Touch Economy

University of Salford | March 2026

Touch Economy was a dialogic and educational workshop I developed and delivered for second-year BA Arts students at the University of Salford. The workshop explored the decline of platonic touch within contemporary society, questioning why physical contact has become increasingly restricted and how this might affect our wellbeing, relationships and sense of connection.

To explore these ideas in a tangible and accessible way, I invited participants to create and participate in a fictional 'touch economy'. Working individually and in groups, students were assigned different societal positions and developed their own rules around the value, access and exchange of touch based on the communities they represented. They then entered into a process of trading, negotiation and exchange.

The workshop concluded with a collective reflection on who had accumulated 'wealth', who had been left with little, and why. This created a framework for discussing who within society might be considered 'touch poor', and how factors such as age, disability, isolation, social expectations and circumstance can influence access to platonic touch and human connection.

The project used play, role-play and dialogue to turn an abstract social issue into a shared experience, encouraging students to question their own assumptions while considering how social structures can shape something as seemingly simple as human touch.