Unlearning the Learning One interesting way to judge an innovation’s impact is to examine its linguistic influence. It’s a bit like the ripples made by a pebble dropped into a pond, the force and scale of the ripples say something about the pebble. The Hoover brand not only became synonymous with vacuum cleaners in general …
Mindspace is Handcrafted Exercising our fine motor skills by using our hands for writing, drawing, knitting and so on, engages the mind in a very special way. It boosts cognition induces a relaxed flow-state in our mind and body. It’s why such activities play such a prominent role in the socialised wellbeing movement. People are rediscovering …
The Creativity Conundrum We’ve previously blogged about the idea that we’re all born with the instinct to make sense of the world around us by practising playful creativity. That’s all well and good but where does the sustained need come from and what it has to do with our health and state of mind? By …
Designed to Move Humanity is part of nature. It sounds an obvious thing to say but, judging from the global trend of increasing urbanisation and tendency to live our lives away from nature, it’s worth reminding ourselves. We are designed to move, to cultivate. When we move, our mind and body function at full capacity. …
Sharing In Time In the Aboriginal culture, sacred narratives of creation connecting people to ancestors through land and time are called songlines. It’s an idea which suggests the past and present are one and the same and the future is now. There are strikingly similar belief-systems to be found in cultures on the African, Asian …
Unblocking So how do we go from scribbling away with youthful abandon to the arduous wielding a pen to sign on the dotted line of mind-numbing bureaucracy? Usually, in the vain hope, it will cushion us from yet more of life’s arrows? The tabloid headline describing this kind of travesty would read something like “It’s …
Squiggling Reality We are all born with the instinct for creativity, then life happens. Think “cave paintings” and ask yourself what inspired people to decorate the walls of a cave with images and glyphs? They were arguably making sense of the world around them by recreating it in graphic form. Similarly, if you’ve ever observed …
Caring and Sharing The idea of “self-care” has become a mantra for a new generation of community-minded activists. Not to be confused with “selfishness”, it happens to map rather neatly to the “prevention” agenda for those concerned with systemic models and top-down solutions. The reality of a simple translatable path between these two parallel worlds …
Who Suffers Most When Systems Fail? Should we expect the organisation that provides our housing to also support our education, employability and wellbeing needs? For this to be a question and not a straightforward statement of fact in the 21st-century is abject system failure. When systems are failing, the obvious question should always be “who …
Social Means Inclusive It used to be said that charity begins at home. That was then. Now it’s more appropriate to see the place where we live as the foundation of a new economy. An economy that makes no value judgements on the vast array of factors that determine our long term health and wellbeing. …
