Studio 61: What's happening? What happened?
Reggae, queer punk, trees, biodesign, management science, love...
It was a buzzy week at Studio 61…
What’s Happening…
Insight Salon: Biodesign with ‘Other Species’
We’re starting an exciting collaboration with ‘Other Species’, a project emerging from the buzzy MA in Biodesign. We’ll be hosting an Insight Salon on the evening of Tuesday 7th June. Book a free ticket here if you’d like to come along. Here is the domain we’ll be exploring:
New Collaborators: The Tree Musketeers
The Tree Musketeers are a collective that run Tree ID Walks, educational workshops and lots of other cool things. We’ll be integrating all of this into the Studio. Stay tuned, book a slot, and come and explore wild Hackney…
Studio Social: The Kween’s Jubilee
To mark this momentous royal occasion, we figured an immersive Queer Punk Drum and Bass rave at Village Underground on Friday 3rd June would be appropriate… we’ll social at the Studio before heading over, so feel free to join…
What’s Happened…
Manifesto: The #Bricklife Exodus
We hosted the first #Bricklife convention and began exploring how we might transition away from our smart phone dependency. We held a Snake competition (Oli beat Hannah) on some old Nokia phones and pulled together a manifesto:
Lecture: Bass Culture, with Earl Gateshead
Earl delivered a talk to the first year students at London College of Communication about reggae history, the art of selection and other insights gleaned from his forty years of Djing experience:
Check out Earl’s latest show here:
Creative Output: Shout Out to Gantt
A Studio 61 workshop marking Henry Gantt’s birthday opened new dimensions into one of the key figures behind Management Science, a discipline increasingly shaping many parts of our lives. One of the insights was that photographs of Gantt seem to show only his head, so, (with a bit of creative license) we imagined what his body might look like:
We’ll be continuing our exploration of the founding figures of Management Science through scenarios and role-plays through a queer lens. This is a completely unexplored and exciting territory - if you’re interested in taking part get in touch!
Playbook Update: Building on InsightOS
Our Studio 61 Playbook is taking shape (this is our ‘living’ document, sharing our ways of thinking and doing). Much of this builds on the work done by the InsightOS collective
So…. due to popular demand… here are some of the InsightOS trajectories worth checking out: thinking about capitalism; a syllabus for developing cultural intelligence; a canvas for thinking through different aspects of culture; a glossary of activism; decoded elements of next-gen independent agencies, a checklist for setting up a business, a long list of creative research methods, an analysis of different social spaces, and an essay on the emerging role of a ‘professional reader’ within organisations. You can also get lost in the dozens of Trello boards that have been created
Love-Centred Design
On Wednesday we jumped on a Google Meet and discussed one of Studio 61’s core concepts: love-centred design.
Taking bell hooks’ definition of ‘love’ as our starting point, we explored what ‘spiritual growth’ might mean. We discussed the idea of using design to provide an ‘animating life force’, and operate in a way that nurtures, cares, trusts, commits, respects and acts responsible. The chapter headings of bell hooks book were also suggested as shaping a workshop canvas: grace, clarity, justice, honesty, commitment, spirituality, values, greed, community, mutuality, romance, loss, healing, destiny.
That’s all for now folks!
Leaving you with some food for thought from Baroness Brady of Knightsbridge CBE, one of the world’s 50 most inspirational people (source: karrenbrady.com) x
