To flourish is ‘to live within an optimal range of human functioning, one that connotes goodness, generativity, growth’ (Fredrickson and Losada, 2005). In Flourish we have explored the ways in which qualities of life are generated and sustained, how personhood and collective wellbeing can flourish, and specifically, how design can enable a flourishing society. Design Innovation is
a way of structuring group creativity towards valuable outcomes using design practices. By engaging with a wide range of expertise, it is possible to address complex issues. Through our creative and participatory design inquiries we have aimed to give voice to invisible communities, by working together with practitioners
and professionals, including doctors in primary and secondary care, clinicians, chaplains and social care professionals amongst others to address complex
civic challenges. A major focus of our research is on ageing, dignity and end of life care and how our society can create and support wider compassionate and caring practices at the point of need.

We have developed an interdisciplinary
network of academics, practitioners, and policy makers throughout a series of Seasonal Seminars in Glasgow and Forres to together consider ways to elicit, capture, and communicate such community narratives and to demonstrate how wellbeing can or could thrive. This follows an asset-based approach – to identify existing skills, talents, and capabilities from within communities,
that may be hidden or ineffable – and to devise creative ways to share these strengths with others in order to ‘flourish’. Flourish’s focus on ‘giving voice’ has thus provided scope to undertake preliminary primary research engagements, or Flurries.Our creative and visual approaches to participatory inquiry have allowed us to ascertain how we might reposition perceptions of these communities by representing and communicating the complex civic challenges that they face, and their
individual and collective capabilities.

Spanning the Flourish timeline, the Seasonal Seminars and the Flurries have generated insights surrounding societal wellbeing, measurement, and promotion, as well as highlighting distinct concepts and themes that constitute qualities of life, qualities of design, and qualities of reflection.