Pathways to Well-Being in Design

Examples from the Arts, Humanities and the Built Environment

Richard Coles, Sandra Costa, Sharon Watson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780815346944
• eBook ISBN: 9781351170024
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

How can we achieve and promote well-being? Drawing on examples from the arts, humanities and design, this book brings together work from a wide range of areas to reveal the unique ways in which different disciplines approach the universal goal of supporting well-being.

Pathways to Well-Being in Design recognises that the distinction between academics and practitioners often becomes blurred, where, when working together, a fusion of thoughts and ideas takes place and provides a powerful platform for dialogue.

Providing new insights into the approaches and issues associated with promoting well-being, the book's multi-disciplinary coverage invites readers to consider these ideas within the framework of their own work.

The book's 12 chapters are authored by academics who are involved in practice or are working with practitioners and features real world case studies which cover a range of situations, circumstances, environments, and social groups.

Pathways to Well-Being in Design responds to those wishing to enquire further about well-being, taking the reader through different circumstances to consider approaches, discussing practice and theory, real world and virtual world considerations.

This book is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand well-being, including students and professionals in architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, design and health sciences.

1

WAYS TO WELL-BEING FOR CHILDREN

Larissa Pople, Saamah Abdallah, Gwyther Rees and Gill Main

Introduction

Since 2005, The Children’s Society has been engaged with the University of York in research to explore children’s self-reported well-being and the factors that are associated with it. The work forms one of the most extensive national programmes of research on this topic in the world involving developing frameworks of well-being that take full account of children’s own concepts of what it means (The Children’s Society, 2006). This chapter presents the findings of this research with a comprehensive and detailed analysis of children’s responses to questions about their subjective well-being based on nationally representative surveys (Rees et al., 2010; The Children’s Society, 2017).

Over a similar timeframe, the New Economics Foundation (NEF) reviewed the evidence on determinants of well-being (as part of the Foresight Project, Aked et al., 2008) to produce messages about what individuals might do to improve their own well-being. NEF’s programme of research is extensive, including evidence from neuroscience, cross-sectional surveys and longitudinal studies. The Five Ways to Well-being framework that was produced – Connect, Be Active, Take Notice, Keep Learning and Give – is now used in a wide range of contexts – and serves as a simple heuristic, echoing the five-a-day message around fruit and vegetable consumption.

• Connect – build social relationships, spend time with family and friends.

• Be Active – engage in regular physical activity.

• Take Notice – be mentally present focus on awareness and appreciation.

• Keep Learning – maintain curiosity about the world, try new things.

• Give – make a positive contribution to the lives of others.

(Aked et al., 2008)

Nonetheless, most of the evidence for NEF’s Five Ways to Well-being relates to adults. Thus, The Children’s Society and NEF saw a need to explore well-being-promoting activities that are pertinent to children’s lives. There was a shared desire, on the one hand, to give children the opportunity to reflect on activities that they could do to improve their well-being, while on the other hand, to test out the specific relevance of the Five Ways framework.

The research took a mixed methods approach, comprising a combination of open, inductive enquiry through qualitative research that explored children’s perspectives on activities that might enhance their feelings of well-being, as well as a deductive questioning through a survey that asked children about specific activities relating to NEF’s Five Ways to Well-being. The methodology used and reported here emphasises the importance of a child-centric approach, giving children a voice to address wide-ranging aspects of children’s well-being, the world of the child, their experiences and expectations,

The focus groups

In order to place children’s voices centre stage, we start by discussing the factors that children themselves cited, unprompted, as being important for their well-being. Some of these themes fit neatly with NEF’s Five Ways, while others are substantively different. We then report on children’s responses to probing questions that were asked about the Five Ways to Well-being, and specifically the aspects of this framework that were not discussed unprompted.

