Having spent over four years exploring the results of our flawed and non-creative education system, and subsequently inspired by the work and voice of Sir Ken Robinson, Lord Puttnam, Richard Gerver and others, I was excited to hear last week via Ken Robinson of a new film documentary that premiered in London last night, We Are The People We’ve Been Waiting For.

This landmark independent documentary, inspired and guided by Lord Puttnam and Sir Michael Barber, explores the education system in the UK and asks whether the current system provides young people with the opportunity to develop their talents. High-profile figures sharing their personal experiences and views include Sir Richard Branson, Germaine Greer, Henry Winkler, Bill Bryson, Sir Ken Robinson and a wide range of education experts from around the world.

This thought-provoking film offers unique insight across generations and nations, and reveals a very inconvenient truth about education. The world is changing rapidly but our education system is not keeping pace.

Sir Ken Robinson’s 2001 book “Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative” was and remains one of my greatest working inspirations and his second book, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything, published this year adds to his belief that individual talent, human capacity and creativity should be enhanced in schools, not stifled.

Interestingly, only last month we heard Thomas Friedman offer his opinion as to the need to understand today’s education challenge and a new era of, what he describes as, ‘The New Untouchables’.

I do hope this film reaches everyone and not only asks if the current system is providing young people with the right opportunities (we know the answer to this one), but I hope it actually instigates the revolution we so desperately need. “We don’t need to reform education, we need to transform it”, explains Sir Ken Robinson.

For more information visit
+ WeArethePeopleMovie.com
+ EDGE: Education Revolution
+ Guardian: Welcome to the Real World

On 4th December 2009, Fair Knowledge and Tomorrow’s Company presents a Cineforum on Climate Change: The Road to Ecotopia – an innovative collaboration hub and conference in London.

The Cineforum on Climate Change: The Road to Ecotopia is offering a unique chance to dive deep into the issues that will be defining the strategic choices of businesses, policy-makers, innovators and citizens over the coming years.

This full day event intends to help you to identify and shape your own part in creating the paradigm-shifting strategies and solutions to designing and building ‘Ecotopia’. Combining powerful documentary films, insights from avant-garde thought leaders, cross-disciplinary workshops and carefully selected Climate Champions and Climate Pioneers, this is the seminal London event contributing to COP15 and enabling you to architect the future. The Cineforum are co-creating a film, called Designing Ecotopia which we’re taking to COP15 – all we need is you.

Places are very limited and tickets are selling out fast, so make sure you book up now to avoid disappointment. Visit Cineforum’s Eventbrite to book now. You can also follow the event on Twitter @designecotopia and add #ecotopia to your tweets to join the conversation and event happenings online.

www.cineforum.co.uk

Responding to current economic, social and environmental crises, London’s NEF (New Economics Foundation) are this month running “The Bigger Picture”, a series of creative activities and events, exploring the possibilities of ‘a new kind of economy’, an economy which is low in carbon and high in well-being.

The event series culminates in a large-scale, public “Festival of Interdependence” in central London on 24 October 2009 when an interactive, living exhibition will be staged in the dramatic post-industrial setting of the Bargehouse on London’s South Bank.

With over forty-five speakers from a range of backgrounds, including Andrew Simms (nef), Roman Krznaric (The School of Life) and Richard Wilkinson (Equality Trust) to name but a few, The Bigger Picture offers visitors and audience a chance to actually join the conversations, learn, share and exchange skills and tell stories. Topics are big and far reaching, including the future of food and farming, the hidden costs of economic growth, civil liberties and climate change, local economics and how inequality leaves us all worse off.

Find out more at thebiggerpicture2009.org, or follow the events, live as they unravel on twitter @BiggerPicture_

Are you a design student or graduate finding it hard to access or find your place in industry? Well, with over 185,500 [1] design practitioners in the UK alone that’s not surprising!

“For the designer to become a producer, she must have the skills to begin directing content, by critically navigating the social, aesthetic, and technological systems across which communications flow.” - Ellen Lupton, 1998. The Designer as Producer. [2]

Welcome to the Studio Unbound!

