25 - Mushi-gotchi, Parfum and are you there, Spring?
It’s week 10, and we’re bordering on spring – I think. Monday is a beautiful sunny day – ‘taps aff’ weather as we call it in Scotland – which makes me instantly happy. I walk to PCA with my sunglasses on, taking in the surroundings and appreciating the newly blossomed cherry trees. In thesis class, we go over the mysterious ‘Annex’ and peer edit one another’s conclusions: a true sign that we are reaching the end, just that final push to get it done! Afterwards, I head home to read my idea of a ‘self-help’ book for realists: ‘The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck’, which is laugh out loud funny whilst providing some tough love.
The next day I head over to Hanna’s flat to work on thesis. We do some peer-editing and Hanna helps me create mock-up invitations for my ‘clothing funeral’. Yes, you read that right. Stay tuned for more, or hit me up if you wan’t to read about it in my thesis, HA.
On Wednesday I work on my thesis at PCA, and later meet Karen Ralph from the Research and Writing Lab for an extremely helpful session. In the evening, I meet Hanna at Le Troisième café for their amateur chef night. 3 courses for 13€: not bad, until you can barely walk from all the food in your belly!
Thursday morning begins with a class field trip (Intellectual Property Rights) to the Palais de Justice, the main court house in Paris. Stephanie – an IPR lawyer, as well as our teacher – gives us a tour and we get to sit in on a criminal court case, pretty intense, and interesting! That afternoon, we have Design Studio class, where we develop our MVP (minimum viable product) as part of the business plans we’ve been creating with help from Diane. Rica, Hanna and I work on the ‘Mushi-gotchi’, a modern-day tamagotchi to help people grow their own mushrooms. Stroke of genius, we know! Then we have Professional Practice Workshop, where interior designer and architect Marie Deroudilhe speaks to us about her area of expertise. Afterwards, Rica and I feast on pizza at Sette, delicious as always.
On Friday, myself and students from the Photography and Fashion Design courses visit Mane Headquarters – fragrance creators – to hear about the parfum project we will be taking part in. We learn about the family business and all the different types of scents. It proves to be super interesting, a real nose work-out, and I will probably never look at the perfume the same way! For the project, we have to create stories centred around our own individual scent, and then one person will be chosen to develop their scent with Mane perfumers, which will then be distributed at the end of year show. Exciting stuff!
On Saturday I work at Hanna’s with Amy. Hanna feeds me delicious Martini’s, and onion and potato soup. I’m so spoilt. I virtually forget about Easter amongst all the thesis writing madness. My mum had sent me an easter egg a while back, and of course I ate it then, oops. So I celebrate by cooking myself a giant veggie chilli and feasting on that instead, very traditional. I just hope that now April has begun, we’ll get to enjoy lovely spring weather in Paris.
20 - Pastel de Nata, Rue Crémieux and Future Dreaming
It’s week 5 of our second semester at PCA, which is strange to say as time really is flying by in a scary way. So even though the work load is heavy, I want to make the most of the next few months because it will be over in a split second, and I know I will be hit by a wave of sadness about this course finishing.
Monday begins with Social and Urban Governance class - where Hanna presents a section of Ezio Manzini’s ‘Design, When Everybody Designs’ and we look at innovations for sustainability within the realm of social governance. In the afternoon, our DSI group prepare our ‘future prism’ for the Sprout Workshop: a future world led by self-sufficient communities with a heavy investment into agriculture and our wonderful planet. Oh how we love inventing these dreamy, utopian scenarios!
On Tuesday I head to Hanna’s lovely little flat to ‘work’, bringing with me the best pastel de nata in the whole of Paris [from Nata Republic in Le Marais]. But it seems my brain is in full procrastination mode, and I spend the day forcing funny videos and satirical articles from The Daily Mash upon my work buddy - oopsie, sorry Hanni. In the end, I manage to come up with a concept for our Designer Ethics class - where we are currently writing up proposals for our individual projects. In the evening, we make our way to Gaîté Lyrique for Design Fiction club - because well, I’m with Hanna.
On Wednesday, Hanna facilitates a ‘Futuring Governance’ workshop at Le Social Bar [and on the way I find my favourite street in Paris full of beautiful coloured houses - Rue Crémieux] where we imagine new worlds and future systems of governance - there’s a bit of a theme developing here. On Thursday we continue on this wave of future dreaming by developing our ‘future prism’ further: modern agriculture and the synergy of city living and countryside farming. In the evening, we hear from artist and designer Martin De Bie as part of our Professional Practices workshop series: his work incorporates traditional craft with modern technology, including some super cool light up flutes!
