Nelson Mandela.

Your walk in this realm may have ended but your legacy will live forever, Madiba. 

"No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite." - Nelson Mandela. 

The Pink Tutu Project.

This project is so incredibly hilarious and inspiring at the same time!

Via Katie at MyModernMet:  In 2003, when Bob Carey and his wife moved to the East Coast, Carey started making The Tutu Project as a way of mixing his old life with his new life, with a little pink frill. Six months after their move, he and his wife, Linda, discovered that she had breast cancer. Since then, Linda has been fighting the disease and Carey has dedicated his photography towards raising money for breast cancer research. Their goal is to raise $75,000 through the sale of his prints and an upcoming book, Ballerina, to be published this fall 2012.

The photographs will make viewers chuckle at this grown man wearing nothing but a pink tutu in absurd situations like frolicking in the snow, laying in the center of Times Square, or standing among rows of corn in the middle of a field. At the same time, we are reminded of the power and impact that this devastating disease can have on women everywhere, particularly in our own lives. Who knew a photograph of a man in a pink tutu could cause such an emotional rollercoaster!

Some say laughter is the best medicine and this project is evidence that Bob and Linda have really embraced that motto. The artist says, "Oddly enough, [Linda's] cancer has taught us that life is good, dealing with it can be hard, and sometimes the very best thing—no, the only thing—we can do to face another day is to laugh at ourselves, and share a laugh with others."

Designed for Health.

Why do hospitals have to look and feel like hospitals?  Good question. They don't and shouldn't.

Design matters, and it has the power to shape the future of health and healthcare. (I could go on for days about design-conscious innovations driven by social media...) As individuals interact in environments and with artifacts, the focus should be kept on creating positive and more engaging healthcare experiences.

Healthcare's effectiveness can be profoundly impacted by something as simple as the physical environments in which we receive care. If eastern facing rooms (with direct morning sunlight) can decrease hospital stays by 3.7 days, just think about the power design such as that in this English hospital might have!

From Fast Co. Design by James Gaddy:

"This was the question that Lucy and Tobie Snowdowne, the duo behind British studio Two Create, wrestled with when they were hired to imagine a new cancer ward in Birmingham, England. After conducting interviews with patients themselves, the Snowdownes diagnosed one potential cure for the common clinic: They made it look like a boutique hotel.

Hired by the Teenage Cancer Trust to create a space for 12 teenage patients in the recently built Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, England, Two Create focused less on the architecture and product design and instead reimagined the traditional interior design of a hospital. And in addition to iPod docks and furniture from SCP and Vitra, they designed a few bespoke objects: an end table to allow patients to carry IVs easier, a sofa made with the softest anti-microbial fabrics, and die-cut sheet magnets that patients can use to personalize their rooms. And anyone who has seen patients roaming the halls, IVs in tow, trying to avoid the banality of their rooms, can appreciate the three additional rooms designed solely to be social spaces.

Known as the YPU (Young Persons Unit), the suite in Birmingham is one of 17 units that the Teenage Cancer Trust operates throughout England."

Cook for America.

Our public schools have faced barriers to restoring fresh cooking to our cafeterias, despite public health cries to do so, for many years. Constricting budgets, outdated or insufficient facilities and staffing have presented seemingly insurmountable struggles for administrations across the country. As a passionate practitioner in the health and healthcare world, I have long felt this troubling, but was thrilled to read a New York Times piece on the topic recently, which debunked many of the myths surrounding this challenge.

It also highlighted Cook for America, a new program which believes that school food is a powerful and effective tool in the fight against childhood obesity (I couldn't agree more), and emphasizes holistic, systemic change through the creation of a foodservice force that is both capable of preparing health scratch-cooked meals from whole, fresh foods, and motivated to do so. Their motto is "school food is the solution, not the problem!" I love the spirit of the organization, and its emphasis on making these ends possible in all communities.

Their work in Colorado is specifically highlighted in the NYTimes article, which I would highly recommend.

Lastly, as a strong proponent of hands on exploration of the joys of food and cooking with children at a young age (thanks Mom), I found their Jr. Chef program to be pretty exciting. Check it out.

The Future of Play.

Swing and be free! Pop Up City on bringing PLAY back:

“71% of adults used to play on the streets when they were young. 21% of children do so now. Are we designing children and play out of the public realm?” Having considered this, Bruno Taylor of Swing & Be Free decided to install swings bus stops in London.

“This project is a study into different ways of bringing play back into public space. It focuses on ways of incorporating incidental play in the public realm by not so much as having separate play equipment that dictates the users but by using existing furniture and architectural elements that indicate playful behaviour for all.”

Swing & Be Happy. In San Francisco, do-gooders hang swings to spread joy in the Bay Area Rapid Train and unexpected outdoor locations. Jeffrey Waldman believes in this pure sense of joy so much that he raised funds to bring swings to Bolivia. Bolivia has the second highest poverty level in South America. One in four Bolivians are between the ages of 10 and 19 and out of every 1,000 teenage girls, 88 are pregnant. Waldman hopes the swings will bring a little bit of childhood back to Bolivia’s urban areas and “not just spread joy, but spread the desire to create it.”

Swing & Let Go. The Red Swing project has used this basic playset to transform under-utilized public spaces into amusement areas for children, adults, poor, rich people… What has started as a University Architecture assignment in 2007, in Austin, Texas, has grown internationally. All around the world, more than 100 red swings are hung in public spaces and just wait for anyone to sit and to create a personal moment. While the project was expanding, the Red Swing project started to wonder about the differences of public reaction from place to place. I did not manage to get access to their official website or find the results of their analysis, but if you found anything, please leave us a comment! A documentary about the Red Swings Project is available here.

Swing & Create. Melissa Mongiat and Mouna Andraos designed the awesome ’21 balançoires’ for the quartiers des spectacles in Montreal.

“A giant collective instrument made of 21 musical swings; each swing in motion triggers different notes, all the swings together compose a piece, but some sounds only emerge from cooperation. The project stimulates ownership of the new space, bringing together people of all ages and backgrounds, and creating a place for playing and hanging out in the middle of the city centre.”

Another participatory work of art is the swing pavilion conceived by the Dutch Studio Elmo Vermijs. It consists of 50 swings with different heights inviting adults and children to enjoy this joyful moment together. “A composition of moving people might arise.” Revigorating, isn’t it?

(Original work by Pop Up City)