Nurture - more of the feminine and less of the masculine

"The premise behind the Throw and Grow Flower Grenade, is the masters of 'guerilla gardening'. The grenade shaped, clay pot contains buttercup, poppy and ryegrass seeds with the idea being to drop them in desolate places so the pot smashes and the seeds can grow and create life! The biodegradable nature of clay will dissolve when it rains. So now you can drop those flower grenades any time you see a patch of unloved wasteland, and not be accused of littering, or worse... This guerilla tactic will be in the name of Mother Nature!"

Whilst this product has good intention, the act of the masculine in the shape of a grenade, of war, fails to be critical in design. The act of war itself is defuturing. The act of nature needs to be about love/kindness, creating/making and nurturing/joyance.

Comments

Kids and iPads

So I have not long come back from a meeting with my daughter's teachers. She has not been happy and has had problems on-and-off with one girl in particular; a troubled girl who has been projecting her own unhappiness onto Cady. A recent spout in school had continued on iMessage as soon as the girls returned home. Texts in angry CAPS, back and forth. It got so heated and personal that Cady came to me in tears and I was made aware of the situation. I eventually rang the girl's mother; a warm, lovely and hardworking professional. She in turn rang the school to inform them of some concerning issues with the use of social media and text messaging. I hasten to add that our daughters are 9 years old. Yes I am responsible for giving my daughter access to the iPad. I tried to delay it for as long as possible but the majority of peers in her class had their own and I was repeatedly hounded. Initially she used it for games as I refused her an Instagram account until again, peer pressu...

The Chinese in Britain: personal tales of a journey to a new land

http://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/1622895/chinese-britain-charting-diasporas-journey-new-land The Chinese in Britain: personal tales of a journey to a new land Today, 400,000 ethnic Chinese call Britain home. But their 325-year history of labour contributions to the UK, from being 17th-century seamen to establishing London's now-famous Soho Chinatown, have often gone undocumented and unnoticed. Some of… BY ANNA CHEN 25 OCT 2014 Comments Gerrard Street, in London’s Chinatown, on July 14, 1969. In 1685, Jesuit priest Michael Alphonsius Shen Fu-tsung became the first Chinese person on record to visit Britain. While he was in the country, he went to work cataloguing Chinese-language books for the Bodleian Library, in Oxford. Since then, hundreds of thousands of Chinese sailors, chefs, students, doctors, laundrymen (and women), artisans and others have contributed much to British society, although this has gone largely undocumented...

The Battle of Two Wolves

I have always loved this quote but it seems much more poignant now.

Design Futures

Search This Blog