Following a lecture to Dundee University in February, myself (@kateandrews) and University of Dundee Master of Design graduate Lauren Currie (@Redjotter), have this month launched the Studio Unbound – an initiative aiming to introduce students, graduates and educators to the power and value of digital networking.

Together as Studio Unbound, we are exploring the power of digital networking, demonstrating tools that students can use to move ideas forward, form networks with practitioners around the world, and build a reputation before and after graduation.

In highlighting creative people all over the world using social networking to their advantage, Studio Unbound discuss the dynamic, conversational value of new communication technologies and illustrate how ideas of teaching and learning need to move away from the confines of the classroom or studio towards other, often ad-hoc and virtual venues.

Focusing on the ever growing possibilities and opportunities that the digital world presents, Studio Unbound demonstrate that during a time of mass communication change, design courses must change with it if they are to stay relevant.

Studio Unbound is not all about Twitter or Facebook, but about breaking down preconceptions of social media technologies, into an incredible value system that can enable us all to find both an individual voice, and collaborative practice.

“A great designer understands that search and discovery is an on-going process that is at the heart of what makes us human. We spend our lives searching for people we share a strong sense of connection with. Designers must join that search.” - Desiree Collier, 2009. Design Week. The Joy of Search. [3]

Last night, the Studio Unbound was joined by 2009 Social Innovation Camp winner Sarah Drummond (@rufflemuffin) who with Lauren ran a Studio Unbound lecture to students at Glasgow School of Art.

Find out more about the project on the new Studio Unbound blog, join and support the project on Facebook, and join the growing conversation on twitter #studiounbound

The Studio Unbound is not only for students, if you use blogs and social media to do what you do or simply understand the power of networking in your practice, this is a project that wants to hear your story too!

After an energetic ten days during London Design Festival 2008, the sustainable design hub – Greengaged is making a big return for 2009. Co-designed with thomas.matthews and web designer Daniel Howells, I’m pleased to announce that Greengaged.com has had a big makeover this year!

With an intent to advance the designs industry’s capacity to respond positively to climate change, Greengaged was founded in 2008, by Sophie Thomas from thomas.matthews, Sarah Johnson from [re]design and Anne Chick from The Sustainable Design Research Centre at Kingston University.

As Greengaged co-founder Sophie Thomas explains in her welcome letter this month, there are big plans for Greengaged 2009! So, if you are interested to find out how to make your design work (or studio) more environmentally sound, interested in submitting articles, or wishing to get involved in this years events, do visit Greengaged.com and get in touch.

For all the latest news and happenings, you can also sign up to the Greengaged mailing list, follow the hub on twitter @Greengaged and network with others on our Greengaged facebook group. Welcome, once again to Greengaged!

Earlier this week I stumbled on By/Association, the latest in a line of social innovation projects from alldaybuffet.

“Innovation is an emergent phenomenon that happens when a person or organization fosters interaction between different kinds of people and disparate forms of knowledge.” — Murray Gell-Mann

‘By/Association seeks to reinvent the traditional notion of “networking” by enabling substantive interactions and long-term relationships. By/Association is for people who want to make their lives, ideas, and networks richer by meeting other remarkable people. It’s not about getting help with your current need or project. It’s about connecting to people that make you better — to inspire more action, better ideas, and new ways of seeing the world.’

For all information about memberships, visit ByAssoc.com

Pitched to be this year’s most talked-about climate change film, The Age of Stupid is a new movie from director Franny Armstrong (of McLibel) and producer John Battsek (of One Day In September). In this epic tale, Pete Postlethwaite stars as a man living alone in the devastated future world of 2055, looking at old footage from 2008 and asking: why didn’t we stop climate change when we had the chance?

