Fab* Summit
Posted: May 21, 2012 Filed under: art, community, design, manufacturing, participation, research, Uncategorized | Tags: FabLab, Future Everything, making, Manchester, technology Leave a comment »
From Glee badges to guerrilla 3d printing, Fab* Summit at Future Everything was educational, inspiring and enjoyable. There was a lot to take in, but here are some bits and bobs from the 3 days:
• the fab community are really passionate about what they do
• there are some interesting new developments in the mini fab lab and grassroots lab movement
• the 40 year old threshold – those aged 40+ tend to seek out classes to learn, whilst those under 40 will happily learn from each other
• so many of the projects on display are lighthearted, playful and fun – a real celebration of creativity and inventiveness
• Instructables are owned by Autodesk (I didn’t know that)
• envisaging an open source nation is not an easy task
• it’s possible to build a small fab lab for around £3000, but not an easy job
• a shipping container-sized 3d printer is currently in open development in the Netherlands
• Helsinki is working towards becoming a fab city, with labs in every library + pop-up labs
• I want to make some stuff!
creative disruption
Posted: May 4, 2012 Filed under: art, community, design, engagement, process, reflection, Uncategorized | Tags: curating, Dundee, service design Leave a comment »
Two events in two days that on the surface seem quite different, but on closer examination are interestingly linked.
On Tuesday I went along to Whitfield shopping centre in Dundee, the venue for a community showcase, presenting the recent work carried out in the area by service design company Snook. On Wednesday I was up in Aberdeen at a seminar about the practice of curating, hearing from Iain Irving (Gray’s), Andrew Patrizio (ECA) and Emma Nicolson (Atlas Arts).
Having a design background, curation is an area I am not familiar with, but I was struck by the parallels with service design (if I’m oversimplifying curation, please forgive me!) The word ‘curation’ comes from the Latin ‘curare’ meaning ‘to care’, and as such is about the presentation and sharing of ‘things’ in order to create meaning. If these ‘things’ are thoughts and ideas, then you could argue that service designers are actively engaged in assembling, or curating these ideas. In his presentation, Iain Irving spoke about curation as more than mere knowledge management, but an act of ‘creative disruption’, a term which seems to be an appropriate description of service design: as designers, we often take an unorthodox approach to a situation, to make visible the intangible.
Obviously when engaging with a community, a lot can happen, and a huge amount of information is generated, whether ideas, memories or feelings. It is the role of the designer to sift through this multi-layered, complex material, to find the key insights, working towards a creative solution and to find ways of presenting to multiple stakeholders.
From the seminar, there were a few factors that emerged that appear to be of relevance to service design.
We have a duty to care for the stories we collect otherwise we risk steeping into an exploitative relationship. If we accept the role of curator, then with this comes power as we effectively become the gatekeepers. Therefore I believe it is incredibly important that we act with integrity, being clear about the role the participants have in the process, taking the time to honour their contributions and making sure that the work we do contributes real value to the community. Design research is often ‘quick and dirty’, but it needs to have depth and sensitivity – we can bring a fresh approach to a complex situation, but there is always a danger of oversimplifying, or failing to see the bigger picture.
Thinking about curatorial practice has shed some light on some thoughts I have been having around the service design knife-edge, where our greatest strength is also potentially our biggest challenge. We just need to ensure that our ‘creative disruption’ has the real lasting value that we aspire to.
(above image: work by Sharon Woods)
Culture Hack 2012
Posted: May 1, 2012 Filed under: art, design, innovation, Uncategorized | Tags: coding, Culture Hack, Glasgow, hack event Leave a comment »
Rules: Play nice, share stuff, use us. So began the 24 hour Culture Hack in the beautiful Society M in Glasgow on Friday. It was an incredibly innovative event, where developers and designers worked with some amazing data – from the Scottish Poetry Library and the Demarco Archive to The List and Luath Press, to create some wonderful (and sometimes weird) websites, programmes and apps. Some favourite were FlockLight by James Baster which adds extra layers of meaning and usefulness to Twitter; David Bell’s visualisation of the Jean Jenkins field recordings, which was incredibly beautiful; and the Macbeth Parlour Game, which was a lot of fun and I could see working really well in schools – and which was the well-deserved winner of the day. For a full list see here. I also loved Jonnie Commons performance, using sounds and data from the hack. The whole event was extremely well run and the whole ethos was one of sharing and friendliness – as @roryf tweeted ‘Are hack days 21st century hippy retreats? #chscot’ I also had my first introduction to coding, using Javascript – seeing lots of boxes traverse my screen, though I wasn’t quite sure how they were doing it, was surprisingly exciting.
Shifting Cultures of Expertise
Posted: April 19, 2012 Filed under: research, Uncategorized | Tags: expertise, RGU, seminar Leave a comment »At Gray’s School of Art we are hosting a one-day seminar on the subject of expertise. Papers and practice presentations are invited on areas such as collaborative expertise for creative cultures and expertise in cross and interdisciplinary fields. The event is free and will be held on the 13th June at RGU in Aberdeen. For full details, follow the link
Shifting Cultures of Expertise CALL
Day 5: Santiago de las Vegas
Posted: May 4, 2011 Filed under: cuba, food, Uncategorized, urban agriculture | Tags: compost, Cuba, gardens, Havana, INIFAT, nursery, santiago de las vegas, seeds, soil, vermiculture Leave a comment »I met another tutor today, the lovely Alfredo Lino. He had a presentation to show me, but the classroom in the hotel that we had been using last week was full – a large group from Mexico had arrived yesterday for a similar course. We went instead to the main INIFAT building at the end of a long driveway of mighty palms. It’s a huge building with a lush garden and pond in the centre. After the intensity of the sun, the long marble clad corridors were dark and mysterious… loads of offices and bustle. It seemed there was some problem getting permission to use a computer, but eventually we made our way into a tiny back office where two women were sat at the single computer. They were none to chuffed about us using this one either, but Alfredo managed to persuade them. The lesson was about soil / compost production, including lombricultura (worm cultivation). Principles of organic agriculture, best materials to compost, how to make a worm bed and the issues surrounding organic certification in Cuba were all covered as well as the details of organoponico systems.
