New societal laboratories for citizen’s science about health and resilience.

In western countries, people go to professional health care if they suffer from physical or mental problems. However, professionals have limited expertise in case of disruptive experiences. Moreover, professional diagnostic classifications and treatments often stress problems people’s and create stigma and shame, instead of stimulating resilience.  Professionals also find it difficult to grasp the interdependence of health issues, loss, poverty, relational issues, informal care etcetera.  At the same time, experiential knowledge of citizens on how to remain resilient and on how to help each other is not actively used and civic learning processes are not organized. Against this background we have studied how citizens can help each other in neighborhood everyday life and how they mobilize and develop everyday knowledge in that context. We studied this question at two public meeting spaces, owned by citizens – a new established meeting place in a mall and an already flourishing children’s and care farm.  At both places we organized a variety of activities (training of experts of experiences, a human library, writing your life story, philosophy café, photo exhibitions etc.). The citizens involved together with university researchers collected data about these activities (fieldnotes, observations, interviews, diary) and analyzed them.

The main insight was that exchange of experiences and knowledge about health and wellbeing (more than sharing opinions) takes many different interactive forms, that require longer term relationships where people feel safe and heard. The quality of the hospitality of a public meetings place is therefore crucial: it limits or enhances interactions, the sharing of personal experiences and the developing of new knowledge, ideas and perspectives. Experts of experience play an important role in this. May people indicated that they felt better through these interactions and exchanges as they also provided support and hope. Health knowledge, as it was developed here, was not information about specific health risks, but more a variety of everyday technologies of hope.