Active Socioplastics
Grace's diary of discovery
Making a difference
I was talking to a friend about the people that made a real difference for me while I was in undergrad. They weren’t the tutors but the support staff;
The security guy Dom, who knew everyones names, a few sentences in their language and would spot when you weren’t feeling great or hadn’t been in the studio for a while.
The technicians Abi and Bim. Abi would give you a tutorial when you wanted to make something but weren’t sure (he saved so many projects). He’d help you design something so beautiful and ingenious, then you’d take it to Bim to look at how you could actually make it. He’d simplify it.
They were the people that gave people hope and put smiles on their faces everyday, and they didn’t need to get recognition to do that.
You can make a difference whatever your role :).
Fashion; a platform to express yourself
“Fashion is very important to me; it’s a platform for me to express myself. My clothes need to represent what I want to say before I actually speak, as fashion is the only way I can defend myself before I open my mouth. Paris is so judgmental and conservative—especially when you’re black—so clothes were the tool I could use to get people’s attention, to be seen as cool and to get my chance. Here in France, I’m part of the first generation born to African immigrants. We don’t have a lot of black lawyers or black doctors yet, so having a black designer doing things you don’t expect is unusual. As a black shoe designer, I’ve got a purpose: I need to show what’s possible. I’m trying to push the culture forward and break boundaries.” Camille Tanoh, interview with Kinfolk
Glasgow, I love this city!
A
s a relatively recent graduate taking the self employed path I absolutely love living in Glasgow. Coming from London with it’s hectic pace and extremely ambitious citizens Glasgow has been a refreshing, eye opening change. Here’s why I love this city.
Glasgow’s a “nursery for ideas, people, careers” as my friend says, and I would add it’s a nursery for conversations. With very little money you can get your idea started up, there’s space to test it, enough of a mass of people to get traction and no rush for it to succeed.
There is a DIY spirit that is entrenched in this city. The Glasgow Effect (the cities unexplained poor health and low life expectancy disparities) and the Glasgow Miracle (the cities booming creative industry) makes for an interesting juxtaposition. It’s a beautiful breeding ground for creative solutions. I have never met so many socially conscious people as in Glasgow!
Support is accessible here. It’s a small enough city where the networks are close, everyone seems to know someone who knows someone. It’s small enough to bump into people randomly. You can strike up a random conversation that lead to great collaborations.
Living costs are low, so you can have a great lifestyle with relatively little income. This frees up more time to work on passion projects. If you want to start a business, there are enough empty spaces for creative use of space. There are so many projects turning Glasgows empty sites into community hubs, like the Stalled Spaces initiative.
Lastly I love this city because of it’s pace. It’s big enough that there is a lot happening but small enough that it’s not overwhelming (you can actually see the outskirts of the city!) Unlike London where change is rapid, streets change in a matter of months here change is slow enough to be appreciated. Finnieston now one of Glasgow’s trendiest areas has been up and coming for more than a decade!
As a freelance creative Glasgow is a nursery for ideas, people and conversations. I love this city 🙂
100 years of beauty playlist
Could watch this all day! 100 years of beauty around the world.
What is Finlands education system doing right?
Inspiring article by Jodi Grant on After School Alliance about Finlands world leading education system. It goes against the standard idea of what education should be. They focus on the importance of play, choicem there are no private schools, tough teacher selection process and little testing. And they have one of the best education systems in the world. Amazing!
What is Finland Really Doing Right?
By Jodi Grant
This post was co-written by our Excutive Director Jodi Grant and STEM Policy Director Anita Krishnamurthi.
Last month we were delighted to be invited to attend a breakfast at the Finnish Embassy featuring Dr. Pali Sahlberg, the director of the Center for International Mobility and Cooperation in Helsinki; Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers; and Roberto Rodriguez, special assistant to the president on education. Washington Post’s Valerie Strauss moderated the panel.
Finland has been receiving a flurry of attention from education stakeholders and reformers for consistently standing out as one of the strongest school systems in the world. We were eager to hear what the Finns thought was the key to their success.
Dr. Sahlberg began by saying that Finland never set out to be the best, they just wanted to improve and do better by their children. This benchmark comes from a philosophically different place than the international competition that drives most of our debate on this issue. He proceeded to describe the other social issues Finland has worked on to ensure children and youth have a fair shot: their child poverty rate is 4 percent, compared to 22 percent in the United States; they are ranked first in child health and well-being while the United States is ranked 29th; and, their income inequality is also much lower. He also stressed that equity played a major role in their re-think—they determined that the notion of private schools where people can opt out of the system and private funding of education is not compatible with an equitable system. Consequently, there are no privately funded schools in Finland. Finland also boasts an incredibly selective teacher recruitment and training process. Only 5 percent of applicants are selected for a master’s program in education, which is required to become a teacher.
