Care-full Design Sprints, Online? Addressing Gaps in Cultural Access and Inclusion during Covid-19 with Vulnerable Communities in London and Tokyo

What does it mean to invite vulnerable communities to the table in times of crisis not just as subjects, but as co-designers, in ways that facilitate nourishing and care-full relations? In this paper, we present the case of an online design sprint involving two groups of diverse participants in London and Tokyo as the Covid-19 pandemic unfolded. This modified design sprint model, which we describe as a 'care-full design stroll', integrated co-design approaches with ethics of care to offer remote cultural experiences aimed at addressing inequalities of access and inclusion faced by the arts and cultural sectors in Japan and the UK. We analyse data from ethnographic observations, interviews and surveys in both nations to illustrate the challenges and opportunities of facilitating design sprints online. Our findings show how care-full co-design, underpinned by concepts of thinking-with and working-alongside, can be facilitated in online-only and/or limited terrains, in ways that nourish cultural organisations and their publics in times of great uncertainty. We conclude with a set of six design principles which provide practical recommendations for the effective facilitation of future care-full co-design sprints for groups working in a variety of settings.