The Royal Society of Edinburgh’s Young Academy of Scotland (YAS) has formed a collaboration with The Glasgow School of Art (GSA) that led to the ‘Ways of Seeing Invisible Illness’ Crossover project to explore more tangible ways of understanding people’s experiences of living and working with invisible conditions.

Crossover’ is a series of projects initiated by Reader in Transdisciplinary Design Innovation Elio Caccavale and Creative Economy Leadership Fellow Dr Michael Pierre Johnson, at the GSA Innovation School, that uses design-led innovation approaches to bring together wide-ranging expertise to identify areas of concern and opportunities for improvement through scientific, health and social advances. This collaboration makes the most of our collective interdisciplinary knowledge to provide expertise and innovative thinking to identify and tackle the most pressing health challenges in Scotland, and beyond.

Our initial workshop included scientific and health experts, in addition to those working in the areas of design and social sciences. Together participants discussed the conditions they wanted to make more tangible, as well as the effects of hidden diseases on individuals and communities. Challenges around invisible illness were identified and ideas were proposed to positively address them. This process highlighted several core themes, including: the impacts of stigma due to a lack of understanding; ways to empower individuals to positively express identity with their conditions; and the potential to distribute support needs and awareness across support networks and services in more patient-centered ways.

These ideas seeded two new pilot projects ‘Beyond Stigma & Empathy’ and ‘Positive Self-Identity Through Fashion’. For the first pilot, videographer Enya Fortuna was commissioned to create a short film capturing the experiences of people with non-visible conditions, namely melanoma, multiple sclerosis and hip dysplasia. Each experience provides insight of life with these unseen conditions and how stigma or empathy can manifest in different situations. This revealed how a lack of wider understanding creates challenges in work and life, and what factors can bring about positive change in building a caring and inclusive society.