I am a co-designer and researcher. I began my research journey in India and Nepal by looking at culturally diverse conceptualisations of mental distress and asking myself if design could be used to unleash the potential of this diversity to support wellbeing and recovery.
Previously, I worked for Futurefarmers in San Francisco, creating participatory spaces and experiences that help destabilise logics of ‘certainty’.
Together with colleague Pras Gunasekera, I facilitated the Makeright project run by the Design Against Crime Research centre, co-designing anti-theft bags with inmates, and working as a research assistant. In addition, I initiated a project aimed at identifying problems and improving everyday life inside, through design research and co-design with inmates.
I am currently finishing a PhD at The Open University which explores design as healing, studying the experiences of people with mental health problems who participated in co-design.
Finally, I am co-founder and director of Bidean, a non for profit that co-designs within and for mental health.
First and foremost, it gave me the recognition of my graduation project. It also gave me confidence when I most needed it. Although I had an embedded understanding of what I was doing, I was – and still am – quite intuitive, so I was not always great at articulating my work process, which often creates all kinds of uncertainties and doubts.
Also the monetary prize given presented me with a great opportunity. I could afford to go to India, and follow my curiosity to delve into the understanding and treatment of unusual experiences in other parts of the world. Among rituals, cathartic experiences, spiritual pilgrimages, and hospitals, I begin to explore the various ways in which we can get ill, as well as recover, and draft how design could contribute, dreaming about the foundations of Bidean social enterprise. In addition, I acquired some volunteer experience in a shelter for women with mental health problems in Nepal.
Reference: ILLARREGI030
Title: What's Life About
Date: 2020
Author: Erika Renedo Illarregi
Details: Object based prompt designed for use with participants in various mental health charities.
Media: Fabric
Credit: bidean.co.uk/whats-life-about
Description: Have you ever found yourself waiting in front of the oven and thinking, what is it all about? We give meaning to objects constantly, even those we use every day. Moving these things around in visual maps help us reflect on our lives in a playful manner, and what better moment to do so than while waiting for those baked potatoes to be ready!
Reference: ILLARREGI022
Title: I'm Not Dying
Date: 2016
Author: Erika Renedo Illarregi
Media: Jewellery item
Details: Co-designed with clients of Depression Alliance, V&A
Credit: bidean.co.uk/im-not-dying
Description: Have you ever had a panic attack? This ring is meant to remind the wearer of what is happening and help her or him get over the attack. It uses a cognitive technique, first you must look through the little hole to identify three things visually. Then you must continue by identifying three sounds, followed by three tactile sensations, and all over again, focusing on one single thing after the other. It works, and of course, you will look fantastic, panic attacks and all.
Reference: ILLARREGI002
Title: Balance Us Out
Date: 2020
Author: Erika Renedo Illarregi
Details: Designed as part of MA Industrial Design project, tested by members of INUF Mental Health.
Media: Ceramics
Credit: bidean.co.uk/balance-us-out
Description: Often, a cup of tea does something for our wellbeing. Rituals all around the world reflect a long history of caring and comfort through tea sharing. The object was part of a wider collection to steer discussion and empathy around mental health issues. Bear in mind IT MAY BURN. It is, after all, a slightly dysfunctional teapot, but aren’t we all?
Reference: ILLARREGI023
Title: Electrostatic
Date: 2017
Author: Erika Renedo Illarregi
Details: Co-designed by Myles in a project partnering V&A and Kensington and Chelsea Mind
Media: Aura Fluffer
Credit: bidean.co.uk/aura-fluffer
Description: Have you ever felt a negative energy, not the kind you can think, but a visceral kinda one which you can’t quite locate? Did you ever find yourself trying to manage this by doing things repetitively, shouting or walking fast around? We know how you feel, and this aura fluffer has been created to help you out. Next time you feel this way... give yourself a good lush and see how it goes!
Reference: ILLARREGI016
Title: La Grande Belezza [The Great Beauty]
Date: 2013
Author: Paolo Sorrentino
Details: La Grande Belezza's main character has seduced his way through the lavish nightlife of Rome for decades, but after his 65th birthday and a shock from the past, looks past the nightclubs and parties to find a timeless landscape of absurd, exquisite beauty.
Media: Quote [spoken]
Credit: imdb.com/the-great-beauty
Description: "lei sa perche io mangio solo li radici? Perche le radici sono importanti"[“you know why I eat only roots? Because roots are important”] This quote is from a character, a nun, featured in Sorrentino’s movie ‘La Grande Belezza’.
The main character is asked by the nun why he never wrote another book. He replies he was looking for the great beauty. To this, the nun responds by asking him if he knows why she only eats roots. She says it’s because they are important. I interpreted that it is not the great beauty but the little ones, or the ways in which it emerges, that is important. We do not need search for beauty, we nurture it.
