There are worlds down there that live different lives and face impossible challenges. Trying to understand them means leaving behind everything we know. That trees are important to provide oxygen for life, that life cannot exist without oxygen, that light becomes energy, that to eat you just have to pick fruits. That the day is born when night falls and dies at sunset. But down there, the day reaches into the twilight zone, after which everything becomes as black as pitch.
While visual messages were once confined to the cities and places where they originated, in contemporary society they come together in a melting pot. On the one hand, this helps people to connect and understand one another. But, something that works and makes people laugh in one culture can offend people and generate conflict elsewhere. Potentially devastating conflict.
Working in Europe and only considering our own culture entails bias in the way we communicate and generate creativity.
We now find ourselves in a time of equal opportunities, including when it comes to the focus on sensitivity around ethnicity and gender.
Communicating visually is very complicated – at times almost impossible.
But as designers, it’s our calling to summarise things.
To tackle this complexity, we need a method.
Why does building a more inclusive future in the world of communication require a collective creative effort? Why should we strive for a global communication paradigm reset? Why should we eschew political correctness in favor of new representations and narratives? Why does localization play a key role in the process of building a more inclusive future?
These are some of the questions that prompted me to reflect on the theme of inclusion and how creativity is partially responsible for helping to design a truly inclusive future capable of embracing all individuals and their respective communities. Communication, entertainment, and design address the theme of inclusion from different perspectives but have one thing in common: they speak to the same people with their uniqueness, identity, and history.
Design and creativity are called upon to rethink the world from a new point of view, one that must include sustainability as the guidepost for reconstruction. Reconstruction of a violated, ill planet, in which many models of consumption which we are accustomed to are failing and short-lived. People are experiencing an eco-reawakening. They are more aware than ever of their relationship with nature, of the impact of their actions on the environment, and of the issues surrounding sustainability.
They have suddenly discovered that this all does concern them closely, and so are implementing behaviors that can impact the planet. The new creative eco-synergistic intelligence is beginning to work in favor of collective healing. In all fields, fashion, food, design, architecture, the world of startups, creative professionals are mobilizing towards a unified, vast movement which addresses the issue of sustainability from multiple points of view, applying new ideas and true innovation.
Nature is perfect, and in nature there is no waste. Instead, we have found out a thousand ways to waste, we have imagined a thousand ways to destroy the world. How can we reinvent food, or generally look at the planet’s metabolic flow and reconsider the role of human beings and their nutrition within this system? How can we get out of an anthropocentric vision of life, and set an allegiance with new species, often ignored, misunderstood, which, however, live in alchemy with nature, with soil, and substantially contribute to the development of life, and to the maintenance of a balance that man is destroying by altering all virtuous cycles? How can we create a new empathy, and try to build a different planet? Artists, activists, and designers investigate this new perspective putting the human being on the same level of other living beings, be they plants or animals, hypothesizing alternative ecologies and new relationships also by means of food. And, reversing the perspective we are used to, they do it in a provocative way, considering ourselves, our bodies, as food necessary for the survival of other living creatures.
There are worlds down there that live different lives and face impossible challenges. Trying to understand them means leaving behind everything we know. That trees are important to provide oxygen for life, that life cannot exist without oxygen, that light becomes energy, that to eat you just have to pick fruits. That the day is born when night falls and dies at sunset. But down there, the day reaches into the twilight zone, after which everything becomes as black as pitch.
While visual messages were once confined to the cities and places where they originated, in contemporary society they come together in a melting pot. On the one hand, this helps people to connect and understand one another. But, something that works and makes people laugh in one culture can offend people and generate conflict elsewhere. Potentially devastating conflict. Working in Europe and only considering our own culture entails bias in the way we communicate and generate creativity. We now find ourselves in a time of equal opportunities, including when it comes to the focus on sensitivity around ethnicity and gender. Communicating visually is very complicated – at times almost impossible. But as designers, it’s our calling to summarise things. To tackle this complexity, we need a method.
Why does building a more inclusive future in the world of communication require a collective creative effort? Why should we strive for a global communication paradigm reset? Why should we eschew political correctness in favor of new representations and narratives? Why does localization play a key role in the process of building a more inclusive future? These are some of the questions that prompted me to reflect on the theme of inclusion and how creativity is partially responsible for helping to design a truly inclusive future capable of embracing all individuals and their respective communities. Communication, entertainment, and design address the theme of inclusion from different perspectives but have one thing in common: they speak to the same people with their uniqueness, identity, and history.
Design and creativity are called upon to rethink the world from a new point of view, one that must include sustainability as the guidepost for reconstruction. Reconstruction of a violated, ill planet, in which many models of consumption which we are accustomed to are failing and short-lived. People are experiencing an eco-reawakening. They are more aware than ever of their relationship with nature, of the impact of their actions on the environment, and of the issues surrounding sustainability. They have suddenly discovered that this all does concern them closely, and so are implementing behaviors that can impact the planet. The new creative eco-synergistic intelligence is beginning to work in favor of collective healing. In all fields, fashion, food, design, architecture, the world of startups, creative professionals are mobilizing towards a unified, vast movement which addresses the issue of sustainability from multiple points of view, applying new ideas and true innovation.
Nature is perfect, and in nature there is no waste. Instead, we have found out a thousand ways to waste, we have imagined a thousand ways to destroy the world. How can we reinvent food, or generally look at the planet’s metabolic flow and reconsider the role of human beings and their nutrition within this system? How can we get out of an anthropocentric vision of life, and set an allegiance with new species, often ignored, misunderstood, which, however, live in alchemy with nature, with soil, and substantially contribute to the development of life, and to the maintenance of a balance that man is destroying by altering all virtuous cycles? How can we create a new empathy, and try to build a different planet? Artists, activists, and designers investigate this new perspective putting the human being on the same level of other living beings, be they plants or animals, hypothesizing alternative ecologies and new relationships also by means of food. And, reversing the perspective we are used to, they do it in a provocative way, considering ourselves, our bodies, as food necessary for the survival of other living creatures.