The present thesis deals with the playful exploration of fermentation as a practice of care. Fermentation has a lot of positive impacts and can be seen as a practice of care in relation to human self-care, caring with human others, relationships to non-human beings, like microorganisms, and caring with the planet Earth. Based on the question ‘What can game design do to explore fermentation as a practice beyond human (self-) care?’ I developed an Online Fermentation Game. The game functioned as a conversational framework to explore together with co-creators the possibilities of more careful and sustainability-oriented food practices on the example of fermentation. The game involved the step by step and hands-on fermentation of fruits and vegetables while exploring the complexity of care in relation to fermentation.  With this project, I aimed to offer a co-learning space to explore together with co-learners the possibilities of more careful and sustainable food practices on the example of fermentation in a playful way. To create a dialogue about more than human care in relation to food, in particular fermentation. To inspire the co-learners to question their relationships around food and discover which actors to care with. Beyond this project and in a larger context, I aim for a paradigm shift from the individualistic human benefit towards a notion of more than human care. This shift can make a huge difference regarding a more sustainability-oriented future of food. With this thesis project, I strived to make a small contribution to this long term vision. Starting from the human need for healthy food, the blind spot of acknowledging fermentation as a sustainability-oriented practice beyond human care, that the majority of other fermentation workshops is missing, was explored in a playful way. The global Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic that this project happened to be situated in challenged me in creating a safe and comfortable co-learning space. Therefore, this project focused on creating a digital- and home-based game experience. To hand over, other design practitioners and change agents can apply and transform the game as part of their fermentation projects. On a broader perspective, the concept of this explorative design game can be adapted inside but also outside the food sector. The project serves as inspiration for a playful and at the same time careful approach to design and change-making. Moreover, it shows an example of shifting community spaces provoked by crises.

Simply Wood is a collaborative inquiry into the topic of all wood joints for industrially produced furniture through engineering and the culture of care for and with furniture through Design+Change. This thesis is written in collaboration with the product development and communication wings from IKEA of Sweden, as the external tutors and supervisors. The design part, called the Kinship of Care, focuses on the culture of care between IKEA’s fast furniture and its user. This research, Kinship of care, consists of slow design principles reveal, expand, and reflect that serve as a cyclic timeline through the design process. Reader, the new caregiver is at the beginning introduced into the field of Slow Design and what does it mean to be the agent of change in today’s world. As the thesis unfolds, the section Reveal expresses challenges IKEA is facing when it comes to the culture of care. These challenges serve as a foundation from which this thesis builds its shape. The notion of care is highly abundant in meanings, and the understanding of furniture is quite narrow and static. The sectionReveal reframes the idea of care in collaboration with other caregivers in the form of a Caregiver manifesto for Living in Times of Social Distancing. The notion of furniture is revalued during an intervention walk Beyond Furniture that reveals hidden connections to furniture in the forest. Once the concepts of furniture and care are reframed, they are brought together and reimagined in the next section Expand. Expand uses tools of bisociation to combine seemingly unrelated notions together. All this information is transformed in conclusion into seeds for caring with furniture that serves as carative guidelines, guidelines that motivate caregiving behaviour in one’s household, and guidelines for imagining caring furniture. In the last section Reflect, the reader contemplates the life of furniture and learns to let go for sustainable disposal practices through the Love and the Breakup letters. This section also contains an interview with a caregiving practitioner, a furniture upholsterer. In conclusion, seeds for caring with furniture are introduced in the form of a moving zine. This thesis, Simply Wood, encourages the reader, fast-furniture user, and fast-furniture producer, to become a slow caregiver in this fast-changing society and offers tools for re-conceptualizing rooted notions of care and furniture.

Here we ask ourselves not where objects come from, but investigate our relationship with what lies beneath the material. Within the Two Point O project, in the Växjö Crisis Edition, the practice of Care Biopics evolves. These individualised interventions bring us face to face with multiple storylines and definitions of an object valued during times of crisis. How does the proposed exploration of Care Biopics, community values and material symbolism facilitate the shift from mindless overconsumption to mindful materialism?Through several aspects of co-creating digital material, definitions and common values, Care Biopics weave a practice of democratic and accessible design. A practice of inclusitivty, caring with and social sustainability. A practice of designing not for, but with the people.

At a Muslim school a group of boys with a reputation for stealing got the opportunity to share stories with communities of concern. Honesty meetings, honesty tests, honesty certificates and honesty celebrations formed part of narrative therapy ways of working together to try and regain reputations for honesty. As an outsider researcher/therapist I was confronted by stories of slavery, racism, unemployment, poverty, crime and violence. Through collaboration with a cultural consultant it became possible to do theology and pastoral care as a Christian in a Muslim community in a respectful and ethical way. The sharing of stories of pain and resistance contributed to the mutual care and community amongst participants from communities separated by racism and apartheid legislation as well as differences of culture and religion. Reflections on this journey mark a migration of identity for me as researcher, therapist, Christian and white South African practical theologian. / Practical Theology / M.Th. (Pastoral Theology)

At a Muslim school a group of boys with a reputation for stealing got the opportunity to share stories with communities of concern. Honesty meetings, honesty tests, honesty certificates and honesty celebrations formed part of narrative therapy ways of working together to try and regain reputations for honesty. As an outsider researcher/therapist I was confronted by stories of slavery, racism, unemployment, poverty, crime and violence. Through collaboration with a cultural consultant it became possible to do theology and pastoral care as a Christian in a Muslim community in a respectful and ethical way. The sharing of stories of pain and resistance contributed to the mutual care and community amongst participants from communities separated by racism and apartheid legislation as well as differences of culture and religion. Reflections on this journey mark a migration of identity for me as researcher, therapist, Christian and white South African practical theologian. / Philosophy, Practical and Systematic Theology / M.Th. (Pastoral Theology)