Visions of care – drawing as a method for seeing the relations between how care is visualised and how it is valued in home care services

Home care services will be central to care provision as the proportion of older people in Sweden increases. In response to the demands of efficiency, this sector is rapidly being digitalized. Digital systems visualize care, they highlight some aspects while they omit others. Nonetheless, how visualizations shape care, is overlooked.

The aim of our project is to develop drawing as a method for seeing the relations between how care is visualized and how it is valued in home care services.

The overall purpose of this is to contribute to how care practices and art practices can be intertwined to purposefully challenge what it means to care.This is a three-year project where we will draw in situ to visualize daily care interactions in home care.

We will also observe how home care staff interact with existing digital interfaces for planning, providing and documenting care. Through working with both existing and new images, we will explore the possibilities of visualizing care. Selected drawings and digital visualizations will be used to curate exhibitions about home care.

The curation processes and the exhibitions will serve as analytical methods to ask questions about what care is, what it can be and how home care can be developed in meaningful ways. This will advance drawing as an inclusive and collaborative artistic research method.