Overview of #daythree of DIXIV: a better life for all

Thanks to the irrefutable evidence of the 45 speakers who presented at this year’s Cape Town International Design Indaba Conference (23-25 February 2011), the question of whether design improves lives, is no longer debatable. It therefore follows that in South Africa, where the objective of "A better life for all” has been at the centre of our agenda for a decade or more, design thinking should be employed in any and all economic revival strategies. [view twitterfall]

Design is certainly contributing a better life for the Eastern cape mohair farmers, who are benefiting from having a guaranteed outlet for their produce via the initiatives of Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University graduate Laduma Ngxokolo.

On the whole, being a continent of rich commodities has not really done the majority any favours. {Note: Could this be the understatement of the year?} However, if we must as a model use an over-reliance on selling off our raw, natural and mineral resources, the very least they can do is to offer the rest of us the skills we might need to play an active role in a free market economy by putting marketing and design at the centre of all future educational objectives and infrastructure projects.

South America is a continent a lot like us in many ways – similar in that it has many countries jigsawed into a vaguely comma shape, the same kinds of abundance of national and cultural diversity, the same counterproductive rush for commodities such as mineral and fossil fuels for sale to the highest bidder at any environmental and human cost and, miraculously, like ours somehow still having managed to preserve a wealth of traditional culture and craft skills despite the plunder of centuries.

I realised that If I wanted to teach, I first had to learn_Carla Fernandez

Carla Fernandez has built a global fashion brand Taller Flora, using the indigenous (pre-Hispanic!) dressmaking skills of Mexico. To do this she had to learn all the traditional techniques such as spinning, waist loom weaving, pleating, brocading, embroidery and the knowledge of other fine hand embellishments that have been held by the rural craftswomen of the region for centuries.

Its website is under construction but you can download the book, which has some sublime images and should be required reading for any fashion design student or practitioner.

{{image:67324.jpg}}“Someone’s thinking about me” Carla Fernandez

We can also learn a lot from the sensibilities they employed in the creation of new Mexican school uniforms. Recognising that polyester clothing for children is uncomfortable to wear, as well as being a fire hazard, they began to weave their own durable zigzag denim to serve multiple functions - to be more comfortable for play, to be easy to care for even for rural mothers and to look and feel nice after school hours if, as is often the case, you have nothing else.

The colour chosen for the fabric was determined by nature – by a mushroom that attacks the cotton plants, giving it a distinctive sort of khaki tone, as well as a purple dye derived from a snail, used since ancient times in the clothing of Aztec emperors. All these measures adding up to not only ensuring the “children felt pampered”, but also making use of the abandoned factories of Oaxaca (pronounced Waka) for a production line of two million school uniforms a year. As per the example set by Ngxokolo above, imbuing products with elements of cultural relevance adds real value to the manufacturer, the end user and even future generations.

To expand the notion of Africa beyond historical boundaries and to redirect perceptions of Africa away from race or colour_Lowery Stoke Sims

Lowery Stokes Sims is a curator at the New York Museum of Arts and Design, which is at the heart of Manhattan’s main cultural artery. As part of her Design Indaba presentation, she shared with us her role as curator of The Global Africa Project – a multidisciplinary collection of art, craft and design from all over Africa which opened in New York in November 2010 and which will be on show till May 2011.

As a starting point she identifies that African art and craft are usually “a celebration of the entrepreneurial spirit trapped in the informal sector” and mostly using “material you don’t have to spend money on”.

It is from this necessity to create despite circumstance, from which contemporary African art derives its essential energy and power_Lowery Stoke Sims

Encapsulating much of the ethos of the exhibition and, indeed, the story of Africa itself is work by Roumald Hazoume from Benin. By scrounging the remnants of foreign cargo he transforms found objects, especially oil canisters from petroleum pollution, into powerful imagery. Tchin-Tchin, BP! is “an ironic working man’s version of a crystal champagne flute – and is subtitled ‘a cynical salute to the oligarchs, your very good health, “Tchin-Tchin, BP!” I also stumbled upon this image by the same artist which is absolutely incredible.

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Most of the work on display at The Global Africa Project is recycled, having this in common with a trend seen earlier in this Indaba from Dutch designers Maarten Baas, the young Eindhoven graduate whose award-winning project smoke consists of pre-existing furniture burnt into desirable statement objects, and that of art historian Renny Ramakers, whose company Droog uses designers to repurpose dead and rejected stock items, such as china and other household items, for resale. Africa has led the way in this kind of resourcefulness and may yet surprise us with more as the new decade of the 21st centrury unfolds.

Meanwhile the four young dudes that make up Fibra, an eco design company based in Rio de Janiero Brazil, make a difference while bringing awareness to the plight of the of palm heart waste by making awesome skateboards.

Then, back in New York, you might be interested to know the other South African artists who had been included in the The Global Africa Project were Zenzulu, showing their innovative twist on basketry using telephone wire, Werner and Philippa du Toit from Mud Studio and the fashion photography of Nontsikelelo-Lolo-Veleko, representing the elegance and innate cool that can be said to be the essence of an “African urban identity”. Also in was work by Heath Nash, as well as the magnificent willowlamp which was on display at the Design Indaba Expo

If you are interested to find out more about the exhibit, there is a nice article about more of the pieces here.

But, it does seem as if a new African context is becoming more attainable – when previously on an Indaba stage would we have heard the names Burkino Faso, Benin, Togo, Senegal, Uganda, Kenya and Cameroon? Not only at Indaba, but also via the new media, the stories of people from countries such as Uganda, Cote d’Ivoire, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt etc that were previously inaccessible are now hand-held and front page news for a much wider audience.

Stoke Sims had also included in her presentation images from the wonderful book The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, co-written by Bryan Mealer, about the globally acclaimed Malawian entrepreneur and scientist William Kamkwamba, who from waste found on the village dumping site made a windmill which brought electricity to his village for the first time.

With exactly the same ethos, albeit on a somewhat grander scale, Robert Wong, creative director of Google Creative Lab, had the crowd eating out of his hand with slides explaining the Google vision as “Do good things that matter”, “Add humanity” and “Every line of code is ultimately about helping someone’s life”. “What if every person, if every company, focused on surprising and exceeding people’s expectations every time?", asks Wong.

Some of the tangible ways “the flashing cursor” are doing their bit towards a better world is via Project10¹⁰⁰. He stresses the need to for company briefs to express real motivation – bringing enthusiastic applause with the comment: “inceasing marketshare by 5% is not a reason to get up in the morning.” We also saw a YouTube viral video, It Gets Better: Google Employees, which was made unsolicited by Google staff as a gesture to help others who might be suffering from stigma or gender issues.

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And, speaking of better, it doesn’t get much than this year’s Design Indaba closing ceremony featuring Hugh Masakela and a four-piece jazz outfit performing a short set on the CTICC stage - including Stimela and Mandela-Bring Him Back Home to the ecstatic audience, who had come from as far afield as Switzerland, Holland and Canada, not as speakers or media, but simply to be there.

Google guy’s last slide “Do epic sh*t” had kinda brought the house down. We had seen Burkino Faso architect Francis Kere doing epic sh*t” for his village kids, Indian Kiran Bir Seti doing truly “epic sh*t” for their kids and Carla Fernandez doing epic sh*t” for Mexican kids and I reckon it’s probably high time we prioritised doing some “epic sh*t” for ours.

Or in the words of the kindle-winning tweet from @beanbagboy: #DesignIndaba 2011: Preserve culture, improve lives, have fun while doing so.

Whoever said you can’t be “epic” in 140 characters?

Here’s looking forward to a better life for all through design.