Learnig through experiences is how kids do ; designers also do in order to understand the problems a population is facing. As we observe that most of the troubles in a relationship between someone with a physical disability and someone else, is the misunderstanding of the other one situation, and because children under the age of seven are still open minded to everything, we decided to make them live a physical desability.
Meet Nitty.
Covering four out of five senses (sight, hearing, touch and taste), Nitty is an installation, a place, to experiment physical desabilities. A group of kids penetrate in the area, and get a mission card. On this card, they have a taste to find, a texture to recognize, a melody to play, and a visual rhythm to repeat. These missions are made while deceiving their other senses - for example recognize a texture without the sight, or find a taste from a gelly product with a disturbing color. During these experiences, the kids are inhibated from one of their senses to enhance another one.
At the end of the four activities, the Nitty cloud at the center of the room delivers a knitted candy - each guess determines the two flavours, the shape and the stitch of the candy. The better they succeed, the more harmonious the candy will be. The candy is then shared between the children, and they can talk about this special moment.
What we find really interesting here, is that a kid with physical desabilities playing in the Nitty space is more prepared than an healthy kid, so that the disability becomes an advantage to succeed better. Also, this disabled kid become the leader of the group of kids by knowing how to use differently his senses, and giving advices to the non-disabled ones.
Living the disability as kid help them understand and interact easily with people with a physical disability as grown-ups.
Context : A 1 week workshop. A teamwork project.
Subject : "Something for kids, something for learning through playing."
Problematic : How can we make children experience physical disabilities in order to give them the keys to understand them ?
Target : Children under the age of seven.
Nitty