Reference: ILLARREGI003
Title: GAME [Video]
Date: 2020
Author: Erika Renedo Illarregi
Details: GAME is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Media: Film [10m00s]
Credit: Courtesy of the artist
Description: GAME was co-designed with clients of Psychosis Therapy Project. It was part of a collaborative research study with a mental health charity, exploring the role of co-design as a mode of treatment or to support recovery. GAME encourages collaboration over competition, and the exchange of ideas in a non-judgemental way. It helps people explore and express their feelings on a variety of themes through play.
Reference: ILLARREGI006
Title: GAME [Paper]
Date: 2020
Author: Erika Renedo Illarregi
Media: Academic Paper
Credit: oro.open.ac.uk/GAME
Description: This situated action aims to engage local community and conference attendees in testing, playing, and reflecting on a boardgame produced as part of a co-design project with Psychosis. This project was part of a collaborative doctoral award with a mental health charity, exploring the role of co-design as a mode of treatment. It was not set up with the intention of developing this artefact, and the collaboration begun without a design brief. A broad design purpose emerged through time which resulted in the development of a boardgame, GAME. Playing it could be a greatly enriching way for PDC attendees to engage with the project and lead to further discussions about the potential of participatory design.
Reference: ILLARREGI004
Title: GAME [Prototype]
Date: 2020
Author: Erika Renedo Illarregi
Details: GAME is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Media: Image
Credit: Courtesy of the artist.
Description: GAME was co-designed with clients of Psychosis Therapy Project. It was part of a collaborative research study with a mental health charity, exploring the role of co-design as a mode of treatment or to support recovery. GAME encourages collaboration over competition, and the exchange of ideas in a non-judgemental way. It helps people explore and express their feelings on a variety of themes through play.
Reference: ILLARREGI017
Title: I became accustomed to be a stranger among worlds that are unknown to me.
Date: 2021
Author: Erika Renedo Illarregi
Details: Written reflections on travel, investigations and volunteering
Media: Quote [written]
Credit: Courtesy of the artist.
Description: I believe I became accustomed to being a stranger among worlds that are unknown to me. I witness cathartic moments in those temples where screams and other expressions of distress were not immediately shut down. As designers we often want to solve problems, and sometimes forget that in doing so we are also defining the landscape of the problematic. In mental health and co-design, this is particularly relevant, and sometimes a source of conflict, too. Witnessing extremely different ways to conceptualise human distress and recovery informs a pluralist approach which I consider key for in collaborative design.
Travelling has been very important for me personally and professionally, and it is usual for me to follow a specific intrigue. For instance, I heard of Uzbekistan first in the book Master of Lucid dreams and went there at the first opportunity. Although I haven’t been able to conduct formal research, it is something that I am eager to explore in the future if covid limitations allow us the chance. One can conduct ethnographic research at home too, but I believe there is methodological value when world views crash, and cultural strangers try to understand one another despite limitations. I have found that design is a great tool to do so.
Reference: ILLARREGI021
Title: Identify > Ideate > Invent > Initiate > Implement
Date: 2021
Author: Unknown
Details: Design process
Credit: Courtesy of the artist
Description: This five-stage design process was envisioned to guide non-designers through the process from the very beginning, when one tries to find out a design problem of challenge that is of interest. The intention was to create opportunities for participants to generate design ideas for projects that will help themselves as well as others, thus investigating indirect beneficial effects on their wellbeing.
In prison, I tried a similar method by encouraging inmates to identify ad hoc products that improved everyday life. I was acquainted with the weapons, tattoo machines, and other artefacts that were confiscated. We conducted collaborative research and designed a variety of solutions following these 5 I’s - Identify, Ideate, Invent, Initiate and Implement (see bidean.co.uk).
Reference: ILLARREGI010
Title: Shoes
Date: 2012
Author: Erika Renedo Illarregi
Details: Photograph in the healing temple of Muthuswamy
Media: Image
Credit: Courtesy of the artist
Description: My colleague Pras Gunasekera and I visited this temple in India after I read about a study conducted here on traditional community resources for mental health (Raguram, Venkateswaran, Ramakrishna, & Weiss, 2002).
We were welcomed to stay for as long as we wanted, and I became especially mesmerised by these shoes and their function. This experience was truly important for me, as I was learning to be curious before judgemental. I believe that trying to navigate the complexity of these realities rather than categorising is partly what objects like these encourage us to do.
Reference: ILLARREGI011
Title: Master of Lucid Dreams
Date: 2001
Author: Olga Kharitidi
Details: Why don't people heal? Why do they stay wounded--some even driven to suicide by their pain-despite the best that organic and psychological medicine can offer? To find the answers, Russian--born psychiatrist Olga Kharitidi traveled to Samarkand, a major cultural and spiritual crossroads, and ancient capital of Uzbekistan, in the heart of Central Asia.
