MCAD Rural Arts Initiative

MCAD MFA alum Gregory Euclid has developed a microcosmic landscape installation entitled ‘held within what hung open and made to lie without escape’ made from park trash. the work possesses a landscape painting measuring 7 ft by 5 ft resting at eye level. 

Eric Benson is doing amazing things out in East Central Illinois.  The studio makes agri-paper using grasses and fibers indigenous to the area.  The model is similar to that of a brewery in that they release ‘seasonal’ papers – winters, summers, and let the content of the paper determine the qualities.  Reminded me a bit of Dale & Jo’s use of the river willow.  Both are really innovative uses of sustainable, local resources.

Recruiting, promoting, and supporting young farmers in America.

Some kids learn by listening; others learn by doing. Geoff Mulgan gives a short introduction to the Studio School, a new kind of school in the UK where small teams of kids learn by working on projects that are, as Mulgan puts it, “for real.”

Geoff Mulgan is director of the Young Foundation, a center for social innovation, social enterprise and public policy with a 50-year history of creating new organisations and pioneering ideas in fields as varied as aging, education, healthcare and poverty reduction.

Before the Young Foundation, Geoff Mulgan has held various roles in the UK government including director of the Government’s Strategy Unit and head of policy in the Prime Minister’s office, and he was the founder of the think-tank Demos. He is chairing a Carnegie Inquiry into the Future of Civil Society in the UK and Ireland. His most recent book is The Art of Public Strategy: Mobilising Power and Knowledge for the Common Good.

Can good design save the world? It just might, one novel idea at a time. Sparked by programs like the Entrepreneurial Design for Extreme Affordability course at Stanford University’s Institute of Design, designers are creating products to meet the needs of communities in developing countries. 

Research interests include: Labor, macro, political economy, economics of the family, social policy, law and economics, public economics and behavioral economics.

Might be an interesting case-study to support the intervention of soon-to-be-demolished buildings when saving them fails.