She Creates a Space for Grief – in Textile

The girl in the magenta-coloured dress is growing up in the city by the sea. You follow her through her childhood and youth – there are unsettled issues due to illness in the family, some friends fall away, but new friends fill their place. At one point, the memories are somewhat vague, but later it becomes clear that the disease has returned and the girl is about to lose someone who is very close to her.

This is roughly how the story goes, and this is the story that designer Stine Ditlev Nielsen has appliquéd and embroidered in various textiles on the back of a sofa for her graduation project from the Design School Kolding. The story is partly her own.

Grief has nowhere to go

- As a child or young person, when you experience a crisis where someone is ill or is going to die, you don't know where to turn. That's why I created the sofa – as a space for grief. Here you can be wrapped in your own thought bubble, in a good way, or maybe meet others who are grieving. In the summer of 2019 I was told that my father's cancer had returned. I did not know where to turn or how to open up to other people, family or friends, because you don't want to make them sad or make the situation worse by upsetting them. Death is a taboo subject, but it has inspired me to turn to the universe of the sofa, she says.

Stine knew from the start that the subject of her Bachelor project in Fashion and Textile Design was going to be how textiles can help create a space for emotions and contact. Her aspiration is that the project can be used in schools, hospitals or libraries where children may need a safe space. And the idea of a space as a protective or socialising framework for people resonates with several of the newly-graduated designers.

Calm and new energy in the children's cave
This is the case, for example, with Anne Mygind's project HabiCave, which is a sensory stimulus cave for children in primary school. Here the children can retire initially to calm down in a peaceful space and afterwards find renewed energy with the exciting sensory impressions in the cave. They appear in the form of light and sound effects, movements and a ball mattress that wraps around the child in a loving embrace. Anne Mygind, who is completing her Master's programme in Design for Play, has incorporated field studies and research in psychiatry and dementia treatment into her project.

- Today, children in primary school are bombarded with noise and turmoil, and we know that the well-being of many children is in free fall. That is why I have created the cave that offers a source of peace and well-being, she says of the cave. As an added benefit, the cave is made of felt created from surplus plastic from the world's oceans.

Xiaoya Wang's project, BE TOGETHER, also has a spatial perspective. The project is a social space built of wood and textiles, where young people can hang out with their friends and have a good time in their own company and with others. She has focused on this age group based on the premise that there have never been more teenagers in the world than there is today, but at the same time, many of them are challenged in terms of well-being and social skills. This social space is trying to compensate for that sad state of affairs.

Can good design lift children and young people out of anxiety and an inability to thrive?
Children and young people struggle with anxiety and poor mental health like never before – and this concerns many of this year's graduates from Design School Kolding. With their graduate projects, they show how the design of objects, spaces or processes can help the youth generation to deal with the insecurity, grief, anxiety, uncertainty or feeling of powerlessness towards the world which can make everyday life a struggle. These design projects also focused on children's well-being:

Mira Lange Hansen: Skimming stones. An interactive podcast episode that gives young listeners a bodily teaser for what everyday life in the future will be like. Voices from the future invite the listener's body to sense how potential solutions to climate change may feel. Thus, the young person can choose to do something active – and escape from his or her action paralysis.

Cecilie Blicher Jensen and Sigrid Vinther Hansen: What is Love. This universe, with a playful website and a board game, invites children to engage in fun, thought-provoking activities and work with the concept of self-love. Here you can hug yourself, laugh with your friends and build self-confidence and self-esteem.

Roseanne Kimber: Sensory tools against fear of needles. When you are a child, being pricked with a needle as part of a medical examination can be a scary experience. Four sensory tools are intended to help parents comfort their children before and during the process of having blood samples taken. The tools are based on the calming effects experienced through music, acupressure, meditation, hypnosis and ASMR, which is a type of sound therapy.