In the project ENCOUNTER#13, the care line of your life, informal caregivers visualize their experiences with care. By drawing a timeline, they map out when care played a major role in their lives. They visualize what care looked like, what it meant and share their stories.
5 Million informal caregivers
Due to an aging population and staffing challenges in the healthcare sector, more and more people will become dependent on their loved ones and community for care. In the Netherlands, there are over 5 million informal caregivers. This means that 1 in 3 people provides care to someone close to them. This number is expected to increase in the coming years.
The project ENCOUNTER#13, the care line of your life, is a creative method that enables informal caregivers to share their caregiving experiences. Drawing from their own lives, caregivers use pen and ink to draw their stories and reflect on them along a timeline. These lines serve as a starting point for conversations about (informal) care, touching on themes such as change, vulnerability, resilience, capacity, overload, intimacy, boundaries, dependency, happiness, and loss.
Create your own timeline
Visitors to the Dutch Design Week are invited to draw their own timeline of their caring life. This can be done on various afternoons during the DDW. For more information, visit the exhibition location (Matchbox, Strijp-S) or keep an eye on the news updates at project-encounter.nl.