A Taste of Inclusion: Sensitizing People with Cooking workshops at the UD Living Lab

Abstract

In the context of reintegrating people with a disability in daily life, workshops and trainings are often given in a medical context with focus on the adaptation of the body and mind. In the UD living lab in Hasselt, the idea was initiated to give cooking workshops for everybody who is interested in cooking for independent living. This way focus is put on pleasure and fun for all. The architecture as well as all available tools are designed with a design for all strategy fitting in a cultural model approach that relies on the expertise of people with a disability to improve design processes. This paper reports on the first pilot cooking workshop in which people were invited to cook an Italian meal. The outcome proves that people appreciate the attention and empathy in which the environment as well as the tools are designed. The attention given to affective and behavioral aspects of tools and environments do contribute to the whole cooking experience. Moreover, the mental associations of the products with their exact origin even influences the experience of the cooks.