The Third Teacher Book

The stack of books I need to read just keeps growing. I haven’t made a dent in awhile. So starting now until the end of summer I’m really going to get after it. The Third Teacher is first up. A project from Bruce Mau Design, it looks at designing today’s schools for tomorrow’s world and includes 79 ways design can transform learning and teaching. It’s a lovely book full of optimism and hope. From Let the sunshine in to Get eco-educated to Put the fun in fundamentals to Dream big and be brave, the efforts of committed individuals are indeed having positive impact. Now add to this list. 

Community Connections Section

Idea 34. Imagine like a child

A STORY OF VOLUNTEER DESIGN

Personal pledge cards for our community group Lincoln Green by Design.

This article is part of The Volunteer Design Chronicles appearing on Design Observer.

On a random weekend evening my wife and I decided to sit down and write some lines about environmental stewardship. They turned into personal pledge cards for a community organization I got myself involved with called Lincoln Green by Design. The cards were designed in an eco-friendly way, made out of paper scraps from past print runs. The messages were both sustainable and witty. One of my personal favorites was “I will eat local. Food not people.” Right up there with “I will stop (using plastic sacks) in the name of love.”

Our small effort was just one part of a bunch of other small efforts by a handful of dedicated creative people who jumped in and helped make this loose collection of concerned citizens into something worthy of attention. (more…)

Majora Carter visits Omaha. Design by Metro Community College.

The Environmental and Community Design of Majora Carter 

“We create an environment where all dreams can thrive.” How’s that for a 21st century definition of environmentalism? I was able to see Majora speak at the Green Constitutional Congress (part of Dialog:City) during the DNC in Denver in 2008. It was a roundtable discussion led by Bruce Mau that looked at the future of environmental action and what it means to strive for sustainability. Both inspiring and challenging, her vision is one of finding the hidden potential of an area. Of adding the moral costs of denying future generations a clean and productive planet. And of working together to change the world. 

Design Alliance Omaha and Metro Community College are hosting a lecture by Majora Carter at the Joslyn in Omaha on Thursday the 25th of February at 7 PM. If you’re in the area, you should definitely attend.

The No Impact Man Blog

I can’t honestly remember the first time I ended up at the No Impact Man blog. I do remember thinking after I read some of the posts, “damn, this crazy guy is really doing it. For him, it is totally on.” The lead-by-example method always gets my vote over do-what-I-tell-you. And with this little experiment, by one person, all the simple 10-step save the planet plans and the dire predictions from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change become irrelevant. It isn’t that I don’t think global warming is an extremely serious issue we need to collectively deal with, because I do. (Come on, it doesn’t take a NASA scientist to see that humans are wrecking this home of ours. Need proof? Go drink from the tap in Appalachia. Mercury in fish? It comes from coal plants.)

But at the heart of sustainability, living more harmoniously with our surroundings is what we were meant to do as people. It’s where happiness comes from. And more than anything else, whether light bulbs, local/organic produce, mass transit, or renewable energy, it’s the togetherness of interconnectivity that makes living sustainably such a wonderful necessity. The human-speak you find in the efforts by this No Impact Man make it obvious: after we overcome the cravings of consumerism withdrawal, the joy and community that come from making no impact is the thing that will make the better place we’re all working towards.

The Movie | The Book