Event Report: Camp Digital 2025

I was very lucky to be able to attend the Camp Digital event this year at the Royal Northern College of Music on Thursday the 3rd of July, alongside the Manchester Digital Strategy team. As someone who has recently started in the Digital Inclusion team, and is new to Manchester, I was intrigued to find out what the day had in store for us.  

The day went impossibly fast, with lots of nuggets of information up for grabs if only we could retain all of it, so I’ll cover the few talks that stayed with me over a week after the day wrapped up.  

We began the day with keynote speaker Hera Hussain, CEO and Founder of global nonprofit, CHAYN. She walked onto stage with her son in a pram, gently rocking him to sleep as she spoke about participatory and trauma-informed design in creating CHAYN. Through iterating on previous learnings over the 12 years of building this organisation, Hera discussed how CHAYN had changed in the way they addressed gender-based violence using their 8 principles as a guiding exploration tool, rather than inflexible evaluation tools traditionally used. Hera’s perspective on iterative design and reflective practices to create a meaningful service that evolved with the changing needs of their audience really resonated with me.

This perspective is applicable to us within the Digital Inclusion team, as changing digital needs of residents and communities are constantly evolving and we need to adapt to these as and when they happen in order to continue to offer comprehensive and compatible support. 

Claire Dellar’s talk was the standout event of the day for me, with her discussion of inclusive design, explored through the social model of disability. Her thought-provoking ideas and unique way of presenting had me glued to the seat, absorbing everything she had to say. Claire talked about designing for 100% of people, rather than the 80% who don’t have additional needs. This built on the idea that improving usability and accessibility furthers innovation, and enhances the experience for everyone, not just those who may be excluded otherwise. She highlighted the ways designers could incorporate flexibility, intuition and simplicity into their design practices to accommodate different learning styles and abilities in a way that enabled everyone to thrive. These practices can lead to systemic solutions in how we interact with disabilities, creating a more inclusive and customisable approach to design. It made me think about how we can work to create more inclusive design elements across our online presence such as making sure we have multiple modes of communication available, like video and text, or ensuring our website navigation is clear and simple for all to use.  

The 300 Seconds x Camp Digital Lightning Talks facilitated by Sharon O’Dea was a fantastic initiative, aimed at creating pathways and opportunities for underrepresented people who may struggle otherwise to feel heard within the digital space. Their aim is to increase the diversity of experiences and voices we hear from in this area, as well as to provide the opportunity to improve public speaking skills in a safe and supportive environment. We heard from six young people who all spoke on different topics of interest to them within the digital space, and demonstrated exploration of new perspectives and ideas. I thought this was such a great segment of the day, encouraging those from diverse backgrounds to get up and seek opportunities to grow, expand and share their skills.   

Throughout the day, I could see the passion of the speakers, and how this resonated with many people in how they can begin to bring these ideas into their work and practices. I was able to speak to other attendees who were in the consulting and design spaces and learn how these ideas were translating in their own minds into their work and their teams.

When it comes to digital inclusion in Manchester, our Let’s Get Digital team want to create every opportunity for all people to be as digitally involved as they want and reduce as many barriers to inclusion as possible. Camp Digital was a smorgasbord of ideas and inspiration as well as an open invitation for those in the digital space to reconsider their ways of working and see digital inclusion through design in a reimagined light.

If the opportunity arises for me to attend the next Camp Digital, I’ll definitely be jumping at it! 

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Interviewing Karoliina Kauhanen