07. GM Weeknotes 08 Oct‘21📅
Hello, Welcome! 👋
I’m back! There’s been a 6 week gap in my weeknotes and partly that’s due to time commitments, but also due to the changes in my working week. I also spent 3 amazing weeks on holiday which were much needed — travelling around the Isle of Mull & the North East of Scotland.
I am now back at University, in my final year at the Glasgow School of Art and working part-time with the Centre for Civic Innovation in Glasgow — so all in all really busy! I am hoping to keep going with these weeknotes now that I am settled into a weekly rhythm.
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This week’s (and the other 6) context 📌
The last few weeks have been a little chaotic, returning to my final year and continuing my work with the CCI.
At work we are heading towards the final weeks of the Bloomberg bid, doing lots of prototyping and pulling together our story for the final submission. It’s feeling energetic and lively and I am excited to a part of this work, it’s great being back as a non-intern and a fully fledged member of the team. I did a write up (all those weeks ago!) about my final week and my presentation as part of my internship, where I learned a lot about my own design practice.
This knowledge is coming in super useful so far at uni! A couple of weeks ago as an icebreaker, we had to think about and set out our stall for the year. Creating a video of the types of design we wanted to focus on… having already done a presentation and considered this in work it was nice to spend time making images for it.
Design Projects 📌
Dissertation Doom!
At uni this week I have been working on my dissertation! The title is still a working one, but essentially it is a study / critique of community-led redesigns of the food system. It chronicles food redesigning throughout history and ends with today’s focuses, how they have and haven’t changed.
Bloomberg
My focus this week has been on my Bloomberg work with the CCI.
- I attended a fantastic storytelling workshop with the Village Storytelling Centre in Glasgow
- I have been pulling together all our prototypes into case studies in Miro — so we can showcase them and show the story easily to stakeholders
Other Projects 💻
In other news, I have been plugging away at learning pottery, sticking with my weekly class as much as possible and have even created a pottery specific Instagram now to journal my progress. I am still loving the physical process of this and I am also starting to think about ways I could incorporate more physical engagement tools into co-designing. Not just relying on post-it notes but developing a more hands-on, creative approach…. more on this to come!
Listening, reading & watching… 👂 📘 👀
Book: Radical Help, Hilary Cottman
Just finished this book, it’s brilliant and inspiring. I couldn’t get over the chapter that chronicles the work with “Ella” — all the interventions, the money spent and no focus on her and what she really needed. Fully recommend! 3 Minute Review.
Program: Kiss the Ground
I know I am late to the party on this one, but I just finished it and loved it! Inspired by the work that is being done in regenerative farming, this is a great documentary about the changes people have made on their land the US.
I’m also using a great app at the moment called Highlighted. So useful for storing quotes and text from books you are reading!
& that’s me this week!