As the U.S. debates how long our school days should be, Finland offers a sobering example of why that cannot be the only solution. Children in Finland do not start school until they are 7 because the Finns believe that learning to play is extremely important—it teaches children how to get along with each other, to pay attention and focus, and to be imaginative—all qualities they think are essential to child and youth development. The country has one of the shortest school days around, teachers give minimal homework and testing is rare. They strongly believe that you test a small sample of schools to see how well a model is working and you ask the teachers to assess how the students are doing. One of the points Dr. Sahlberg made that really resonated was “Accountability is what is left when responsibility is taken away.”
The Finns strongly believe that children need to have opportunities outside of school and academics to develop into healthy, well-adjusted adults. Seventy percent of their students participate in activities run by NGOs that offer sports, music, art and other enrichment activities (and he expressed grave concern that this number was not higher!). They fully believe that these activities have merit on their own and should be separate from the school day—he actually mentioned the words “youth development” several times! Sadly, in the United States less than 20 percent of our children are in afterschool programs, and youth development is not valued as highly as it is in Finland. Afterschool programs are under constant pressure to demonstrate how they impact academic success of students.
Dr. Sahlberg spoke at length about the difference between Finland’s approach and that of the Global Education Reform Movement, which he abbreviates to “GERM.”
| Global Education Reform Movement (GERM) | FINLAND |
| Competition | Collaboration |
| Standardization | Individualization |
| School Choice | Equity—all schools receive public funding and legislation forces them to collaborate. They don’t compete against one another |
| Test-Based Accountability | Trust-Based Professionalism |
Dr. Sahlberg stressed that the U.S. and many other countries are “infected” by the GERM model while Finland has moved to eradicate the GERMs. He gave us five lessons that he thought the United States could learn from Finland:
- More collaboration, less competition
- More trust-based responsibility—less test-based accountability
- More pedagogy, less technology
- More equity, less privatization
- More professionalism, less social experimentation
The description of the Department of Education’s signature reform, Race to the Top, that followed Dr. Sahlberg’s presentation strikingly illustrated how GERM-ridden we are, with a focus on high-stakes testing and steep penalties for schools and teachers whose students do not perform well on these tests. Afterschool programs are not immune, as they are often only considered valid if they can improve test scorers rather than being evaluated on a host of measures that show growth of the whole child. Sadly there was no real dialogue about the presentations and how we might incorporate the best practices of the holistic Finnish model into our education reform efforts.
We left the breakfast feeling both elated and depressed. Finland shows what is possible—they set out to improve a failing system and have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. There are clearly lessons from Finland that support all the great things our afterschool programs are providing to American students in the hours after school. There are clearly lessons learned from Finland that can help us demonstrate the value of the informal nature of the afterschool space. There are clearly multiple ways to measure our students’ success that do not rely on test scores. But there are also clearly some big barriers and challenges ahead and for now none of the real lessons from Finland are in policy maker’s textbooks.
Should
Should is not an active word
The Happy Show
Filling the Institute of Contemporary Art’s (ICA) entire second-floor galleries and ramp, and activating the in-between spaces of the museum, The Happy Show offers visitors the experience of walking into Stefan Sagmeister’s mind as he attempts to increase his happiness via mediation, cognitive therapy, and mood-altering pharmaceuticals.
100 ways to uncomplicate your life
I rediscovered this whilst sorting out my stuff over the Christmas break. Such true advice!
From Bella Mumma
Here are 100 ways to uncomplicate your life…
1. Don’t try to read other people’s minds
2.Get up 30 minutes earlier so that you don’t rush/get a ticket while driving too fast/have to explain why you’re late/get fired
3. Get 8 hours of sleep per night so that you think more clearly
4. Stick to your budget
5. Start saving and investing every week, no matter how little you can spare
6. Balance your checkbook
7. Don’t try to be friends with everyone. Cultivate closer relationships with fewer people.
8. Don’t try to do business with everyone. Identify your target client and take very good care of them.
9. Before getting angry, ask yourself if it will really matter in 20 years
10. Focus on being a good person, not on pleasing others
11. Stay home this Saturday, and finish off that nagging chore that you need to finish
12. Kiss and make up
13. Make a weekly menu, and shop for only those items at the market
14. Ask your grandparents the best way to uncomplicate life, and try it for a month
15. Fill up your gas tank when it’s half full
16. Don’t drink alcohol when you’re tired, sad or mad
17. Pay your bills on time
18. Get an annual physical examination
19. Say “I love you” to your significant other and to your children. Studies show that more marriages last, and fewer kids use drugs, when these words are spoken every day.
