Design Futures

Here I find myself again, twenty six years later at an old high school haunt, The Church Inn, catching up with old school chums and reminiscing of times long past. Forty four years of age and older and wiser as the wear of life's unexpected events turned to us all, we had mostly seen each other mature from the tender age of twelve; developing at different stages amongst the confusion of hormones and fitting in. Despite the headiness and bleary sightedness of several rum and cokes with wine and cider aplenty, we had talked of fumbling through early adulthood cluelessly, unleashed into the great wide world with naive curiosity and new friends, to achieve and reach the milestones in the ‘Game of Life’, to go onto university, to find ‘the love of our life’, to endure broken hearts and pursue rosey careers, grand weddings and healthy offspring. Indeed we had pursued those things set upon us, but it had turned out not as plain sailing as the illusions of growing up. Life had throw...

A Part Timer's Story When I began the 'Design Futures' Masters course in September 2015, 18 years after graduating with the same title in my undergraduate studies, I had introduced myself with a big bang; sporting a mass of flaming red hair, ranting about the state of the world and how inhumane we've become in our digitally connective world. I had appeared mad as I ranted to what I now regard as mere rhetoric. But equally, I was ferociously passionate in my subject, adamant that I could solve the issues over the course of the Masters. How naive I must have seemed! I had only two months prior undergone a thyroidectomy, a last resort to a genetic disease that myself and my partner had coincidentally suffered from. Graves Disease, a largely unknown hyper-thyroid disorder, had reaped misery and darkness in our life's since our teenage years, and especially during each of my father and mother's passings in my 30's. Having battled through so much, leading up...

Careless Words A rancid jolt hits thy tongue, It's bitter taste left savouring, As thou curs'ed words attack the air, It's purity plundered into weighty smog, Without a care to thy precious flowers, Wilting as thou toxic wrangles Smother it's divine innocence. Oh, how thy flowers weep,  As they hang their heads in sorrow, Shrinking as beauty and virtue are stolen, As thou acrid contempt spill over. Nancy Jim

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...

Coffin Beds and Penny Sleeps: An Exhibition on Victorian Homelessness Allison Meier, May 5, 2015 Taken from: http://hyperallergic.com/200035/coffin-beds-and-penny-sleeps-an-exhibition-on-victorian-homelessness/ In 1897, a journalist visiting an East London homeless shelter described a restless night: “Ranged in banks along the floor, narrow passages between each row, and in the gallery were 300 men asleep or half asleep, a few talking. The bunks not unlike coffins and in the dim light the men in them looked like corpses arranged for identification after some great disaster.” Over a century later, the voices of those taking refuge in the tomb-like beds are difficult to resuscitate, their experiences only echoed in the recordings of outsiders. Homes of the Homeless: Seeking Shelter in Victorian London , opened in March at the Geffrye Museum of the Home in London, draws on paintings, photographs, newspaper reports, diaries, and the scarce personal objects left behind to recover th...

BBC's Victorian Slums I've recently finished watching BBC's Victorian Slums, a 5-part 'reality' show where a group of 21st-century Brits move into a Victorian Work House,  painstakingly brought back to life in the heart of London's East End . The Work House was a place for those with little prospect of a living wage, or a sickness or disability that prevented them from working. Starting from the 1850's to the 1890's, each episode reflects political and industrial changes through each passing decade. The slum dwellers, made up of modern families, couples, single mothers, the disabled etc, experience Victorian hardship and insecurity first-hand, facing the grim reality of life for the urban poor and the truly squalor side of the industrial revolution. Watching the programme, there were some uncomfortable parallels within our modern society that I drew on. Work was on a temporary basis, much like our present 'zero-hour contracts', and fo...

I have been reading Darian Leader's latest book, 'Hands - what we do with them and why'. Psychoanalyst Leader reflects on the hand and how we have always kept them busy. He argues that our hands, through sensory touch and exploration, have helped evolve and shape the world around us. Looking at the history of civilisation and child development, Leader argues that our hands have a conscience of their own. But why and what might this reveal about ourselves? I aim to explore our hands as tools to question and create, thus evolve us. Our hands have evolved us from the first-man and define us from animals. It is through the sensory nerves of our fingers that we explore and feel; through hand-writing, painting, sewing, our hands busy themselves as we reflect and express ourselves. Taken into our connected era, our hands fidget with our smartphones as we wait for the bus. (Before smartphones it was newspapers, cigarettes etc). The device works on tap and swipe gestures but...

"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.

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

Alienation, Artist  Naikos N It has been a heavy few days, which have felt like weeks. I've been in the deep throes of Tony Fry's Design as Politics and have a clearer understanding of the mechanics of what is essentially a defuturing Capitalist Democracy we live in, one dominated by consumer demands as "... the result of incremental designed action and thinking without vision or critical reflection over a period of time". Along with the reading, the Easter holidays have involved spending time with siblings and extended family. They are examples of the hard working, aspirant middle-class families Fry talks about, who have been conditionally inscribed to 'being-in-the-world', technocentrics fused to their smartphones. The subject of when our children should start walking to school without guardianship comes up. I'm all for my daughter's independence and feel she's ready at the start of Year 6. "No, no!", one of my elder sister...

My Masters has been on much calmer ground, having discovered Tony Fry. Hallelujah, a design theorist and philosopher, voicing similar issues and searching for solutions.  He has brought clarity and vigour into my research.  As a person who considered themselves fairly intelligent, I realise how little I know and how much more I need to know. More profoundly, I've discovered that some of my initial views were incorrect. Indeed I was a raving hippy activist! The Masters has been a personal journey. Where before I felt a bit of a rough diamond, I feel a little more polished. As passionate as I am about my subject, I  now understand that no-one wants to hear rhetoric; they simply switch off. It feels good to talk about my research in a calm, informed and academic manner where people feel more compelled to listen. I cringe when I look back. I wasn't/am not a Luddite but believing that we are becoming cyborgs with the increasing adoption of 'connected' technology or that tech...