Just a a more general theme in a way which encapsulates the others: poverty. Could be a nice area to explore, especially in terms of behaviours, people's history and how they try to get themselves out of it, if they do!

what about "social responsability"? ...or possibly "self policing". The extents to which we should interfere in each others personal freedom's has always been ambiguous and is extremely relevant to issues regarding terrorism, smoking, 24h drinking as well as using golf umbrellas on busy streets and listening to mobile phone music on the back of a bus.

How about taking a look at geomapping and New York's 311 system? As Steven Johnson wrote in Wired, 311-style systems will likely become as powerful and transformative a tool as the census.

My hunch is that once these systems take hold and begin to reshape the way priorities get set in government, the next big debates will centre around who has access to the sum of every city's databank and who can view its traffic. Entrenched bureaucracies and politicians will want to control that information dearly. Reformers will want to see it made public and the most innovative and daring will propose creating online maps, infographics and public dashboards where every citizen can watch and take the pulse of their communities -- much less, see how their government is responding.

I bet London would do well to have a 311 system, so here's the chance to create the 2.0. Plus it would complement your visualization work nicely.

As the 10th.. SOCIAL INTEGRATION re immigration, ethnicity, religion, ageism etc. bridgeing these social divides. Intrinsic within this are the aspects of community, poverty, social responsibility, behaviour, security, well-being, local procurement etc. etc.

Education, Education, Education!

The current system continues to perpetuate 18th and 19th century values and aspirations. Completely new learning systems and experiences need to be designed that are appropriate to the needs and opportunities of the 21st century. This will require innovative thinking and a fundamantal change in attitudes towards social and economic policies and practices.

I suggest that RED consider the potential contribution of design for improving hospital bureaucracy, notoriously the most complex organisational bureaucracy of all. I'm doing some work here for Queensland Health on the issue of safe hours of work for medical practitioners. The UK's NHS has been tackling this for some time. A lot of energy is being placed in the power of "good rosters" to ensure that doctors work safe hours whilst making sure that full coverage of health services is provided. The medical workforce shortage exacerbates the issue. Some good thinking is being done in the UK to examine the roles and responsibilities of the various allied health professionals with a view to improving interdisciplinary team work and perhaps even re-aligning certain tasks (eg nurses to be allowed to give injections usually given by doctors). However, the thinking is limited by territory wars and conventional professional jealousy. RED's design approach might be able to disaggregate these issues and come up with a better way of reconfiguring hospital work patterns and practices. The outcome would be a healthier medical workforce plus a better quality of patient care.

Can design / tackle environmental issues like over-consumption, pollution from materials? can we re-design products/life styles in order to be 'in the flow' with all other species. I am thinking of the Cradle to Cradle' (M Braungart).
Can we find ways to go beyond recycling - where we use materials that can go back into their own cycle?

Another subject:
Can we change life styles/behaviours through education/ questionning purpose of our human lifes?

I think a great topic would be childcare - an emotive topic among working parents like myself, and among parents who would work if they could get some appropriate, affordable childcare sorted.

The worlds of work and parenthood are not very compatible. I feel very lucky to be able to work as I know people who don't because of childcare issues. It would be great to get some design brains thinking about alternative kinds of solutions to common issues. Some issues found among my circle of parent friends are:

1. It's a bit of a challenge initially just finding what different kinds of childcare there are and who to contact.
2. Whatever your solution, it costs an arm and a leg, especially if you have more than one child. Fine if you're loaded, not so fine if you're on a middle/low income.
3. Sometimes this feels particularly painful when you only need help at certain times (before school, after school and in the holidays), but nannies/ childminders mostly work for whole days full-time.
4. Standard office hours are not the same as school hours & there aren't many schools that offer things such as breakfast/ after school/ holiday clubs.

Any thoughts?

ALCOHOL - How can we get the idea of moderation back into society whenexcessive alcohol consumption has become the socially acceptable norm.. I am trying to look at this in Liverpool in particular by segmenting the market, finding key motivators, then hopefully producing some innovative solutions, would be great to have RED's help!

Received by email:

Zero Zero are currently piling into the many recent gov. initiatives relating to communities etc. many seem to hang around a concept of the local or "neighbourhood". this can be interpreted very traditionally, and frequently is, however we believe it needs to be thought of beyond just a physical place, more as a wider concept of the relationships existing in/passing through any defined location.
 
we see that many of the current government policies are trying to deliver large scale initiatives through devolution/empowerment at the local/neighbourhood level i.e. from healthcare through local primary care trusts, education through foundation schools, justice through community courts, development through community land trusts, etc. as well as generally using the community voluntary sector to deliver. however, with increasing individualism and social mobility, increasing cultural diversity/segmentation, more flexible working patterns/lifestyles, the rise of ageographic/virtual networks, etc.is the assumption that there is some level of coherence or "neighbourliness" between geographically grouped people true?
 
or are these policies based on a traditional/industrial notion of local/neighbourhood as a more static and monocultural environment where there would inherently have been mutual interest between people, but as such no longer be valid in our post-industrial/service/knowledge age. and would this "nostalgic" condition actually be either achievable or desirable within contemporary society?
 
we propose that alternative ideas necessary, and consequently alternative mechanisms to construct "neighbourhoods"? if so, how can they be implemented or the existing condition effected through design strategies? something we are particularly interested in is can we refind the "common", again both socially and physically. it is a place or a thing or just an idea?

