Co-Creating a Virtuous Cycle: Fostering Citizenship-Alliances through Making and Gifting.

We present a short film following the creation of four co-designed objects which were gifted between participants from two community groups, a group of older men living with conditions affecting their mental health, including dementia, and a group of children based in a typically disadvantaged neighborhood in north east England. Over 10 weeks, these participants created unique woodworking projects, each group working to improve the lives of the other, while gaining new creative skills, and establishing a ‘virtuous cycle’ of reflection and praxis. In the spirit of the film, we invite participants to create a design proposal for a fellow delegate in return for their own bespoke design, in a co-design ‘secret Santa’. We aim to reveal ways in which we can hope to be seen and come to understand artful ways of seeing, through a new virtuous cycle.