20. For just one day, imagine everyone’s intentions are good because most people’s are
21. Give away clothes that haven’t been worn in two years
22. Throw out clothes that are in disrepair, and can’t be mended
23. When you have a conflict with someone, talk it out. Don’t let it turn into more than it is.
24. Know what your priorities are in life, and act as if they are your priorities
25. Tell the truth
26. Don’t cheat
27. Don’t steal
28. If you’re holding on to a ridiculous grudge, let it go
29. Clean your house weekly, so that it doesn’t become too large a chore
30. Do your best at work, or at school
31. Don’t eat when you aren’t hungry
32. Eat when you are hungry
33. Be yourself
34. Say no unapologetically
35. Cook simple meals
36. Don’t try to keep up with the Joneses
37. Pay off your car before buying a new one
38. Organise your desk at the office
39. Change your smoke alarm batteries when the clocks spring forward, and again when they fall back
40. Organise your important paperwork
41. Take only half the clothes that you planned to take with you on holiday
42. Help your children with their homework every night, and have an open dialogue with their teachers
43. Have white sheets and white towels in children’s rooms/bathrooms, because they’re easily bleached
44. Spend your time with nice people
45. Avoid drama
46. Don’t text or talk on the phone while driving
47. Turn off the television/video games/computer; they’re time consumers
48. Don’t engage in office politics
49. Refuse to gossip, or talk behind other people’s backs
50. Do the dishes right after dinner
51. Never go to sleep angry
52. Ask nicely for what you need and want
53. Walk 10,000 steps per day to help your heart
54. Do 20 push-ups before speaking in anger
55. Leave work at work
56. Don’t befriend anyone that isn’t trustworthy
57. Don’t envy others
58. Have your oil changed
59. Take vitamin C BEFORE you catch a cold
60. Don’t work more than 8 hours per day
61. Weed your garden weekly
62. Wash your car weekly
63. Have a spring cleaning month every year, and do one room at a time
64. You don’t need to be best friends with work colleagues, but build respectful partnerships
65. Don’t drink and drive
66. Don’t look for reasons to be angry or sad, look for reasons to be happy. You’ll always be able to find plenty of each.
67. Be friendly with your neighbours
68. Return emails and phone messages promptly
69. Schedule in free time
70. Don’t procrastinate
71. Do what you say you’ll do, when you say you’ll do it
72. Be more flexible when you’re able to be
73. Forgive and forget. End of story.
74. Break the consumerism habit…put a three month moratorium in place on buying anything not deemed a necessity
75. Start your diet on September 1, rather than January 1, so that you won’t also have holiday pounds to lose
76. Take care of any health issues or concerns
77. Have your tires rotated
78. Have your brakes checked
79. Have your eyes checked
80. Don’t let your imagination run away with you
81. Let go of perfection in others
82. Let go of perfection in yourself
83. Don’t try to help those that refuse to help themselves
84. Find a way to reduce your commute to work
85. Have an alloted amount of worry time per day/week, that you strictly abide by
86. Drink more water
87. Eat more salmon
88. Don’t make a mountain out of a molehill
89. Wear your hair in a classic, easy to care for style
90. Finish what you start
91. Wear classic clothes and shoes that never go out of style
92. Create a daily routine
>93. Have a 1, 5, 10 and 20 year plan for your financial and life goals
94. Slow down
95. Eat out less often
96. When you ask your husband which outfit looks best, thank him for his answer and wear the one he liked rather than focusing on why he didn’t like the other one
97. Allow your children to grow up
98. Clean out your garage, and donate anything that hasn’t been used in the past year
99. Stretch every day
100. If a relationship is over, let it go
Brian Eno John Peel lecture
Notes from Brian Eno John Peel Lecture
The way I work is not to set a goal and reach for it but what i do anyway and how I can make use of it
Exploring the idea of the arts as an economics entity
- Is art only a luxury?
- Is there a way you can create a situation in which the arts flourish?
Rethink how we talk about culture. What are we doing when we make & consume art
Definition- Culture the creative arts. Art is everything that you don’t have to do. Essential need we do with interest, highly and carefully stylised.
What is it for?
Children start world building very young. Empathy comes from imagination, humans can imagine whole worlds.
Children learn through play adults play through art.
Culture- collective conversation
Senius talent of a community
Genius talent of individual
ecosystems, richly interconnected, co dependent, no hierachy
New ideas articulated by individuals but generated by community
Altruism generosity towards the future
We’re moving from scarcity and economics of scarcity and competition to an era of abundance and co-operation. What are we going to do? We’re going through change faster than ever before. resynchronise with each other, adventurous mind games about different things. Share resources. Altruism, writers like William MacKaskell. Constantly remoulding ourselves. We work out our actions in relation to everybody else. Art and Culture is central to this.
dancing in the street barbara ehrenreich
Active Socioplastics 