Beautiful Trouble is a new book and web toolbox that puts the accumulated wisdom of decades of creative protest into the hands of the next generation of change-makers.
Combining practical and theoretical resources for creative activism this amazing book will be helpful to any Occupy Designers in need of creative inspiration.
More info: http://beautifultrouble.org/
Debt is everywhere. It designs our lives and the whole world.
Debt takes the power from the people and gives it in to the hands of bankers and experts. But Debt wasn’t always what it is today. Can we imagine a different relation to Debt?
Our friends at Memefest are calling for work for their ‘friendly competition’ on Debt for 2012.
Each year, Memefest singles out a text and/or image that serves as a focal point for a critical take on the current media and communication environment. In order to enable creative approaches based on various interdisciplinary, practical, and theoretical perspectives, participation is invited in different categories.
The friendly competition has three main divisions: Visual communication practice, Critical writing and Beyond…. It is open to anyone who wants to participate. Any artist, activist, writer, designer, malcontent, educator or media manipulator can enter. There is no age restriction. The only limit is your creativity and imagination.
Visual communication practice and Critical writing are conceptualized around the same theme. Beyond… has separate outlines.
In order to get the best possible in-depth understanding of your work, we will categorize all submissions in two fields: Student/Academic and Non-academic.
You can register your works in one or more categories. However, a particular work can compete in one category only.
Check here for more info about the category that is most interesting for you.
Participation is free of charge!
Deadline for your submissions is May 20th 2012!
Mainstream curriculum in schools, universities, academies and colleges trains us to become exploited cultural workers. Yet many lecturers, teachers and students out there are working to resist this and create alternatives.
What we all need is an anti-precarity alternative education curriculum!
After months of research, meetings and debates, the Precarious Workers Brigade have finally put together a resource pack:
Training for exploitation? Towards an alternative curriculum
It’s for use by students, teachers and cultural workers to address free and precarious labour in the arts, design, education and the creative industries.
Download it, read it and spread the word!
Graph of the week: why everything George Osborne says about the economy is wrong. That tiny yellow blob on the UK bar is what British politics is obsessed by – the government’s debt. That monstrous green chunk is the great unmentionable – the financial system’s debt. A catastrophe in waiting.
We’ve received this message from Occupy Design friends, Brave New Alps in Italy, asking for Designers partcipation.
Designers’ Inquiry wants to investigate the social profile of designers today.
Using a questionnaire, we wants to capture and reflect on the complex and often precarious condition that characterises the experience of working in the field of contemporary design.
It is an open inquiry and there are no right or wrong answers. The information you are sending us (anonymously) will be included in the analysis as well as in the presentation of the results.
For our research it is important to also gather personal voices, so please feel free to comment questions throughout the questionnaire.
The survey will remain open until the 20th May 2012 and it takes about 15 minutes to fill it out.
“The scale of the support currently provided to UK banks has fallen from a peak of £955 billion to £512 billion, but the amount of cash currently borrowed by the Government to support banks has risen by £7 billion since December 2009. It is likely the taxpayer will be providing support for years to come.”
National Audit Office
This year as part of their student awards D&AD released a brief to rebrand the City Of London. The project set by Venture Three, stated that this was a valid brief because “we need the city to work for our savings and our student loans.” Students, who are one of the groups who had suffered the most as a result of the banking crisis what with widescale withdrawal of higher education funding and the tripling of tuition fees, were now being asked to use their talent, supress their anger and rebrand the very people who were causing their hardship in the first place. At Occupy Design we don’t think this is acceptable, so we’ve set up a ‘debranding’ competition to allow you to say what you really feel about the City of London.
Download an A3 PDF Brief to stick up on your studio/college wall here.
How exactly is the 1% able to exploit so successfully the rest of society? Part of the problem is that most people have little or no idea how global finance works, hidden behind descriptions deliberately designed to confuse: ‘credit default swaps’, ‘asset backed securities’, ‘deriatives’, ‘private finance intiatives’ this is completely understandable.
