Exploring Enriching Environments
I found this video courtesy of Creativitea. They were using it to explain how they don’t believe in creating things under a time pressure. It really does a great job of illustrating how we all need to give ourselves more time, and space in our lives, to get creative and think about things.
Have a happy weekend, and make sure to make some space for play and creativity.
Do you have a kid (or let’s face it, grown-up) who loves to color? I preferred to embellish on the pictures themselves, but I know a lot of people who still find it relaxing to color in different shapes and colors. Now you can have an entire room, or at least piece of wall, devoted to your pastime, plus you get super-original wallpaper:
The site says you can use any medium you want – felt markers, paint, crayons – so you could also think outside the lines if you were so inclined.
I knowt a lot of people really wanted to draw on the walls when they were younger, or maybe even did. What was your greatest wall masterpiece. Leave your story in the comments below.
When does public art and playfulness interfere with the health and well being of other living things? That can be up for debate… more often than we think.
The war between whimsy and responsibility is an ancient one, and it is raging in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. Someone, and you’d be hard pressed to find who, has put a tiny door on a tree in the park. Officials took it away, saying it was hurting the tree. But people freaked out, so they are putting it back.
via A big battle over a tiny door in a San Francisco tree | Grist (caution, original article has swearing).
While the Grist article favors the tree and park officials, I honestly feel like the door did no more damage than a bird feeder attached to a tree, probably less.
I also like seed bombs, however the seeds contained in those are sometimes invasive, so you do have to be aware.
What are your feelings about adding on to or embellishing living things in order to create public art and whimsy? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.
Happy Friday everyone. Be sure to go out and play today. 🙂
Super cool!
For Turkish artist Mehmet Ali Uysal’s space is paramount, hence the title of this body of work, ‘Space Matters’. Always concerned with how to reshape the space around him, in his art he has achieved this exploration seamlessly. A giant clothespin pinching the landscape, Uysal takes the place of the work as the cause for creating the work. In the end, the gallery space becomes part of the art work, its’ material, form and content. The context becomes the content.Built for the Festival of the Five Seasons in Chaudfontaine Park, on the outskirts of Liege, Belgium generated a bit of attention across the web. It was made for the Festival of the Five Seasons.
It makes sense since several studies have found nature in general to be calming and correlates with an increase in concentration.
What many landscape architects and designers know intuitively is increasingly becoming proven scientifically. In fact, more and more exciting research appears showing the cognitive and mental health benefits of being out in nature — in places like parks, or even just meandering down leafy streets. According to The New York Times, a new study from Scotland shows that “brain fatigue” can be eased by simply walking a half-mile through a park.
In The New York Times’ Well blog, Gretchen Reynolds writes that “scientists have known for some time that the human brain’s ability to stay calm and focused is limited and can be overwhelmed by the constant noise and hectic, jangling demands of city living, sometimes resulting in a condition informally known as brain fatigue.”
Green spaces help alleviate brain fatigue because they are “calming” and require “less of our so-called directed mental attention than busy, urban streets…
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This article in the NYTimes really drives home for me the need to let everyone learn how to play and create on their own. The thesis of the article and the book it’s reviewing is basically that the next generation of workers will need to be able to identify needs and figure out how they can fill those needs, and monetize it.
“Today,” [book author Tony Wagner] said via e-mail, “because knowledge is available on every Internet-connected device, what you know matters far less than what you can do with what you know. The capacity to innovate — the ability to solve problems creatively or bring new possibilities to life — and skills like critical thinking, communication and collaboration are far more important than academic knowledge. As one executive told me, ‘We can teach new hires the content, and we will have to because it continues to change, but we can’t teach them how to think — to ask the right questions — and to take initiative.’ ”
Ok, so how do we teach kids to be innovative? Play! Play play play! Creativity! The opportunity for boredom, as one study recently found, and free play. Letting kids be kids! Letting them take stuff apart and put it back together. Letting them get messy and innovative!
So let your kids, and yourself, have some unstructured play time. It’s good for your brain, and will help you keep your job, or find or even make a new one.
Veggies can be a powerful tool to fight obesity, food deserts, and create beautification and community engagement. This blog post is a great example…
This is a great exercise in demonstrating a connection to one’s environment, plus it’s fun! And a great example of how you’re never too old to be playful and maybe a little silly.
A great example of re-energizing public space and making it more green and friendly.
Mental Flowers 