Tilt

Thanks to Novella Carpenter (and Anne Draddy for telling me about her), Oakland can now claim fame to one of the most talked about US City Farms (well at least of the new millennium). Farm City is based on her story of living in the historic and tainted “Ghost-Town” in an undesirable area of Oakland with a 100 yard plot in her backyard that she essentially squatted on for the last decade. She built an inner city farm complete with pigs, chickens, rabbits and honey bees and her stories are wonderful.

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Designers Drinks & Social Change or DDSC is a group of fun and energetic folks in the design industry that are looking to make a different. Each month we have a topic and share best practices and advise on opportunities happening in the world. We work together to formulate solutions to ultimately create change for the planet.

Join us for this month’s talk:

When: September 16th, 2010 at 6pm EST, 5pm CST, 3pm PST
Where: http://www.tokbox.com/tiltstudioinc/ddsc
Topic: “Design Tithing: Making a living, finding time to make a difference”

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Riverford Farms, our local veg box scheme, has this amazing traveling Yurt in the South East side of London. We had been getting boxes from Riverford, but we must have missed this opportunity to eat at their traveling restaurant that is only happening during the summer. We had heard about their restaurant in Devon and we couldn’t wait to get there, so this was a chance to have something a little closer by. Only on Thursday we were hanging out with our neighbor Steve (who works at Riverford) and he mentioned that the yurt was here just until Sunday. So, we rented our City Car Prius and drove 2 hours out of Surrey, past Chartwell and Leeds Castle to this little East Coast version of Riverford farm. We drove down a one way road, that was meant to be two way, and ended up in a pear and apple orchard to our dinner at the yurt.

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What a great talk! On August 19th we had a chance to really connect and talk openly and candidly about what is going on in our industry. Conclusions were definitely made and we were able to share a lot of our ideas as a group. Elaine, Eric B, Eric K and myself were the primary group. We had a few people come in and out, but we didn’t include any other team members.

Please check out the page on our website with more information.

If you would like to join or participate, please fill out one of our contact forms and we will hope to invite you to participate.

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Information taken from CNN Health report.

Cases of severe food allergies are on the rise in the U.S. and the reasons for this are still unclear. There is speculation for doctors and experts that it is due to the overly clean environment that our children grow up in and the lack of bacteria they are exposed to. Others believe that introducing children to things like fish and nuts should happen much earlier in life than 2-3 years as many pediatricians recommend. Whatever the reason may be, it does not change the fact that food allergies can make the lives of the child with the allergy as well as the parents who are dealing with it, extremely difficult and many times scary.

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Yesterday we had a great day on the roof top. I had meetings scheduled all day with clients, accountants and solicitors (lawyers) and it was on the beautiful AstroTurf and exquisite box gardens that the urban gardener in myself was born.

We were able to harvest quite a substantial amount (see above) and one of the key partners of the Hackney Pirates Ben even made a birthday lunch for one of the MBA staff, Geetika, out of things from the garden (with an avocado from perhaps a favored street vendor). It was lovely.

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Today we had a remarkable experience working our monthly shift at The People’s Supermarket in Holburn. It was warm, inviting and enabled creative energy to really be apart of a community and get some things accomplished. The market was busy from the moment we opened at 8am, all the way until we left at 12. People came in, they asked questions and they joined in the fun with figuring out pricing!

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This past month in July, we had a fantastic first go of Designers, Drinks and Social Change – aside from the technical difficulties. The conversation, was awesome and the external chat dialogue profound, so much in fact that we have decided to have this topic for a second session this coming week. August 19, 2010 marks the day where really discussions will happen at 12am GST / 7pm EST / 6pm CST / 4pm PST.  We are going to have another public broadcast on “Are designers becoming obsolete?”

Use this URL to join: http://www.tokbox.com/tiltstudioinc/ddsc/

If you have any thoughts, questions to ask the group or ideas on this topic, please feel free to send them ahead of time to E. Rachael Baird.

We hope in two months time we will have a recording device for this so it can be cataloged on our site.

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We are two of the more recent members of the People’s Supermarket, but not any less important. This very unique venture has been in production for years and is now coming to fruition in only the last few months. Operated like a co-op, there is a discount for members and a request that you spend 1 day a month or even an hour a month helping. Whatever you can give is appreciated. It is the first of its kind in London. They have a fabulous story, based on chef Arthur Potts Dawson who has run several environmentally and organic-based spaces. The website is hilarious and very cleverly done. Please take a look here.

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Take directly from a report on BBC

Shoppers in the US state of Pennsylvania have been given the chance to buy their favourite tipple from a wine vending machine. The state has some of the strictest alcohol laws in the country and until now wine has only been sold at state-owned shops.

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