WRUIN was started after I at repeated occasions got asked the question: How do you start writing?”. One day a friend asked me if I ever write under influence. The answer to that question was NO, but I fell in love with the expression “Writing Under Influence” and decided that I had to do something with it. And so the website WRUIN  [WRiting Under INfluence] was born.

The fact is that most people are afraid of the blank page. Writers and students alike, most of us are dreading that first sentence. With this in mind, and a glass of wine in hand, I started working on putting together a space where people can send their first drafts, unedited and full grammatical errors. A space where you don’t get judged for jotting down their brilliant, silly or/and completely nonsensical words on paper.

Its the space for bad poems, tacky novels, and heartbreaking love letters, written while under the influence wine, whiskey, weed or simply the lack of sleep.

Ernest Hemingway said many brilliant things in a simple way, one of these many things was:

“Write drunk

Edit sober”

On WRUIN we keep to the first sentence and skip the second. We better give the reader something to laugh about when they need a break from the dull mondays.

So grab a glass, a bottle, or a whatever your heart and brain desires, sit down by the computer and write write write.

WRUIN doesn’t judge, WRUIN just wants to be there to hold your hand while you get the words you have inside of you out through your fingers to cover the first page of whiteness.

It has already inspired a man in Norway to start a Lost & Found Oslo ;-)

Schools kill creativity. This simple message was the point of Sir Ken Robinson’s TED talk, now the most viewed of all time. Robinson challenges the way we view education in todays society, and highlights the fact that it hasn’t developed in the speed that it needs to, but is stuck in the old way of thinking.

The talk was released in 2006. And while much has changed since then (how many of you are now reading this on a smartphone or a tablet?), our schools have remained dully familiar. In the UK, things have arguably got worse, with unpopular figure Michael Gove damning progressive education as a ‘misplaced ideology’ and swinging the curriculum back towards good old traditional methods.

Four students at Royal College of Art in London have decided to do address this issue by developing a summer program where kids can enjoy thinking and learning in different ways. Project 42 is expressly intended for creative learners (ages 9–12) who really don’t fit into the framework of today’s educational institutions. The program will take place between July 28 and August 8 at the Royal College of Art. WhyProject 42? Well, according to the one the founders, Ed Tam:

The name is inspired by the book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. In the story, a supercomputer was tasked to find the ultimate answer to life, the universe and everything. Millennia had passed and the computer came back with the answer 42. But the people soon realized that it’s going to take a much bigger, more complex computer to arrive at the question. Project 42 was set up to help young people discover the power of the question.

The aim of the weeklong course is to bring out the fearless learner within each child by encouraging them to explore a question that interests them, and by starting with their strengths and working outwards. The theme for this year’s camp is London 2050, and under four themes—fashion, food, habitat and transport—children will be able to explore potential futures for the city through drawing, cooking, sewing, animating, storytelling, making and even coding.

The entire process will be available open-source: Project 42 will be documenting and sharing all of their experiences, methods and outcomes for others to adapt and use.

True to the principles of empathic design, the project has been developed organically, in collaboration with kids, parents, teachers and current experts in the field. Besides Sir Ken Robinson’s powerful talk, the project also bears the legacy of influential educational thinkers such as John Dewey and Lev Vygotsky. Other sources of inspiration include the Independent Project, Sugata Mitra and Logan LaPlante’s talk on Hackschooling.

I will be following the project and the team from London, which means that you’ll be able to read about the project as it unfolds. You can follow it here on Core77 and on Project 42’s own blog.

 

Connecting through t-shirts

 

First friends:

Juliet – Copenhagen, Denmark

Bram – Copenhagen, Denmark

Lene – Copenhagen, Denmark

Rodolfo – Mexico

Giorgio – Reunion Island

Berit – Copenhagen

Reka – Copenhagen

I could give you a long rant on why they look the way they look, but if I’ve done my job right I don’t have to.

Bevægelses Mentor

kiurius.com

Lost & Found Copenhagen

MOA

MoHo – Co-creative Architects

Nordic School Lab

Socication

 The T-shirt Project

WRiting Under INfluence

The MoHo Process Kit for the design of learning environments contains various tools and equipment that make it possible to design processes involving the users. In the kit you amongst others find; process plans which can be used as guides through the planning of the overall process, collection of examples, showing different ways to build processes, method cards with descriptions of various exercises and assignments and props, supporting the exercises. A summary of the kit contents can be viewed below.

Who is it addressed to?
MoHo Process Kit is designed for designers, teachers, schools and architects to focus on the interaction between learning environments and the pedagogical approach.

What is co-creative processes?
A process consists of a series of sequences that relate to each other and generates new knowledge along the way as the process unfolds. The more sequences, the more resources are required. The co-creative process is focused on creating as a team. The  focus on learning environments means that the participants get involved in the development of the physical environment, to improve the quality of the final solutions.