I like the suggestion about the impact that design could have on how we deal with domestic waste. As I understand it the amount of refuse we produce as a country is going up by 3% a year, and how ever much we recycle that's unsustainable.

Having seen the stuff you've done on energy I'm sure that you could bring a similar kind of energy and creativity to helping minimise our use of resources in this area as well.

If you'd like to scope something out let me know and I will put you in touch with the right people here in Lewisham.

All the best,

Andrew

Cllr Andrew Brown
Cabinet Member for the Environment
London Borough of Lewisham

I am a frustrated designer who has come upon some ideas relevant to these processes. The one that is time sensitive for you is in this category that you list on your site:

Agriculture
How can design help to solve the problem of the UK's farming sector?
Can systems design problems -like provision of transport, access to markets, marginalisation of rural issues and population migration - be addressed in a design project to visualise the existing linkages and reframe the problem?

Toxicity and dead soil are two very specific reasons that people leave the land. Both can be solved now by new technologies emerging within the expanded frameworks of the new biologies. Here are two links coming your way:

http://www.soilfoodweb.com/

then from there:

Feeding Cities by your own Soil Association next week:

Conference Workshops - Friday 4.30-6.00pm

14. Soil Health - foundation for optimal plant and animal health Leading soil microbiologist, Dr Elaine Ingham, presents the latest research and practical insights from the Soil Foodweb laboratory in Oregon. Soil Foodweb measures the quality and quantity of soil organisms and helps farmers and growers to build the life in their soil and so produce healthier plants and animals.

Conference - Saturday

6.45pm - The Porter Tun
Secrets of the Soil
Public address by Dr Elaine Ingham, Founder, Soilfood Web Incorporated Introduced by Monty Don

Sally Fallon has become very important over here, also speaking:

11.10am - The Porter Tun

Back to the Future � Renewed Health and Rural Prosperity through Traditional Diets Sally Fallon, President, Weston A Price Foundation

Please, good luck in your work. I've been inspired to type you by Bruce Sterling's new little design book called Shaping Things:

"And in order to avoid that fate, we need to work. We need to tear into the world of artiface in the way that our ancestors tore into the natural world. We need to rip root and branch into the previous industrial base and reinvent it, rebuild it. While we have the good fortune to be living, we should invent and apply ways of life that expand the options of our decendents rather than causing irrepaiable damage to their heritage."

Pg 142

Thanks for the listen. I do think of agriculture in design terms, as a design problem as well as a mystery to be lived.

Kim McDodge

Kim Mc & Terence Dodge

Desperate Ag:reculture - Soil Foodweb Consulting
4004 NE 16th Ave
Portland OR 97212

503.284.7116
503.516.4794

DesperateAg.net

This is a big one, and may need some refining, but interesting nevertheless. Was wondering if you could do a project about 'redesigning consumption'.

Reason is that all this sustainability stuff is moving now towards lifestyles, behaviour and consumption and I think there's a nice (and ironic) design project in here somewhere in the space around post-materialism, anti-consumerism, etc. Of course design helped us get into this mess in the first place!

Maybe you could also design some non-material
satisfiers for needs along the way?

Hope I made that clear!
Chris

Oh yeah... I forgot

Can you also make the UK more cycle-friendly and increase take-up? Total cycle journeys in the UK are down, though in London they are booming, even though its still crap and dangerous!

Can you help?

TOPIC: Water our lifeline!
Water and its place in our lives - within the home, for agriculture, for pleasure. How do we revalue it, design systems that improve awareness and efficiency of use..... recycle it and give it the reference and care it needs throughout the environment.

What about creating/supporting/starting, places/environments, say in a town. To start ideas for improvement or any ideas which people have (obviously not drug ideas etc). Maybe the main aim/point of the place should be to, in the public, to anybody (any ages, race etc) and in general to start getting people to think about the power and difference design can make. Basically to get people thinking and that anybody if they are thinking along the right lines, can make an idea happen. Or indeed to help people realise there ideas and help them to realistically go about making (the big idea) actually happen. How many times do you hear or know people, who have an idea, but never realise it because of one reason or another.
Why not help people to realise there ideas?

Topic would be called "Change Your Mind" and would approach different ways of thinking in order to achieve larger goals.

Example 1: Our inheritted primate brains constantly keep us thinking like primates -where alpha males become automatic leaders and the underlying reasons behind achieving everything is directly related towards sex and reproduction of status and achievements through replication.

As a society, our fascination with elevating media celebrities, business magnates, porn stars, and government officials to higher examples--as well as the placement of ourselves within our workplace and among our peers-- stems from social hierarchy and thinking exactly like those within monkey clans.

Globally we think of unindustrialized nations as somewhat "inferior" because we're viewing them from a position of an alpha male monkey. The disparity we inject between ourselves and others is an obstacle we have to overcome. We're destined to fail at everything bigger than our current human existance if we can't get beyond thinking like monkeys.

Example 2: Religion becomes a means for most people to let an outside authoritative party govern and decide moral and social values. These structures lead to metastructures that usually dictate the concepts of "nationality" and "culture", which I believe repels and erodes and kind of massive change.

Responsible global concepts need an overarching global consciousness that replaces out-of-body god-based religions with an introspective and responsible individual-based religion.

Reply to David September 13, 2006.

This is the exact problem. Nothing is ever straight forward. There are no straight paths. When you want to achieve something its a dashed/spaghetti line.

Please can you write in plain English, so everyone can understand!