.

When we moved into the new Snøhetta-designed building in 2018, it was a huge transition.
I was actually on the building committee, representing the art department.
And we had lots of strange conversations with the architects and interior designers.

For example:
They wanted to put glass windows in the darkroom. With curtains. Things like that.
So, yes—it was a kind of utopian vision for an art academy.

And the building has so many opportunities. But it took years to settle into it.
It’s still a work in progress, and I completely recognize what you’re experiencing.

I had this dream that we’d move in and it would be perfect. But that was naïve.

So instead of getting frustrated, I started asking:
What can we do with what we’ve got?

Together with my colleague Swaine Unerlund—who was also one of my PhD students—we made a decision:
Let’s turn problems into opportunities.

I can give you a few examples:

One of the things that really frustrated the students was the lack of kitchen space.
In the old buildings, we had shared kitchens—they were these great social spaces.

But in the new building, we weren’t allowed to use the café kitchen—it’s too professional.
And the little “tea kitchens” just weren’t the same.

So we created a “kitchen sculpture”—a hidden kitchen inside a mobile wall.
It became part of an art installation.
We used it for Drawing Club, for shared meals, for building community through food.

Eamon O’Kane (continued):
So, that kitchen sculpture became a kind of living artwork—used for cooking, sharing meals, and creating social practices.

And then there’s the Studio Forum in the foyer—you’ve probably seen it.
It’s that kind of crazy-looking structure just near the entrance.

It came from another strange episode.

In the old Munch factory (before this building), there was a massive testing structure.
Snøhetta and Statsbygg had created it to prototype the building systems. It cost about 1.2 million NOK.
It was like a mini version of the building—complete with ventilation pipes, black box, doors, etc.

When we moved into the new building, this prototype was still sitting there.
So I asked Statsbygg: What are you going to do with it?
They said: We’re throwing it out.

And I said: Wait! Can we have it?

They agreed—but couldn’t help us move it due to health and safety issues.

So we salvaged what we could—ventilation parts, windows, materials—and planned to install it in the lower hall.

This became part of a larger initiative I called Nomadic Structures, which was my response to the same frustrations you mentioned.

A group of MA students once came to me:
They wanted to organize a seminar and invite Warren Neidich. But nobody was listening. No budget. No support.

So I applied for funding. But by the time we had it, everyone was so disillusioned that the energy was gone.

That’s when I realized:
We needed a mobile, flexible structure—so we built an outdoor studio next to the black box.
It was inspired by Edvard Munch’s own outdoor studio—somewhere to saw wood, use strong solvents, or paint in the rain.

Sometimes you just need to build the conditions that allow things to happen.

Closing – Elida Mosquera (Book Launch):
Yes, hello.

We’re very happy to finally present the book: Greymatter.
This book reflects on a pivotal period in our work with aging societies (2020–2022), when the need to rethink aging, care, and community grew increasingly urgent. Rather than presenting projects chronologically, the book captures key moments of dialogue, openness, and deep listening that have shaped our integrated approach to health, architecture, and urbanism.

Emerging in response to the pandemic’s impact on institutional care, Greymatter/Grått gull proposes more humane and interconnected models of living—tested across Norway, Denmark, and France. Structured as a three-part dialogue, the book weaves together conversations around the dinner table, fieldwork along Norway’s rural west coast, and personal stories from older individuals, revealing the deep ties between aging and place.

Internationally recognized, Greymatter has received awards including Europan 15, the Crossroads Prize (SBAU Seoul Biennale 2021), and the Neighbourhood for Generations competition (2023), and has been featured at major architecture and film festivals across Europe.

 

A big thanks to BAS, Direktoratet for høyere utdanning og kompetanse for the support, municipalities involved and Vestland Fylkeskommune.

All the students and participants in the events, Liz-Eva, Camilla, Eva, Sebastian, Anna, and everyone involved in the making of the book, Silje, Kimia, Kjartan, Hermine, Tina, Miriam.

A huge thank you.