What is the purpose?
Involving users can produce outputs at two levels:

A) Ownership of the project.
B) Democratic processes where the context is a an fundamental parameter.

You can choose to focus more on one level than the other. you have to make sure that the users know the frame so they do not experience breach of trust during the process. If you choose to focus on B, where the users are involved in the development, you will normally embrace A as well. However, one should expect that this type of process is more resource intensive than the former.

When is it an advantage?
By involving the people using the space on a day-to-day basis it’s easier to focus on the interaction between the pedagogical approach and the physical environment and thereby qualify the design. You can work with co-creative processes when new schools are being designed, and old ones being renovated and upgraded. The framework focuses on enhancing the play between architecture and pedagogy and makes it clear to see how the co-creative process can be a part of a transformative process of change in which schools become wiser about their values and visions and what requirements it imposes on the learning environments.

How to design co-creative processes:
Processes can vary a lot, it all comes down to scope, duration and to what extent you wish it to effect the building. First you should carefully consider the goal of the process, and then decide what kind of involvement is optimal. You must also know what resources are available, then the process can be adapted accordingly. When the process is designed it is important to involve users only to the extent it is needed, this makes the process more targeted and overall more effective.

How to use the kit:
In the kit you will find different tools and props to help you get started with designing co-creative processes. It is important that you familiarize yourself with the materials and get your own experience. The various tools and props must be adapted to the process you decide to work with. It is important that you relate to the goal and the users. The answers you seek can be found in many different ways – just make sure to find a method that suits the targeted audience. Make sure to make your own reflections along the way, thus you can easily adjust the process next time you design a course.

One of the first spaces that tourist see when arriving with the buss from the various airports of Milan is Piazza Luigi Di Savoia. In this very now, the Piazza is not something that represents the beauty and cultural level of Milan. By creating a stage that is just as beautiful in use as out of use, it creates a space that literally reflects the true beauty of the city.

From August 19th this team (including students of course) co-design a plan for a new area at the school. The project is especially focusing on the tweens (age 10-13), as there is a tendency that this group of children is less and less active.

106 school projects applied to participate in the first phase – 17 schools were selected. Skanderup-Hjarup Forbundsskole were one of them. By the 3rd of December all design teams handle in their project proposal – and at least five will be realized.

We of course hope to be one of the final projects, seeing that we work radically with the connection between the outdoor design and embodied learning. At the moment we are working on the final concept and in addition to the blueprints we are collecting material from the co-creative process and writing about it in a new book. (The first edition will be printed in Danish)

The initiative is funded by the Danish organizations: Realdania, Lokale og Anlægsfonden and Kræftens Bekæmpelse. You can read more at the website http://www.droen.dk/Pages/default.aspx (in Danish)

The course of the process of the Plan B School in Vejle took place over 4 days of workshops, where students developed new concepts of learning environments based on their own needs and experiences through their stay at Plan B.

The Plan B School was a training school that was designed to give young people from 4th – 9th Class tools to be included in the daily education at their respective schools. Common to all students who followed this 10-week course was that they are all functioning normally but need more stimulating teaching not only visually and aurally, but also bodily, tactile and through various forms of movement and variation.

It was very exciting to co-create with children from this school since they, through the course, is more aware of different learning styles and learning environments then most other students. Unfortunately, the Plan B School has been closed due to savings in Vejle municipality.

The course was conducted over a 3-week period in December 2011

KG as the school is called colloquially, is going through a process where they seek both new forms of teaching, new learning environments and to expand the school through adding a new section to their existing building.

Our role in this context was to get students and teachers involved. Over a period of two months a group of students and a group teacher explored and documented the existing framework. They presented their results at the annual board meeting conference. Based on these findings 60 students, teachers and directors developed visions for KG’s future educational approach and vision for the physical framework.

Alongside working with Copenhagen Open High School we collaborated with Peter Gatys Wahlberg, In_Situ architects, who has extensive experience in the development of schools. The next stage in the development of the add-on is to decide on the responsible architect and consulting engineer. The building, which includes a minimum of 4 new classrooms, it is expected to be completed in the autumn of 2013.

Some spaces are not to be taken for granted. Some spaces you have to work hard to enjoy the pleasure of interacting with. This space, even though located under the island I’lle Seguin in central Pars, is designed to be one of these spaces. No true reward comes easily. During the day the light will shine into the cave through the openings above, during the evening the light will shine from below, showing the landscape and life underneath the surface.

A little get-away house overviewing the Norwegian shore.  With the aim of designing a luxurious, but yet simple, home that can be accessed from both land and water, this home can been seen from a far. With a heavy inner core made of black concrete and an outer structure of unpainted wooden slats, the structure changes depending on the proximity of the beholder. Time will change the wooden structure as a boat stranded on the shore, and turn it into a silver shell only displaying a few glimpse of what hiding beneath.