After lunch we went to a nearby nursery to see some of the theory in action. A few stops on the bus, down a lush and colourful lane (where I saw my first hummingbird, all shimmery incandescent green) to the most beautiful nursery. The greenhouses in Cuba are made to shade the sun and these ones were filled to bursting with seedlings, including tomatoes and peppers. A few people sat nearby transplanting trays, as everything is done by hand. Under the shade of some trees there were long raised beds of earth where the worms are cultivated and next to that a massive pile of rich compost that gets bagged up and sold in the tiendas. On the other side of the lane were more net shaded areas and organoponicos with such a rich mix of plants – ornamental, herbs, veg, fruit, trees, palms… I was given an ornamental plant as a present – as they are propogated by their leaves, I would be able to sneak a few back to Scotland in my rucksack – fingers crossed they root.x
Day 1: Santiago de las Vegas, Cuba.
Posted: April 30, 2011 Filed under: cuba, food, Uncategorized, urban agriculture | Tags: Cuba, Havana, INIFAT, organoponico, urban agriculture Leave a comment »Arrived late at night with my daughter and were united with our study visas, thanks to Maritza who had organised everything and who was there to take us to the teaching hotel at INIFAT (National Institute for fundamental research on tropical agriculture). The ride to Santiago was in a decrepit Lada that reeked of petrol in the hot humid night. When we arrived at the hotel, we were greeted by a large group of 50-something men gathered around the tv watching the baseball quarter finals. We were shown to our room, filled with heavy wooden furniture, and told to show up at 9 the next morning for the first session…
I still didn’t really know what to expect, as I had only been emailed an outline of the programme before leaving, but it turned out to be a tailor made programme for me alone – and entirely in Spanish. The first session was an introduction to the programme, the institute and the professors who would be taking me under their wing for the next 10 days. I hadn’t slept at all with the jet lag, the heat and general nervousness and all the spanish I had been assiduously learning for the past 6 months completely deserted me when sat around the table with five spanish professors! My general confusion didn’t seem to faze them and they were all very encouraging in my feeble attempts to communicate in spanish – especially Esmeralda who is my mentor while at INIFAT. I was shown a presentation about the history and context of the institute. It began as an experimental station in 1904 and has grown to employ more than 500 people (half of whom are women). They grow a huge variety of fruit, vegetables and trees and aim to increase the production of food in a natural and sustainable way, and they spearheaded the National Urban Agricultural Programme The grounds are vast, and we took a stroll around the area immediately surrounding the hotel where they have a selection of trees and fruit (including mangoes, rolinea fruit, banyan trees and the national tree the Palma Real), plus a small area of organoponicos with salads and herbs.
The rest of the day was free, so we made good use of our time by exploring the small town (we’re about 10km from the centre of Havana) and finding the local branch or Coppelia’s ice cream parlour, where we ate scoops and scoops of rapidly melting strawberry ice cream.
view from our window
Rolinea
model of INIFAT and some of the grounds
the teaching hotel
organoponico no.1 - just out the back from the hotel
personas and scenarios
Posted: March 2, 2011 Filed under: design, knowledge, process, reflection, Uncategorized | Tags: characters, drawing, personas, scenarios, visioning 1 Comment »
Persona: An imaginable or fictional description of a character created to represent different user types – a character in a story.
Scenario: A description of an everyday situation (an event or action i.e. something that happens)
This was our task on Monday, to develop some personas and scenarios. It can be a way of exposing problems and open up opportunites, as well as being a good way of presenting our findings. I have based the personas on real people I have met and spoken to, but used my imagination to pad out the details – so I suppose they are ‘semi fictional’ characters. I could imagine this also being a good excercise to do in a workshop, especially thinking up possible ‘solution scenarios’.
South Road park is…
Posted: February 28, 2011 Filed under: city, community, engagement, interviewing, open space, social space, Uncategorized, urban agriculture | Tags: Allotments, dens, get go glasgow, interviews, lauren currie, Menzieshill, south road park Leave a comment »
Inspired by Lauren Currie’s talk about her Get Go Glasgow project, and with the desire to get out and talk to people who use the open spaces in Menzieshill, I made up a whiteboard and headed out yesterday. I spoke to some allotment holders and dog walkers about how they feel about South Road park and what they think would improve the area (if anything). I met some lovely people who graciously gave their time and thoughts. I heard about the reintroduction of the allotments in the park and the efforts the allotment holders are making to create a community – two of the twenty plots are let to groups, one to a mental health group, the other to a lone parent family support group. They are trying to let the plots to people who live locally, and have plans to increase the biodiversity at the back of the allotments to encourage more bees and butterflies. Edna and her husband have made great progress with a plot they took on in July, having enriched the soil, built some lovely decking and got a load of seedlings started in the greenhouse and cold frame. Edna has lived in Menzieshill since it was built in 1963 and has seen a lot of changes to the park. She described to me the old pitch and putt and bmx tracks, as well as the old children’s fort and the skiing that her sons did down the hill in winter. Apparently in the summer it was basically a big meadow, with tall grass that the kids used to weave into dens (I remember doing this in the abandoned tennis courts in the village I grew up in in Fife). Now the only dens they see are drinking dens in the thicket of trees behind their house, and they fear that any improvements to the park would just be vandalised.