But what does the financial system look like? What social relationships does it promote or restrict or even destroy? How can we show this and explain it to people so they understand and can act as informed citizens?
Occupy Design UK received this curious request from trend forecasting, brand strategy company The Future Laboratory. We have documented the letter and our response below…
Hello,
Thanks for getting back to me on Twitter, I would love to know if there are any Occupy Design items available to get my hands on?
I am writing from London based trend forecasting and brand innovation consultancy The Future Laboratory. We work with clients worldwide to create brand strategy and innovation, aswell as publish an online trend portal called LS:N Global.
It would be great to get hold of any posters, papers or leaflets Occupy Design UK have created, as I’d really like to write about the initiative. I have also contacted The Occupied Times to try and get hold of past issues.
Would you be able to send me info if there are items I can get hold of or purchase? I think it’s such a great and relevant idea.
Look forward to hearing from you,
J*****
Our response…
Dear J***** @ The Future Laboratory,
We got your email and are glad that you are aware of the relevance of the Occupy movement. We are considering your request to get your hands on some of our items.
What we need to do is to establish exactly why you want to learn about our movement. Occupy is resisting encroaching corporatism around the world. Can you please explain how it is that your clients intend to use any material we were to provide?
We are concerned that anything we give you could be used against the aims of our movement. How can you reassure us that you will act in good faith?
You must understand that your corporate clients have created a situation in which civic and democratic processes have been eroded to such an extent that Occupy has had to create movements of resistance in city centres around the world.
Your corporate clients have spent the past fifty years ignoring the warnings of environmental scientists, and now their actions put the vary stability of ecological systems at risk.
Your clients, the big brands, have worked to marginalise and destroy the capacity of civic society to regulate the the financial sector. Consequently, ordinary people are facing severe austerity measures for the reckless behaviour of the financial class. Meanwhile, the entire country is on the brink of financial ruin. It is clear that corporatism is a threat to the well-being of everyone except extraordinarily privileged – the 1%, the bosses of the brands you are working for.
We have decided that we need some proof that you and your clients do actually acknowledge, as you say, the ‘relevance’ of our movement. We have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you, and your clients, to acknowledge the role of corporatism in escalating social and ecological crises. This acknowledgement must include a commitment to make amends. If your clients are sincere they will surely agree to remediating the damage they have caused to the earth and starting the work of building more just and sustainable social institutions.
If your clients are capable of taking responsibility for their activities, this will allow us to forgive old scores and start to trust you in the future. Please send the letter of acknowledgement, signed by the CEOs of all your clients, to info@occupydesign.org.uk. In order to share this moment with others we also ask that you make this statement public by buying space in a friendly newspaper. If you fail to provide us with this token gesture, we can have little faith in your good will and we cannot send you any Occupy material.
We would like to think that the current crisis conditions have opened your eyes to the wrongs which have been done by your clients. Unfortunately, there is no evidence to indicate that they have decided to work for the good of humanity and the planet, so we are expecting them to continue to disappoint us with their wrong-doings.
Regards,
Occupy Design UK
The Occupy Design Workshop coincided with the release of The Occupier, a poster newspaper printed to get more images out on the streets. Following in the footsteps of the Poster version of the Occupied Wall Street Journal, designers and artists were asked to produce large format posters that could be used in a variety of circumstances.
As it says on the cover “These posters are for distribution, putting up on wall, corridors and in your workplace. This is one of many initiatives aimed at opening up a debate in the public sphere about the current crisis. We realise the way out will not be simple, but in order to find creative solutions we need to hear alternative voices and the need to be amplified”
Here are some pictures of the paper – if you are interested in distributing some copies or want to design a poster for the next one get in touch: info[@]cactusnetwork.org.uk
An image gallery on our Flickr of the weekends events
The Occupy Design Workshop coincided with the release of The Occupier, a poster newspaper
The City of London has wrecked the world economy, it's time for a debrand!
Here are images from the Occupy Design launch weekend
The idea of what St Paul's protesters are doing is now in the mainstream 'and we can't go back'