Resilient Futures

Development of innovative packaging, printed report and presentation for a pilot research project called Resilient Futures by the premier research facility SAHMRI: the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute.

“Resilient Futures is a flexible, trauma informed wellbeing and resilience research collaboration that is funded by the Wyatt Trust and the James and Diana Ramsay Foundation. Since 2015, more than 100 trained teachers and youth workers from seven schools and youth agencies have trained more than 1,400 vulnerable young people in our most disadvantaged communities. Through explicit and implicit teaching and coaching strategies, the program supports young people to develop the resources to deal with the challenges of everyday life and achieve the goals that they set for themselves.”
David Kelly, Project Director.

Working Images was engaged by Project Director David Kelly and team with the knowledge that we would bring a depth and consideration to the project that would both  capture and dignify the value in this research and the outcomes generated – both for SAHMRI and for the philanthropic investment partners. For such an innovative and landmark research project our aim from the outset was to ensure we resolved a way to package this information that avoided a conventional means of communication – which would potentially consign valuable research to the dusty shelf.

To achieve this requires a circuitous and lateral approach to the nature of the information being packaged and avoiding a convenient design response.

Our approach necessitated an iterative process of design prototyping whereby we undertook a series of intensive working discussions with the team to understand the nuances of the project, its methodology, the subject and participants, their stories and something of the journey the team had made. We took a draft of the early report outcomes in very much a raw form and mapped all of these elements to understand and appreciate in detail the merits of all project components, their intersections and overlays and the meaning generated through these implicit relationships. Through this we were able to resolve a design solution driven by the requirements of the information. What emerged from this exploration was evidence of a clear tension within the report: a need to satisfy a functional requirement whereby the report may be used by other professional bodies as a development tool and for some means where the stories of the report participants may be elevated and revealed in the most transparent and authentic fashion.

The solution saw the development of a series of brightly coloured A5 cards carrying the individual’s stories and featuring an image or visual representation of each participant. These standalone elements formed a set of 32 cards packaged loose within a bespoke, card outer case of which only 50 sets were produced. Within and through this we developed a visual, coded system that enabled a range of 10 key insights and suite of higher level of learning tools to be presented that would support its practical function. This package succeeded in capturing the youth stories in a way that honoured and celebrated their personal triumphs and difficulties whilst enabling the cards to be utilised as a learning tool for the institutions and organisations they partner with.