Culture Present Awareness We are journeying beyond the gates and borders of cloistered imagination to realize a different identity, defined less by national borders and more by interconnected present awareness of future possibilities, a regenerative venture into interbeing, creativity, collaboration, and community.
Art Impact The smallness of individual human actions in juxtaposition with vast geological landscapes is a contrast that is at once a feeling of helplessness, but also a recognition of the power of the collective to employ technologies with little realization of the unintended consequences of our actions.
Culture Ideology The public relations machinery of the Dominion of Canada distracts the population from the actual pursuits of the British Crown and its corporations, founded upon the Doctrine of Discovery, to extract the resources of the colonies and its labourers to secure economic power.
Culture Learned Helplessness We have internalized a sense of helplessness and abdicated our power and our ability to think to celebrities, billionaires, and politicians. This is our moment to take back our power and to reimagine our social architecture.
Writing Regenerative Future How do we define the different elements of the social system to be designed through the lens of our core values? In a holobiont, we are a host to multiple symbiotic biological communities that require the equilibrium of the relationships of the individuals for the health of the whole.
Culture Pattern The problem with my family of origin is the inability to confront problems. We yell at each other, and someone slams the door and drives off. Then we retreat into silence. The same toxic pattern for my entire life.
Culture Public Relations The British Crown is pathetic in its posturing, public relations, and disinformation campaign to cow its ill-informed population to serve its economic interests. There is no longer any point maintaining any military presence in the colonies. The banks are working just fine.
Culture Time Human time, energy, and creativity are the new currency. When our time and love are considered precious, as living, breathing human beings, then money, capital, property, corporations, and nations become worthless.
Culture Clarity Ancient storytelling illuminates recurring patterns in the histories of humans when thinking about the never-ending struggle between the hierarchies they create and the people who serve them.
Culture Invitation If you do not listen, we need not speak again. I will know that you don’t love me and you don’t care. I will not throw my pearls before swine. But, if you do, we can share our table and break bread together. I pray only that we be one, I in you and you in me.
Culture Exile Who am I? A stranger in a strange land, an exile. David Bohm’s story helps me to reframe my own as an exile who turns exile into an advantage.
Culture Game I played your game. I built your wealth. And you burned it to the ground. How can we win? How can we win?
Culture Options The silence of the corporate and business class maintains the status quo in a social, economic, and political system designed to kill people for profit. However, we have options to redirect human behaviours in a more positive and life-giving direction.
Culture Conversion How to think differently about doing good as a creative person: A guide to avoiding “creative savior complex” when working on social impact projects.
Culture Power As designers, we have power to give our time to what is important and necessary and required. We also have power to withhold our labour from the very systems that are built to oppress us.
Community Design for Resilience My application for the Design Science Studio was submitted on the day of the application deadline on Friday, June 12, 2020. I learned of my acceptance into the Design Science Studio in early August 2020.
Culture A time to tear down and a time to build The design industry faces a reckoning. We either continue to build the fascist empire of corporate control or we dismantle it by refusing to offer our labour to perpetuate the existing systems.
Culture Delete Facebook The burning of the American Empire and the Earth is the responsibility of every Facebook executive and employee who might be saying to themselves, “I was only following orders to keep my well-compensated position at Facebook.”
Culture Melina Laboucan-Massimo For Creative Mornings Vancouver, Melina presented the story of her work, studies and campaigns in Brazil, Australia, Mexico, Canada and across Europe focusing on resource extraction, climate change impacts, media literacy, energy literacy and Indigenous rights & responsibilities.
Resilience Resilience To become a resilient society, we need to become the heroes and protagonists of a different story. Who are we? We are a builders collective. We are building leaders to design a resilient society.
Hope Grief A sense of hopelessness can overwhelm us within moments of a feeling of joy when we are confronted with a loss. Grief may never leave us, but it may be possible to respond in healthier ways.
Art The Jazz Kids created by Joan Chamorro “It is my wish, for those who didn’t know the vocal jazz, that through this work and these young voices they become curious about and begin a journey of discovery of what may be a source of immense pleasure: Billie, Ella, Dinah, Sarah and other many voices, male and female, are waiting for them.”
Hope We Are All In This Together We are all being affected by COVID-19. The stress of the situation and the loneliness of our social distancing can be overwhelming at times. The Liturgists are offering a way to help during this time.
Love Israel Loves Palestine These are stories of love and peace from the area that has been the iconic symbol of the divisions that are tearing this world apart. The stories start with a wish to stop a war with Iran by getting to know the other side — all by simply starting a conversation.
Art Year End Problems Music released by Roy Darnell Music, featuring scenes from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
