Alison Thomson
Alison Thomson
Alison Thomson (b. 1986) designs interactions that challenge and explore people’s everyday acceptance of the world.
Alison completed her Masters at The Royal College of Art in Design Interactions (June 2010), where she designed an alternative health care experience for people with Multiple Sclerosis based on the principles of holistic care. Other work includes designing methods of public engagement into scientific research through participation workshops, traditional craft and speculative film.
Alison has collaborated with the Neuroimmunology Group at Barts and The London NHS Trust for over 2 years, currently working with neuroscientists to improve the dissemination of their research.
Alison has received funding from the MS Society, the Millennium Trust, The British Society for Immunology and Queen Mary, University of London. Her work has gained interest from both medical science and design press, recently exhibiting at Cheltenham Science Festival (June 2011) and Dublins Science Gallery (Feb 2012) and presented methods to the world congress for Multiple Sclerosis research in Amsterdam (October 2011).
The Chronic Facility
The Chronic Facility
The Chronic Facility (July 2010) is an alternative system for treating people with chronic disease, taking the service rituals and system of a restaurant and redesigning it to cater for this need. The project suggests a future outpatient department of the NHS, with a holistic approach to health care. It provides a language to discuss issues of living with disease, treatments and diagnosis.
This speculative service was designed from a series of creative modeling workshops where scientists were asked to imagine themselves as chefs then build their research using food as the communication medium. This project facilitates a way for the public (more specifically people with multiple sclerosis) to engage in and understand science. It also gives people tools i.e. metaphors, physical materials imagery and the confidence to have conversations about what happens inside their bodies.
This speculative service comes to life as a workshop where the public can get interact with the experts researching multiple sclerosis, a chronic disease.
The designer facilitates the workshop, along with scientists of The Neuroimmunology Group at Queen Mary University of London, and teach the public, through modeling the inside of our bodies in food, about what happens in multiple sclerosis.
“5 minute meal” film series, are where the scientist’s explain to us how to make these models at home. The scientists all model different parts of the disease from the central nervous system, the effect of cannabis on our nerve signals to an eye ball.
