During Green Week (10-14 February) staff and students will take part in a series of internal events prompting us to reconsider the amount of ‘stuff’ we produce.
Throughout the week students will be compiling a collaborative map on ‘the Street’ in Granary Building, to help each other find sustainable materials and resources. People can add stories about shops, markets, and other sites where they found reused or salvaged materials. Laurence Liu will also be inviting people to create ‘gifts‘ by carefully composing found materials in a vacuum pack bag.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, you can be introduced to the Japanese art of Chindogu, or un-useless inventions. In teams, staff and students will take the art of problem solving to the level of absurdity by creating ‘better widgets’, to be trialled around the College.
The Big Data: Designing with the Materials of Life exhibition comes to an end on Wednesday. To see what the design teams have learnt, attend the public presentation in the Lethaby Gallery at 2pm. Also on Wednesday, members of Second Page club will be on the Street turning scrap paper into sketchbooks.
Thursday sees a screening and discussion of Man in a White Suit in room E003. The film stars Alec Guinness as a scientist who develops an everlasting fibre that threatens the textile industry’s future. A panel will consider the conflicts that arise as a consequence of dematerialisation.
At 11am on Friday, Jana Valencic will be discussing her proposal for a ‘recycling/upcycling buffer zone‘ to intercept waste material for reuse before it is skipped. Finally, there will be a swap shop, furniture collection and fixing station on the Street. Take along your unwanted goods and exchange them for something you like better.
More information:
Collaborative map
Gift project
Chindogu at work
Big Data: Designing with the Materials of Life
Second Page scrap club
Man in a White Suit screening
Recycling/upcycling buffer zone
Swap shop