The project at the Glesborg Children Village served as a collaborative project where kids, parents, teachers, direction and other employees were involved in varying degrees.

Glesborg Children Village consists of several institutions (an elementary school, an after school and an preschool) located under one and the same roof. Glesborg city is located in a stunning natural area next to Kattegat, 12 km. north of Grenå on in the municipality of Norddjurs.

Our task in this collaboration was to rethink teaching methods at the school and find out how the physical environment could support a daily practice based on differentiated instruction. Like all other Danish municipalities Norddjurs has been through a period of austerity and decline in births. An attempt to save the education system in the municipality is to rethink the existing institutions and merge them, rather than to close schools in the small villages.

It was exciting to find out how co-creative methods could anchor processes of change through the physical presence created by student development and designing of new learning environments. To undergo a process of change is not something that happens overnight, it requires a long-term strategy that connects ideals with reality. The good intentions should therefore also work in practice.

At Glesborg Children Village we worked with a class of sixth graders through a sequence of 10 workshop days developing and realizing new learning environments, while we continually received inputs to the architectural redesign of the school. The feedback that we got from the students were very valuable since we as architects can’t put ourself into the role of the different users, but need to involve them as to gain knowledge about their patterns, needs and desires.

During the process, we continued developing the MoHo Process Kit, so to make it even sharper than the first edition, and of course adding quite a few methods.

The process at Glesborg Children Village lasted 2 months and the atmosphere that grew while the project was ongoing especially pleasantly surprised us. Not only was the project important for the parties involved, but other users were affected by the process as well. Children from other classes followed the projects while they were being realized, the janitor helped building, parents helped both to build and provide building materials and cleaning staff were project ambassadors at the school when the rest of us went home. Students who were very close to the project discovered skills they did not know they had and the self-confidence grew from workshop to workshop. For us in MoHo it was an amazing experience to be with and see how the people working on the project grew at a even a faster pace than the projects themselves.

To read more about the workshops please go to our blog. Here you will find posts describing the process of mapping for idea generation, realization and finally building. Look in the period between the 7th March and the second May 2012.

Download excerpt of the “Børnebyen Glesborg” report (Danish)

When posed with the challenge of creating a piece of furniture from one pieces of MDF, my goal was not just to create a chair, or a table, or something ordinary. My goal was to create something that had never been seen, or even thought of before. My goal was to create something extraordinary.

And Yes, I met both the criteria set for the challenge, and the criteria I had set for myself. And Yes, it is comfortable. And Yes, it is a chair, an extraordinary chair.

- School furniture for physical activity and learning

Educational research has in recent years focused on the fact that children learn better through the body, and if they are regularly physics active it will probably lead to better power of concentration. At the same time there is a group of students who are less physically active and therefore are at risk of developing lifestyle diseases. Finally, there is evidence that the reduced physical activity leads to increased incidence of musculoskeletal problems.

This leads to an increased awareness of physical activity and exercise and we encounter that the physical environment should promote physical movement during lessons. “The furniture” shape and location are key elements here.

The goal of the project is therefore:

1. To develop inspiring, movement friendly school furniture and furniture for physical activity, play and learning.
2. To adapt and develop the pedagogical practice in correlation with the new physical environment.
3. To test concepts and hereby uncover new knowledge about teaching with integrated physical activity, play and exercise.

The project is developed and tested in collaboration with four schools; Sjøllund Hejls, Lyshøj School, Kollerup School and Dragør North School in Denmark. The project is EU funded and MoHo has been working with the following partners during this project: Kolding municipality, SIS Functional Furniture, Institute of Sports Science and Clinical Biomechanics – SDU and the Alexandra Institute.

The schools developed educational methods, you can find the  instruction movies and read more about the project here: iMoLearn.dk

For additional information check out the project description – kids’n’tweens

How many levels is there to restraint when you don’t have the papers displaying you heritage or that you really exist? You have no right to medical care, you have no right to education and you have right to leave the country you are in. Those are the most obvious restraints, but what about the ones that are not so obvious? What about your mental restrains, after seeing what you’ve seen, after struggeing to get where you are now? Hopefully it is safer, but you are not really safe until someone somewhere have filled out your papers, telling the word you really exist, first then are you getting closer to being truly free.

When I write about projects and people that I find interesting, I often wonder “Why the heck don’t more people know about these projects/people?” You can say that I see it as my duty to spread the word, to inform people about the things going on out there, and make sure that you don’t miss out on all the awesomeness that is to be found in various places, and within people… which is a long way of introducing Communitere.

