MDes Design Innovation & Interaction Design School of Innovation & Technology
Bailee Allen
Bailee Allen is a multidisciplinary designer who grew up under the dark skies of the Mohave desert, USA. She enjoys working with both tangible and digital mediums to advocate for wellness and community togetherness in hyperlocal contexts. Mutual flourishing and connection to the natural world is central to her design practice and aspirations.
Works
Reclaiming the Cosmos
Fostering a Connection to the Night Sky in the Scottish Highlands and Islands
Challenge
Emerging technologies and scientific advancement provide greater access to the night sky, or ‘cosmos’ than ever before. Despite this, humanity and the more-than-human natural world has never experienced a greater disconnection from dark skies and to each other. As we reframe the cosmos as our ancestral commons, how might residents of the Scottish Highlands and Islands overcome the barriers that separate them from dark skies and “reclaim” their personal relationship with the night sky by creating their own personal or community asterisms (star stories)?
Proposal
This project explores the creation of custom star maps as a collective, regional storytelling tool to connect local Scottish communities to the cosmos. I visited the Isle of Canna (National Trust for Scotland) and engaged with residents and visitors through participatory design who connected real patterns of stars to create asterisms, or “star stories” of their experiences during Canna Naturefest 2025. An interactive star map, explorable through web and VR, was designed to share these stories, and resources were developed to help other regions across Scotland create their own storytelling star maps to connect local communities to the cosmos.