Media: Publication
Credit: books.google.co.uk/The_Master_of_Lucid_Dreams
Description: “The only sin is to cease developing oneself-from master of lucid dreams.”
This sentence is given by a master of lucid dreams in Uzbekistan. It is a morally and ethically radical position, that I instantly resonated with. It inspires me to think this way about the human experience. It is one of the most inspiring stories I have read around trauma and healing.
Reference: ILLARREGI012
Title: Phone Voice Recorder
Date: NA
Author: NA
Details: Screenshots of mobile phone voice recorder application
Media: Image
Credit: Courtesy of the artist.
Description: I use it to record peoples experiences, the interviews I do to participant co-designers, about their engagement with the process and their reflections about it. I use it also to record reflections, and what I remember of my dreams.
Reference: ILLARREGI013
Title: Woman Imprisoned in Tuol Sleng
Date: Unknown
Author: Photographer Unknown
Details: A picture of the picture of a woman that was imprisoned in Tuol Sleng, ‘ Hill of poisoneous Trees’ a museum chronicling the Cambodian genocide.
Media: Photograph
Credit: Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum
Description: This is a picture of the picture of a woman that was imprisoned in Tuol Sleng, a museum chronicling the Cambodian genocide. The photographer is unknown. I was visiting the site of the former secondary school, which was used as a security prison, when I came across a collection of photographs of people who were held there and killed. I slightly dissociated from myself to cope, trying to find comfort among rational, disembodied thoughts. This woman brought me back within myself to finally sense a glimpse of their horror and acknowledge it with my bodily emotions. I felt sadness for her loss, this woman I never met. Our anonymity made the encounter, paradoxically, more intimate.
Reference: ILLARREGI014
Title: Neurogastronomy
Date: 2016
Author: Marina Mellado Mendieta
Details: A set of tools to support the cognitive behavioural therapy for othorexia nervosa, a seemingly paradoxical eating disorder in which sufferers restrict their diet based not on quantity of food but on quality.
Media: Cutlery
Credit: domusweb.it/brain_waves
Description: I found fellow NOVA awardee, Marina Mellado Mendieta's objects greatly inspiring. I have always seen beauty in everyday objects, and cutlery are no exception, which also affected my MA ID project which NOVA awarded. But Marina did not use them symbolically. I find it fascinating how such subtle, or small alterations in form hugely altered their use, to respond to a big problem.
Reference: ILLARREGI015
Title: Safe Photo Frames for Prisons
Date: 2016
Author: Erika Renedo Illarregi and HMP Thameside Inmates
Details: Velcro photo frame system
Media: Photograph
Credit: Courtesy of the artist
Description: One of the inmates at HMP Thameside co-designed these photo frames. As glue tac was contraband, and hooks place significant risks, inmates use ad hoc solutions to paste their pictures to the walls, such as toothpaste. When the inmate and I began researching, he realised that this apparently insignificant issue caused great problems in the wing. He used the Velcro system of the curtains to design prison friendly photo frames. It was really illuminating to learn how small issues could have huge impact in this environment with consequences that would’ve otherwise gone unnoticed.
Curation Reference: ILLARREGI019
Title: Travel, Investigations and Volunteering
Date: 2021
Author: Erika Renedo Illarregi
Details: One can conduct ethnographic research at home, too, but I believe there is also methodological value when world views crash and cultural strangers try to connect and understand one another despite all limitations. I have found that design is a great tool to do so.
Media: Quote [written]
Credit: Courtesy of the artist.
Description: It was fantastic to see how you spent the money awarded to you on travel/investigations and volunteering. Could you tell us a bit more about how these two experiences influenced your practice/continue to influence your approach to your design work today?
First of all I believe I became accustomed to be a stranger among worlds that are unknown to me. Perhaps I was shown the art of unconditional acceptance, being with ambiguity in ways that prevent rushing toward solving problems, towards stabilising. I witness cathartic moments in those temples where screams and other expressions of distress were not immediately shut down or controlled but accompanied by others who showed support and care regardless.
As designers we often want to solve problems, and sometimes forget that in doing so we are also defining the landscape of the problematic. In mental health and co-design, this is particularly relevant, and sometimes a source of conflict, too. Witnessing extremely different ways to conceptualise human distress and recovery informs a pluralist approach which I consider key for in collaborative design.
Have you traveled/volunteered as a means to generate design work since this first initial experience? (e.g. Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Cambodia)
Travelling has been very important for me personal and professionally, and it is usual for me to follow a specific intrigue. For instance, I heard of Uzbekistan first in the book Master of Lucid dreams, and went there at the first opportunity. Although I have not yet have the opportunity to conduct formal research in these parts of the world, it is something that I am eager to explore in the future if and when covid limitations allow us to do so. One can conduct ethnographic research at home, too, but I believe there is also methodological value when world views crash and cultural strangers try to connect and understand one another despite all limitations. I have found that design is a great tool to do so.