Sunday sermon

Alice Rawsthorn, design critic of the International Herald Tribune, spoke yesterday as part of The School of Life Sunday sermon sessions.

1. There are 6.5 billion people on this planet, 90 percent of whom can't afford basic products and services. Half of them don't have regular access to food, shelter or clean water. Yet when we talk about design, it's usually visual eye candy.
2. Policy makers are increasingly looking to designers to come up with solutions to social and humanitarian problems through the development of new products, systems and networks.
3. As consumers we are asking for designs to be ethically made. We need to know the life-span of a product. How it was made. How it will be disposed of. Is this design necessary. How it will contribute to finding solutions to the ecological crisis.
4. When the word 'design' is said, most people think of a chair.

Alice recommends:
Organisation: Participle
Preferred Slogan: Architecture for humanity's 'Design Like you Give a Damn!'

Referring to the hymn sheet, the 'congregation' sang a bit of Northern Soul with Gloria Jones' Tainted Love during the session and left the pews and the pulpit with The Clash.
p.s I am fascinated by Alice's side-sweep fringe. It's hard not to fixate on it. I don't know anyone who has a side-sweep.