just a little reminder of how to work better..... We have been trying to keeping our heads above our ever increasing pile of work the past couple of weeks. The bricks + cartwheels Gala Dinner is on this weekend, and we are all so excited and even a little bit nervous about it. 
It's official! The b+c team are heading over to Kenya in December! We are very excited about spending 2 months in Katolo with the community and cant wait to get our hands dirty! We will keep you posted on all the details leading up to the trip...
There was plenty of pens/trace/bubble diagrams and lively discussions about different options... We are happy to say we now have a masterplan! A job well done! We are looking forward to hearing the feedback from Kenya.
Michael Franti featured on triple j today and what a cool dude he is! As Andrew Denton describes him in an Enough Rope interview - “In a pop world dominated by pipe-cleaner bimbos and testosterone-addled rock idiots, every now and then an act of class and substance creeps underneath the wire.”
A rebel with a cause, one of Michael’s many ventures is the Power to the Peaceful Festival. The mission of this festival is to bring people together through music and art to highlight the similarities and celebrate the diversity of all of the world’s inhabitants. It is a not-for-profit, non-partisan organisation dedicated to the promotion of cultural co-existence, non-violence and environmental sustainability through the arts and music. It has already been on this year BUT good news is, he has announced he is heading to Tanzania to stage a festival in February next year in a bid to combat ethnic tensions in the country. Not only will he will document this journey, he has been travelling the world, asking people what it means to be human to compile his long-term documentary called Stay Human.
This book is on the top shelf of the bricks + cartwheels ever growing library. Adding to our list of inspirational women is the story of Catherine Hamlin and the women of Ethiopia. If ever there was a story of suffering this one will make you stop and think just how lucky women in the developing world are... however this story gives you the hope that their are people out there closing this gap. 
Gynaecologists Catherine and Reg Hamlin left Australia in 1959 on a short contract to establish a midwifery school in Ethiopia. Over 40 years later, Catherine is still there, running one of the most outstanding medical programs in the world. Through this work thousands of women have been able to resume a normal existence after living as outcasts, cured of the horrible obstetric fistula. The World Health Organisation estimates that approximately 2 million women have untreated fistula and that approximately 100,000 women develop fistula each year. Fistula is most prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia.It is Blog Action Day 2008 today - and the focus issue is poverty. I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to introduce The Global Studio.
Global Studio is an action research program where international interdisciplinary students, academics, and professionals in the city building professions come together to collaborate on community-based projects. Informed by the UN Millennium Development Goals, the program promotes forms of education and practice that will benefit under-served communities and facilitate bottom-up, collaborative partnerships.
I was lucky enough to be a part of Global Studio Johannesburg in 2007 and together with other students from Brazil, New Zealand, Italy, Chile and America – we developed a project called Small Changes, Big Improvements. Click here to see what we did.
Another group of inspired and talented students returned to Johannesburg this year to work with the residents of Diepsloot in Johannesburg and did a fantastic job developing the work from last year. Continuing to focus on projects ranging in scope from housing to the environment to communication technologies and the arts – all projects were driven by local people’s interests and developed with high levels of community participation. Sustainability was number one priority and projects were developed with strong communcation with local authorities and NGOs.
You can see the continuing work of the Community Chalkboards project on Candy Chang’s fabulous website. These chalkboards in the township of Diepsloot improve information sharing between residents.
Candy explains that being public and paperless, the community chalkboard gives residents an accessible platform and allows them to share info on a daily basis, self-organize, and empower each other through local knowledge. And it's cheap to boot!
Make sure you take some time to explore her site – she is pure talent. Candy’s ‘I’ve Lived’ public art project will interest many in these times of number crunching. I know I have been dying to know how much rent my neighbours are paying. What a great idea to start community dialogue.
Back to The Global Studio, GS founder Anna Rubbo from The University of Sydney will present the work of Global Studio together with Diepsloot residents in Nanjing, China at the UN World Urban Forum.
It is critical that design education and practice should focus on collaboration with the urban poor to improve the environment and living conditions of society's poorest 20% in cities worldwide. Let’s hope that Anna and the Global Studio programme can get some well-deserved recognition and funding!
sometimes you just need to hear it, and today is Friday...... so now you'll all be ready for a wonderful weekend! We're having a master planning weekend, so hopefully we can report back next week with an update on the Secondary School for Girls, in Katolo. 
Next Wednesday the 15th of October is this year's Blog Action Day. The topic this year is poverty. If like us you haven't come across this great concept before your in for a lovely surprise. As Pia from the blog enhance the everyday said it's a "great idea to bang our blogs together to stimulate awareness, conversation and creativity about something that is in desperate need of our attention." 
Through a Foreign Lens is a photography exhibition we heard about through Frankie Magazine. The photo journalist Jay Gunning has been travelling around the world taking some beautiful photos. The photos all highlight the issues of poverty and justice. 
me!
So today is the day - Happy world architecture day! Architects are encouraged to wear their black uniform and spend a little moment remembering all those buildings that have come and gone, celebrate the beauty of the built environment yet remember the impact the construction industry has on our beautiful planet... Treehugger has some suggestions for architects on this day of days.
Who else can't wait for the loooong weekend? If you are in Sydney why not pop along on Monday to the Architecture Festival, a celebration of the city's unique built environment. It aims to engage with the public about architecture and to explore critical aspects of sustainability in the built environment.