This qualitative strand of the research involved 11 guided focus group discussions carried out in May/June 2013 in 6 schools in England. Each focus group comprised between six and eight children of the same age, including a range of ethnicities to reflect the ethnic profiles of the schools involved. Participants’ ages ranged from 8 to 15 years. In these focus groups, we started by asking children open questions about the activities that they do – or could do – to contribute to making life good for them. Key probing questions included what it is about a certain activity that is good, and what might help or hinder engagement in the activities in question. After this open discussion, we introduced the Five Ways to Well-being, specifically those activities that had not been raised by participants themselves. So children had the opportunity to mention the Five Ways to Well-being unprompted, and were then led into a discussion about them.

Connect

In all of the focus groups, children asserted that being with family and friends is fundamental to a good life. Some focused on the benefits of spending time with loved ones, while for others “connecting” was part and parcel of another activity – such as playing or going on holiday.

“I like to have people with me whatever I’úm doing.”

“It’s like a treat when you get to see [wider family] cos you don’t see them all the time.”

One of the aspects of relationships that children valued most was the support that they received:

“I think it’s important to tell your parents stuff as well as your friends. Like if it were anything really serious or if it involved them I’d let them know. Like with school if anything were to happen like bullying or anything then I’d talk to my parents and they could help.”

However, children also highlighted their role in giving as well as receiving support, illustrating the overlap that exists between different Ways to Well-being, in this case, Connect and Give:

“If my mum’s been working all day she’ll come home and be really stressed and I’ll like wash the pots to help her, like tidying up.”

Friends were cherished for many reasons: for their qualities as good friends, for the activities that could be enjoyed together, and for the company that they provide:

“You look out for each other, look after each other. Me and my friend say that we’ll protect each other and stand by each other’s side, like if one of us gets bullied we’ll help each other cos that’s what we always do.”

“You do things together like say, you go shopping, you play with them. They make you happy cos they keep you company. Say you’re bored, you phone them up and you go and play out and you’re not feeling bored anymore.”

Be Active

Another strand of responses about what makes life good for children related to physical activity. This involved both organised activities, such as playing football within a club setting, as well as informal activities such as riding a bicycle in the local neighbourhood. When probed on what they enjoyed about physical activity, children often made reference to the social aspects of sports and exercise:

“[Football] that’s a good thing . . . so you can be active with your friends and you can make new friends and you can have fun.”

However the well-being benefits were also felt to be important in and of themselves:

“The park has obstacle things where you can be active and you can go on the swings, it just makes you feel happy to do it.”

“When I play football I get happier, either playing on the football team or playing with my mates.”

As well as associating physical activity with feeling good, some children also associated it with functioning well. One girl derived a sense of vitality from exercise:

“I used to go running in the mornings, before I hurt my knee. I would be in a better mood in the day, and feel wide awake.”

Learning

Somewhat surprisingly, learning emerged unprompted in the focus group discussions as something that could engender well-being. While for some, learning was associated mainly with school, for others it encompassed learning outside of school.

“I enjoy learning, I absolutely love learning in my favourite lessons. I also enjoy learning in other lessons cos I know they’ll contribute to what I want to do when I’m older.”

“Well you learn every day even if you don’t go to school cos there are so many thing...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Contributors
• Introduction
• 1 Ways to Well-Being for Children
• 2 Co-Creating Well-Being Experiences with Assistive Living Technologies
• 3 Greenspace and Urban Greening Benefits for Health and Well-Being Across The Life-Course: A Pathway for The Operationalisation of The Green Infrastructure Approach
• 4 Growing Pathways to Well-Being Through Community Gardens and Greenspace: Case Studies from Birmingham and the West Midlands, Uk
• 5 Biophilia and the Practice of Biophilic Design
• 6 “On Empathy” and Well-Being in Design Education
• 7 Emotional Transition and the Internet World: Implications for Well-Being
• 8 The Legal Protection of the Well-Being of Future Generations
• 9 Well-Being Restoration in the Workspace
• 10 Designing for Well-Being in Late Stage Dementia
• 11 Alone Together – Documentary Filmmaking and Stories of Well-Being in Outdoor Spaces
• 12 Pathways to Well-Being
• Index