Hello, I’m Andy and I create spaces for good conversations, learning and design, bringing service providers, policy makers, designers, innovators and others together with people who are disabled and disadvantaged by products, services and environments.

This work doesn’t focus on fixing things necassarily, it’s about building relationships, finding new ways to work together and recognising the value that people can bring to improving design. Then we can fix the right things in the right way, discovering the best problems to solve and designing more inclusive solutions together.

Right now I’m

• developing ideas around Inclusive Low Carbon Journeys and Just Transition action plans.

• writing a course on designing for dementia for a Chartered Institute

A little more about Go Upstream

In 2016, supported by the Life Changes Trust, I started working with people with dementia to explore how we could bring their experience and expertise into the design of the services, environments and products we encounter along our journeys. I established Go Upstream Ltd in 2018 to explore a new model to make this happen.

Our early research focussed on working with people with dementia and more recent projects have involved friends from the Deaf community, wheelchair users, people with visual impairment and many others. This isn’t about creating ‘dementia-friendly transport’ but rather developing new ways for people who are disabled and disadvantaged by current systems to be included as part of design teams that take a different approach.

This feels urgent now. As we rush to decarbonise transport we have to ensure that everyone has the choice to get out and about. Our collective track record of creating a more inclusive world tells us that we need to take a different approach if we’re going to do this well and in time.

We can only do that by involving people who know exactly what it’s like to feel excluded.

Projects

Future Journeys

Mobility as a (more inclusive) service

Making Connections

Working with disabled people and transport staff to explore the spaces between travel services, discover barriers and design solutions together. We considered connections from trains to ferries but the process can be used anywhere.

Many journeys rely on us changing from one mode of transport to another, navigating the spaces between services, where one 'stops' and another 'starts'.  But even short transfers have potential barriers – crossing a busy street, poor lighting, difficulty finding a place to sit down and rest.

Who’s responsible for the quality of the connection? And what’s the best way for everyone concerned to work together to improve it?

‘Making Connections’ brought disabled people together with staff from Northlink Ferries, CalMac Ferries, Scotrail and designers at StudioLR to experience and assess journey connections between rail and ferry services in Aberdeen, in the North East of Scotland, and Ardrossan on the South West coast.

We recorded the real challenges of making connections and worked with transport providers to develop ideas for improvements to make travel easier for everyone.

This helped us to develop a way of working to improve connections across Scotland and beyond.

You can read our project report here

Drawing from our Experience

Can comics describe the impact of everyday travel experiences ?

If artists and people with dementia travel and create artwork together, can we more accurately describe the sights, sounds and impacts of a journey as experienced by someone living with dementia?

We started to explore these questions as part of Drawing from Experience, a project funded by a Dementia Services Development Trust Disruption Award.

A small group of people with dementia took journeys together with artists Ashling Larkin and Megan Sinclair and developed two stories together to describe their challenges.

Of course, these stories can’t represent everybody’s experiences, but we hope that they can start conversations - not only about the challenges of travel, but also about the importance of getting out and about and how to make it easier to continue to do so. Let’s shift the focus to solutions.

The process of travelling together, discovering the stories and developing the artwork together is perhaps as important as the final product.

We think that comics developed in this way might be useful as a training resource - not only helping staff to understand the impacts of travel services and environments, but also exploring possible improvements. We also wonder if this might be a more accessible format for people with dementia.

Download your copy of the Drawing from our Experience by clicking on the image

Understand Together

As fellow members of the EFID network, Go Upstream and the Irish Dementia Working Group worked together during 2019 to explore the challenges that people living with dementia find when travelling throughout Ireland. This formed part of the Understand Together initiative, a public support, awareness and information campaign aimed at inspiring people from all sections of society to stand together with the 500,000 Irish people whose families have been affected by dementia.

While working with people with dementia during a series of workshops in rural and urban areas, we learned about a their travel concerns and hopes. In response, Go Upstream suggested a range of potential project areas and activities that could explore these more closely. After considering these, the Irish Dementia Working Group decided that they would like to work with a travel provider to build understanding of dementia and influence the future design of services.

Irish Rail offered to host a number of workshops at Dublin’s Heuston Station.

As you can see in the video, members of the group and station staff spent time together, walked around the station and learned from each other...

A Public Inconvenience

Exploring the barriers experienced by disabled people when finding and using toilets along a journey. We prioritised the key considerations when designing and installing toilets.

Read more…

Welcome Aboard

Working with people with dementia and Neatebox (and their Welcome app) to improve assisted rail travel and reduce the anxiety of arriving at a rail station.

Assisted rail travel enables many people to travel around the UK every year. According to the Office of Rail and Road, Passenger Assistance was booked 1.4 million times in 2016-17 and 63% of passengers said they could not have completed their journeys without it. 

But sometimes the service doesn’t work so well.  Delays and cancellations can disrupt Passenger Assist, potentially turning a journey into an anxious situation for passengers and staff alike.  A lack of information or poor understanding of a person’s needs can prevent staff from offering the service they want to provide.  

We brought people with dementia together with LNER rail staff to explore the use of Neatebox’s Welcome App to improve the passenger experience. We explored how passenger assist services currently work, how the app works and how it might help to improve assisted journeys. 

By listening to each other and developing ideas together, we developed new features for ‘Welcome’ and discovered ways in which Passenger Assist can be improved locally.  

The ‘Welcome’ Aboard project brought people with dementia together with train operator staff to explore how the Welcome app can improve the experience of assisted rail travel. By combining the experience of living and travelling with dementia and LNER’s experience of providing an assistance service we used and enhanced Neatebox’s Welcome app and imagined a better version of Passenger Assist.

We discussed rail journeys and how passenger assistance services can help. We visited Waverley station together to discover the environment and find where passenger assistance ‘lives’. We learned about the Welcome app and how to book a visit to the station…

We reflected on our various trips to the station and what could help. How could the app help? what would improve it further? What did we learn about passenger assist service?  

As a result we developed an idea for a service that truly improves the experience for passengers and train operator staff alike. 

The Team 

Go Upstream brings people living with dementia together with people who provide travel and transport services, exploring ways in which journeys can become more enabling, putting the voice of people living with dementia at the heart of future mobility service design. 

Neatebox’s mission is to lead society in becoming more inclusive to everyone, developing solutions that empower disabled people in their daily life and ease the pressure on those who are tasked to support them. We aim to reduce anxiety, increase social mobility and ultimately promote a very real change in society's attitude towards those who have so often been ignored.

Open Change support service providers and users to explore problems and solutions together using design tools

DEEP engages and empowers people living with dementia to influence attitudes, services and policies that affect their lives. 

LNER operates the east coast mainline running between London and Scotland. 

Welcome Aboard was funded and supported by the Rail Safety and Standards Board (RSSB)