On Friday 22nd May 2009, I attended the first Indie Screenings of the film at London’s Royal Society of the Arts, and the film is absolutely incredible – a truly remarkable summary of how urgent we all need to change our behaviour. I left overwhelmed but determined to share this film with many. The Guardian Environment have got a wonderful documentary of ‘Team Stupid’ revealing the lengths they went to – from kidnapping threats in Nigeria to ‘crowd-funding’ in London – to make the film.

Following the screening, Film Director Franny Armstrong took to the stage and was joined in a panel discussion by George Monbiot, writer and campaigner; Dr Richard Betts, head of climate impacts at the Met Office and Lord Stern, economist and author of the Stern Review. The discussion was broadcast live across the internet and to Age of Stupid screenings around the country. You can see and hear the evenings discussion, during which Stern suggested the West should meet China half-way over who owns which emissions. You can see all of my photographs from the RSA screening of the Age of Stupid here.

The evening also featured an exclusive video broadcast from Dr. Mohammed Waheed Hassan, Vice-President of the Maldives, on “Climate and Change and the Art of the Possible”. The Maldives is the first country to commit to going carbon neutral in ten years. You can also read a full story about President Mohamed Nasheed watching the Age of Stupid at the New York Times Magazine.

As the film credits began, a large digital clock lit up, counting down to the UN Climate Change Conference 2009 (COP15), which will take place in Copenhagen in December 2009. ‘We have seven months to really make the change happen, and to do that we need pressure and people power,’ Franny explained.

To organise your own screening, visit AgeofStupid.net – Everyone should see this film!

+ The Age of Stupid
+ Notstupid.org
+ follow @AgeofStupid on Twitter

This article was originally written for Inhabitat.com

On Sunday 28 June 2009 at London’s Conway Hall, Alice Rawsthorn (design critic of the International Herald Tribune, columnist for the New York Times and a leading authority on contemporary design) will host a ’sermon’ at The School of Life entitled “Alice Rawsthorn on Good Design”.

ABOUT the talk:

‘The numbers seem nutty. There are 6.5 billion people on this planet, 90 percent of whom can’t afford basic products and services. Half of them don’t have regular access to food, shelter or clean water. Yet when we talk about design, it’s usually about visual eye candy, a cute new chair or digital device.

There’s nothing wrong with such things says Alice Rawsthorn. It’s just that when you look at the bigger picture, it seems strange that so much time and energy should be devoted to creating luxuries for relatively few people, when so many essentials are needed urgently by so many more.

At a time when the environmental crisis is deepening, social and political systems are breaking down, and the global economy is in crisis, Alice takes to The School of Life pulpit to argue that we ignore the importance of good design only at our peril. She’ll show how design can play a pivotal part in developing new products, systems and networks both to help us repair the damage caused already, and to enable us to behave more responsibly in the future.

Whether you already worship at a Philippe Stark altarpiece or simply want to understand how design can help to make the world a better place, come and hear Alice preaching about why it should be an essential not a peripheral concern.’

To book your ticket, for only £10, click here. Notably, on 28 August 2009, Alice will also be leading a discussion at the INDEX Awards in Copenhagen entitled ‘Designing for Good’.

Founded by More Associates Director Luke Nicholson, Kept is a new movement celebrating the “stuff” that can be kept in the world, stuff that isn’t rubbish. “Together we will help the people who still design and sell rubbish to embrace the change”, he explains.

Of course, we are in the throes of a worldwide recession, and we also face the urgent global crisis of climate change. Most of the new materials we take out of the ground to drive our economy are rubbish just one month later. This makes a huge contribution to both problems. If we’re going to ’spend our way out’, we shouldn’t be buying products that are designed to go into landfill.

Most of the stuff we can buy today is rubbish, and it was designed to be rubbish. Literally. Now, that’s not easy for us to say; we invented some of it, designed some of it, photographed it, advertised it, wrote about it, composed music for it and in the end we went out and bought it. Kept has been started as a way to make things better. Companies have to make products and services that meet our needs without extracting virgin materials from the ground, and without creating systems that routinely bury products that still have life in them. This will help them – by using fewer materials and less energy in clever ways, they can actually become more financially successful.

