Design Futures

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.