Speaker
Karen Oikonen
Participatory Researcher and Service Designer
Death, Dying & Design
Karen Oikonen (she/her) is a Toronto-based design researcher and service designer who uses participatory installations to open up conversations about death, dying, memory loss, and mental health in public spaces. Alongside her broader practice in service design and participatory research, she maintains an ongoing collaboration with health services researchers, creating installations that invite reflection on topics too often kept out of public view. Having lost her father to cancer in 2010, Karen is committed to ethical, trauma-informed approaches that create space for people to process difficult experiences collectively. She holds a Master of Design in Strategic Foresight and Innovation from OCAD University, and by day is a Principal at The Moment, a Toronto-based consultancy.
The Space Between: Exploring death, dying and grief through participatory installations
Death, dying, and grief are among the most deeply human experiences we all share, and yet they can be some of the hardest to talk about. This talk looks at how participatory installations in public spaces offer a different way to engage with these topics: outside the clinical, and through creative, collective experience. Drawing on experience creating installations across project work, collaborations with health services researchers, and community arts events, Karen reflects on what becomes possible when people are invited to participate in something shared, and how what they leave behind can also become a meaningful, complementary way of understanding human experience alongside more familiar research methods.