Kept represents anyone who wants to have great stuff in their lives, and who wants stuff to be better. Kept will be working with companies who care about the stuff they make, and wouldn’t want it to do harm. And will help government to understand what they can do (or not do) to bring about the improvements we all want.

To get involved, Kept is asking you to tell your stories and share what “things” you value and cherish. Submit your stories about the things you have kept, big or small, by visiting www.kept.it or if you use twitter just add #kept to your tweet!

You can follow the project news @keptintheloop and please join the project the Kept Facebook Group where we will be raising questions and sharing news, insights and debate.

Asking how technology, globalisation and sustainability will impact the creative sector? And, further, how they impact the education sector? Ravensbourne College of Design & Communication presents the 2009 Cumulus Conference: ‘Confronting Challenge with Change’ at the O2, on 27 – 30 May 2009. Key note speakers include Lord David Puttnam, Dr Angela Dumas, Sir Ken Robinson, Prof. Robin Baker OBE and many other industry and education leaders.

In Good We Trust

After being diagnosed with a life threatening disease, Washington based artist and illustrator Eric Smith set up We Live Now, a project consisting of a growing collection of quotes, thoughts, stories, lyrics, creations and other various mediums that pursue the idea of living now and inspiring each of us to grow, live meaningful lives and be happy! “Our lives are only in the moments right in front of us.”

Thanks to Chris Clarke for this discovery!

The Age of Stupid is a 90-minute film about climate change, set in the future, which will have its world premiere in London on March 15th 2009 and then be released in UK cinemas on March 20th 2009, followed by other countries. Oscar-nominated Pete Postlethwaite stars as a man living alone in the devasted world of 2055, looking back at archive footage from 2007 and asking: why didnt we stop climate change when we had the chance?

On April 30th, in the heart of London, four students from London’s Ravensbourne College of Design will present Blank Canvas, a silent auction of customised design work by the likes of Milton Glaser, Ken Garland, Non-Format, Jonathan Barnbrook, Si Scott, Julien Vallee, James Goggin, Graphic Thought Facility and many more!

Blank Canvas is an event organised by the students on the BA (hons) Design for Moving Image and Graphic Design course to raise funds for their graduation show. They will be sending a list of top designers and illustrators random items, found in various jumble sales and charity shops across London (anything from an old teapot, to a rusty cog, to a vintage suitcase). They will then be asked to customise these items to then be collected and put to auction on April 30th at the Vibe Bar on London’s Brick Lane.

Brilliant idea guys, I’m looking forward to seeing some old stuff made new!

Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman speaks on the MIT campus in a talk entitled The World is Flat 3.0, where he discusses the 2007 update to his bestseller The World is Flat and provides a preview of his latest book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded.

As many of you will know, for over a year now, I have spent a great deal of time mentoring graduate designers and creatives, offering them advice, connections and often helping them to gain working placements. Today, one 2008 graduate forwarded me news of a new social enterprise that’s been launched in North London. Consurgo is an initiative that gives exciting opportunities to design students and graduates through a range of pioneering schemes such as portfolio reviews and remote placements. Brilliant, schemes like this are vital.

In this short video Dr Deepak Chopra, renowned physician and best-selling author, suggests how the environmental crisis stems from humanity’s flawed perception of reality. “The earth is your body, the air is your breath… There is a single reality”, he comments. See the full video at Big Picture TV.

Via. BonfireoftheBrands.com

Moving picture company Crush + Lovely have been asking hundreds of people one simple question.. see the project and responses here.

(Thanks to Ravensbourne undergraduate Megan Riera).

(Image: Formulaic by Frank Chimero)

Borrowing five powerful words from David Berman’s new book “Do Good Design: How Designers Can Change the World”, I recently wrote a short essay exploring the relationship of design writing, criticism and the concept of ‘good’ design. Today, Berlin’s new SocialDesignBlog.org have published the feature – Design matters, like never before.

Great to see Lauren Tan already picking up on the discussion.