On Friday morning, Hanna, Amy and I started the day with a yoga session in our classroom: an instant reminder that I need to make more time for yoga - it soothes my little soul. Afterwards, we had our minds boggled in our Design Ethics class [philosophy is mad deep] where we are presented examples of bad design by Rica and Amy - a racist chatbot and Facebook, respectively - and discuss the effects of capitalism on the world of architecture. We continue the discussion on Saturday during class, expanding it from architecture to the world of design in general, before heading to the American Church in Paris to observe the football refugee integration program [which Amy is running alongside Kabubu and REF].
Now it’s Sunday night, and I am madly rushing to finish chapter 2 of my thesis, which is due tomorrow [after taking a 2 hour Hank’s burger/gelato break with Rica and Hanna - worth it!] So I better jump back to it. TTFN! - V
As we enter our 5th week, and the beginning of a new month, you can feel the seasons changing. Week 5 has also brought about another big change, our course is now down to 5 people. Khadija has transferred to the Transdisciplinary New Media programme <next door, and so just a stone’s throw away>, and Yara has decided to return to Lebanon <for the time being> to pursue another route. We are still adjusting, and the classes feel a bit empty, but we are happy for them both, and are sure this isn’t the end of our design for social impact journey together.
The week started with our research and methodology class, where we were taught how to construct the most effective research survey for our thesis’ <survey spam will commence shortly>. We also met Sabine, our course leader from MakeSense, who we will be working with as of next week.
Tuesday was jam-packed. We began with our social entrepreneurship class, led by Malaury and Manon from MakeSense. We were asked to identify a social or environmental problem and dig deep into its causes, the impact, and various initiatives and organisations which are currently attempting to tackle the issue. Afterwards, at our weekly reading group I was introduced, by Hanna, to the concept of speculative design. ‘Speculative Everything’ is a book by Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby which poses the idea that ‘design is a means of speculating about how things could be - to imagine possible futures.’ For me, this felt like a lightbulb moment. Design can be a difficult thing to describe, especially if you don’t have that ‘physical object’ to present, but the speculation is such a huge part of the process; wanting to imagine how things can change for the better, through design.
We then had a session with Linda about conflict behaviour for our personal leadership class. We had all completed the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI), a test which measures an individuals behaviour in conflict situations through 5 different modes of responding. These modes consist of: competing, collaborating, compromising, avoiding (deferring), and accommodating. Of course, our results were varied, we are all different people, but it was very insightful to analyse our results. This will hopefully allow us, as individuals, to look at how we might balance out or improve on certain areas, in order to become more well-rounded ‘leaders’.
That evening, a group of us went to the Open Design for Social Change event at ESS’pace. ODSC is a collective which brings together designers and professionals to generate social innovation. Through this, we met a number of interesting people, including Jeanne Granger, one of the founders of La Réserve des Arts, an exciting zero-waste institution which we visited previously, and discussed in week 2’s blog. The November <rencontre> is already being planned, and at this event we hope to introduce our programme on a wider scale. It feels extremely hopeful to be part of a collective with the same ideals as our masters, and is yet another eye-opener in to what this amazing city has to offer.
On Wednesday, we had our second visit to the Draft Ateliers workshop, where we proposed our individual projects for our design studio class. The projects were extremely interesting, ranging from large-scale furniture design to Amy’s simple but effective bracelets; an identifier that the wearer is a ‘safe space’ and source of help for refugees in unfamiliar surroundings. Later in the day, Rica and I met up with Adriana, a social activist and creator of Honesty; a free-speech platform and self-coaching programme <http://honesty.strikingly.com> which aims to give people the tools to be their best selves. The end goal: peace. We are definitely hooked, and already planning our next meeting with Adriana at the Honesty ‘Heartquarters’.
Towards the end of the week, we start discussions and brainstorming for our Design for Social Impact Festival, set to take place in June 2018. I can already tell that, personally, this is going to be a huge motivator, and is giving me a real sense of purpose as to what we, as a team, are trying to achieve <watch this space>. The pace is definitely starting to pick up, and the workload is starting to build. However, I am continually thankful to have my DSI family to keep me cool and calm.
