#021 Ivor Williams [Design & Death]

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In this episode I am joined by Ivor Williams, a designer and Lead for End-of-Life Care at the Helix Centre, a part of the Institute of Global Health Innovation (Imperial). His work focuses on thinking about how we can live, die and grieve better. During the episode we cover a range of topics, including:



- The place of design within medicine and death

- Dying and the medical profession

- Archetypes, power and dying

- The move from the priest to the medical profession

- The transition between the specialist to the lay person, supporting people in dying

- The way the pandemic has devolved responsibility for mediating death

- The need for someone to say "I've seen this before" with death

- The balance between distributing the role and keeping the experience needed, for helping people die.

- Designers as neutral participants, between the church and the doctor

- Doulas supporting with death (as well as birth)

- The gendered experience of birth and death

- People want different things when it comes to their death

- Death as a permanent end to an attachment

- At what point does the process of death start to focus on the living?

- "who is a good death for?"

- Drawing the distinction between avoidable deaths and deaths

- How can we decide when a death is "a failure?"

- Collective Grief: what can we do collectively?

- Planetary palliative care: do we need to accept things are ending in a civilisational level?

- Can suffering transform?

- Viewing Maslow's hierarchy of needs from the perspective of 'becoming part of a collective whole' and understanding your place in time

- How can we use our smartphones to grieve better?

- Cove App - a musical emotional journey

- "They had the best growth, the best health, the best pensions and now they want the best death. And our generation is responding by creating start ups" - Baby Boomers and the demand for 'death-tech'

- How the context of can shape whether it's perceived as 'a failure'



Find out more about Ivor:

http://ivorwilliams.info/about



Contact Ivor:

@ivorinfo (Twitter)

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