The Beginning

When disaster hit Haiti back in 2010, Sam Bloch was working on a custom-made lighting system for a weekend cabin up in the mountains. He had finished work for the day and was sitting in a bar, drinking a well-deserved beer, when he saw the news about the earthquake. Right then and there (because it sounds more dramatic that way), he decided that he needed to be there. He packed his big backpack with as few private things as possible and filled the rest up with tools. About a week later, he was standing in the middle of the disaster area with the feeling that he had made the right choice and was in the exact place that he needed to be. And although that moment marked the beginning of Communitere, Sam had already been working in disaster relief for about six years.

The name itself, Communitere—which I first thought was French—stands for Communities United In Response, Relief & Renewal.

What works, and what doesn’t

With quite a few years within the field, Sam had gathered a fair share of insight into what worked and what didn’t work. One of the problems he had identified was the lack of innovation within the global aid industry. Where there’s no margin to fail, there’s no margin for innovation, at the same time as it’s easy to argue that this lack of innovation is failure in itself.

This lack of innovation is the problem that Communitere took to heart and decided to make into its main focus. By creating Resource Centers, spaces that also know as “Spaces of Safe Failure,” they have established big workshops where the locals inhabitants can learn how to build their own homes; use the tools provided in the workshops; use the space to work on new ideas; and collaborae with visitors on prototypes and projects to solve a specific problem.

As Bloch says, “You can’t empower people, the only thing you can do is give them the tools to empower themselves.”

“Focus on solving the problems that others are not”

It’s one thing to think that you know what the people you want to help want, but actually knowing what they want may be a whole ‘nother thing. There’s also a difference between knowing what they want and what they truly need. Needs can be tricky in the sense that sometimes what you need the most is something that you didn’t even know existed—a problem that might be so ingrained in your day-to-day life to that you don’t even see it as a problem, but rather you take it for granted.

One of the problems you encounter in the world of aid is oftentimes many organizations focusing on solving the same problem without communicating with one another what they are up to, at what time, where, and so on and so forth. This results in redundant efforts, resources going to waste, as well as other areas being neglected when it comes to support, products or medicine.

Another problem that you often encounter is that some organizations inject themselves and their projects into a community without involving the locals, and without finding out if the project they want to build is truly wanted and needed. Not only does this mean that energy and resources may go to waste, but also that these organizations may lose credibility with the locals, both in the present and in the future.

Before starting a new project, organizations should ask themselves:
– Who wants this, is it the organisation or is it the locals?
– Do the locals really need this, or is there something else that is more important?
– Is there any other organization working on solving this problem?

It’s important to work closely with the local inhabitants both when it comes to locating the needs and creating a priority list. Another perk with this way of working is that it creates ownership and has a bigger chance to make a lasting positive impact on the local community.

The lack of communication between the various organizations and the problems that this engenders are frustrating for everyone involved and everyone affected by it—an enormous amount of medicine, building materials and other resources end up going to waste. This is why Sam and his crew created a kind of a “Take one / leave one” market in Haiti, where various organizations could come and leave the things they had in abundance, (and would have discarded otherwise), and pick up other things that they may need, left behind by other organizations.

Resource Centers – Tools to empower

As mentioned earlier, Communitere builds Resource Centers as a way for locals community to build itself up from the inside. Everyone is welcome to become a part of this space, and it is built up in such a way that it is self-sustainable. The first 20 (or so) locals to sign up will be allowed to use it for free; beyond these founding members, there is a sliding scale: Local inhabitants get to use it for a very low fee, the local government pays one fee, various organizations pay another, and so on and so forth.

The Resource Centers are seen as a melting pot where International Innovators can get culturally appropriate feedback on their ideas and prototypes before implementation, while local innovators can receive input and feedback from people around the globe. It’s neutral ground, a space for creating, teaching, collaborating, growing, learning and failing.

One of the ideas that has developed over the years and now is coming to life is a project called Maker to Maker. The idea behind this project is to connect individuals using the Resource Center with engineers, architects, mechanics and others who can help develop a project around the globe.

Building made from upcycled styrofoam bricks

Innovation generated from problems

Other than creating physical and interactive spaces for growth and development, Communitere works on problems and needs that haven’t been addressed by other organisations or businesses.

As in so many other countries, waste is a major problem. In some areas of Haiti, there is so much waste floating in the water that, in some areas, people can walk on top of the waste as to get to the other side of the river, using it as a floating bridge. Styrofoam is among the materials that cannot be easily recycled, so an American scientist helped them develop a process to turn it into bricks from which they build homes. The factory for these styrofoam bricks is located on top of one of the building on the grounds of Communitere Haiti.

Show your support

Last but not least, let’s talk about what is on the agenda for Communitere in the near future. In January, the plan is to start building a Community Center, specifically focusing on youth in the area. On this project, Communitere will be working with a rather well-known organization (read: World renowned).

Right now Communitere is running an IndieGoGo campaign to raise money for their the Resource Center and the Maker to Maker initiative in the Philippines. Check out the video and show your support for “Communitere: Make It Happen in the Philippines.”