The massive yet small, everyday changes needed for
Climate Safe Economies
We are living in and through unprecedented changes to life on Earth, and although our natural systems are characterised by endurance, resilience and adaptation, our climate is changing. What can we learn if we pay close attention to the way that we live, and the way that we could live? The impacts that our economies have had on our ecosystems can and must be reframed so that current future generations can live, thrive. See all posts in Climate Change.
Remembering our Stardust Nature
In July 2020, I founded Stardust Life Centered Design. Stardust is the culmination of ten years’ dreaming while moving. The ethos behind it is that we are made of the same substance as all of life - stardust. If we remember this, we will no longer live in opposition to life but in partnership and collaboration with it.
Growing a Reforestation Revolution
The journey to planting a billion trees a year continues. In 2019, TreeSisters announced three new planting projects in West Papua, Mozambique, and in Amazonia, our first indigenous-led planting project, developed by the Ashaninka tribe. Photo credit: Aquaverde, TreeSisters planting partner.
RESTORATION IN EVERYDAY LIFE
One of the most daunting aspects of climate change is the sheer immensity of it - but is that aspect daunting or empowering? It means that everyone has a collective responsibility to be a part of the solution, everyone has the opportunity to save what has been lost. Explore how we can move from a consumer species to a restorer species.
Two decades of experience in design, business strategy and sustainability.
a big picture thinker
with a love for detail.
DESIGN MANAGEMENT - Balancing creativity, viability and sustainability
What is a designer now? What was the role of a designer in the past, and how has that changed over the past fifty years? Designers can address the unique challenges that we face today, by embedding design strategy into business strategy. Design Management balances the needs and solutions creativity provides, with the ethos of feasibility and sustainability. Explore all posts in Design Management.
INCLusive design leadership
Over the past fifteen years, the Caribbean based design firm Abovegroup has been a sanctuary of big ideas and a driver of sophistication for building powerful brands, while building a strategic design sector.
Ideo.org - Human-Centered DesigN
Our team at Abovegroup immersed ourselves in IDEO.org and +Acumen's human-centered design course, applying it to challenges in Trinidad. We also workshopped the method with students at the Artisans for Change initiative hosted by UNESCO.
interview with bruce mau
In this interview, Mau discusses the structures we have created to support our life styles, and discusses the underlying and unavoidable links between design and economies that must support and sustain nine billion souls.
Design has become the twenty-first century's
catalyst within
culture and commerce.
CULTURE CHANGE
Managing change within businesses, non-profits and societies means cultivating an environment where diverse, multi-disciplinary teams can flourish. Mentoring, visioning and applying design thinking to complex problems can create positive impact that sparks changes in behaviour and the human condition. Explore all posts in Culture Change.
antilles economics interview
Featured interview in the June 2017 edition of Antilles Economics Quarterly newsletter, From the Minds of Marketers, which showcases business leaders across the Caribbean creating impact in advertising, marketing and research.
the Seeking Amani Project
In the lush Kilimanjaro district of Mwanga, Tanzania, the creative workshop Seeking Amani (Kiswahili for peace) at the Amani Vumwe School helps children to gain a deeper understanding of themselves, their community and the wider environment.
togetherwi - design and advocacy
In creating an iterative design strategy, brand and website for a group of passionate creatives working toward a better Trinidad and Tobago, we re-discovered the revolutionary power of a collective voice, and re-affirmed our own aspirations to be agents of change.
For billions of years, nature has demonstrated that
a thriving, sustainable world already exists.
nature as mentor
Biomimicry is the conscious emulation of nature’s forms, functions and systems - in effect, it brings together the disciplines of design and biology. This emerging field which looks to the strategies of the world’s ecosystems and abstracts nature’s tried and true methods, applying them to product design, innovation, as well as tackling social and business problems. Explore all posts in Biomimicry.
exploring nature's genius in costa rica
A life-changing journey to Costa Rica's Pacific coast and immersion in biomimicry methodology; exploring interlinking ecosystems as inspiration for groundbreaking, sustainable innovations to solve some of earth's most pressing challenges.
Workshop at Northeastern College
Biomimicry workshop at Northeastern College in Sangre Grande, Trinidad, with members of their Environmental club, Citizens of a Respected Earth (C.O.R.E.). We had a fun afternoon trying out a biomimicry card game developed by Wiithaa Circular Design Agency in Paris.
young citizens of a respected earth
First keynote address on biomimicry at bpTT's School's Environmental Awareness Art and Writing Competition in Guayaguayare with about 100 students ranging from 5 years to 12 years, and first workshop at Northeastern College.