Make your own Robot - an intergenerational collage workshop exploring AI and robotics

In October 2023 as part of the annual Festival of Social Science, Wellcome Trust Research Fellow Giulia De Togni invited me to work with her to develop and visually capture an intergenerational collage workshop exploring AI and robotic healthcare applications with potential end users. This took place in the iconic setting of the Summerhall Anatomy Lecture Theatre, Edinburgh.

Giulia's Wellcome Fellowship titled 'Caring Machines' was focused on AI and robotic applications for healthy aging and independent living for people with disabilities.

What is really important to people when looking to a future where robots may be embedded in our everyday lives?

As the participants created their (beautiful!) collage robots, they were gently challenged with these questions:

Would you be happy to have a robot (or any other kind of technology) in your home, school or hospital?

How would you like such a robot or technology to look?

What would you like the robot or technology to do for you?

Giulia's introductory talk and the workshop participants feedback and conversations informed and inspired this visual record:

You can learn more about Giulia's fascinating research and the workshop findings here:

https://www.ed.ac.uk/usher/biomedicine-self-society/blog/make-your-robot-2

Thanks to Grzegorz Biermanski for the photographs.

Moving into 2026 - and joining up the dots..

A very happy new year to you and yours, I hope it brings you health, calm and good news🍀🌝🌱.

2025 was one of the most challenging years of my life, with bereavement casting a long and heavy shadow over the year.

Whilst I won't go in to that here now, I may come back to it later, as it has been reshaping a lot of my thinking, about my work, priorities and purpose.

The last couple of years have also brought a number of really exciting projects into my life, which have expanded my practice, and taken me to listen at the heart of conversations that really matter.

From AI in education to the impact of flooding to participation in democracy to rethinking what constitutes a medical education in these fast changing times, I've drawn the conversations and ideas of extraordinary people, working hard to create positive change here in Scotland.

In my graphic recording work I've tried things out, I've had breakthroughs, I've made mistakes, I've got lost in fogs of complex information and had moments of extreme clarity, and I've learnt A LOT.

This year I want to go a little slower and reflect on these experiences, and how I can use them to take my creative practice forward.

A new year 🌅

Sketchbook-ing

I've been trying to re-establish a daily drawing habit, and to learn a new digital drawing programme, Adobe Fresco, to add to Procreate in my digital drawing pencil case. I've decided to go back to my art history roots, harking back to one of my favourite pass times as an art student - drawing (and learning) from the masters, and looking at old art. SO I'm using the wikiart site, generating a random historic artwork, trying not to veto, and drawing from it in my sketchbook. Then colouring it in in Adobe Fresco. Not accurately. So far, so fun. I'll see where it takes me.

Here's the first five. From classical Japan, to Italy and America, via a slightly odd moment in Neo-Romantic Germany.