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May 22, 2012
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We don’t share well in New
Zealand, and if there’s one thing missing in our biggest city, it’s a sense of solidarity. No feature of city life exists in a
vacuum: it’s a feeling of community
that makes it liveable and appealing. But there’s no magic wand, no convenient red button marked “love thy neighbour” at our disposal. Maybe this is why smallscale,
grassroots-led
programmes are taking hold in larger cities around the world. As Sam Eichblatt says, fostering a sense of personal connection based on shared
values and resources isn’t just trendy—it makes sense.
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A couple of Victoria University design graduates are bringing furniture-making to the masses. Greg Saul and Tiago Rorke of Diatom, a studio based in London and Lisbon, have launched a Kickstarter project called SketchChair, which consists of open-source software enabling anyone to easily design and build furniture themselves that can then be flat-packed and shipped to their door. Their goal is to complete the software and release the source code, and build an online community in the process. Right now, the pair are just over halfway to reaching their goal of $18,000 in pledges. But i you don’t have $300 for a flagship Antler Chair, there’s also a variety of other collectibles tied to various donation tiers.
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Applications are now open for the International Fulbright Science & Technology Awards, valued at a cool NZ$350,000+ each. These are the most prestigious international scholarships in the sector, allowing promising graduate students to complete a fully-funded PhD at top American universities in science, technology or engineering.
Candidates are nominated by their home country’s Fulbright commission, and New Zealand has successfully nominated six candidates in the competition’s five rounds to date, the latest being paediatric registrar and Otago graduate Nick Fancourt from Auckland. Could it be you this year?
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Motorised cupboards, babies in drawers—apparently once we had some quite bizarre ideas about what technology might enable us to do in the future. But by the same stroke, we now have video screens and personal computers galore, even if the flying cars are still a way off. Mashable’s rounded up a list of 10 vintage videos that once offered predictions of a hypothetical future.
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Data is so much more appealing in a visual format, don’t you think? Here’s an animation of Twitter traffic in London over the course of 24 hours. Tweets are shown as red circles, and retweets as yellow points moving from the original tweets towards the location of the retweets. http://vimeo.com/21391784
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If promoting understanding of mental health is a cause close to your heart, then read on. The RETHiNK Grant, part of the government-funded Like Minds, Like Mine project, has $15,000 to share among up to three creative projects that work to create social change in this area. Specifically, it wants projects that will reach a large Auckland audience with the message that mental unwellness is common, understandable and possible to recover from. Previous projects have come from the creative fields of poetry, visual art, design, installation, stand-up comedy and community theatre. Applications close on April 30.
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Dunedin is the place to be this weekend for those working in the film and TV industry; the 2011 Festival of Film and Television Craft is on at the Church Cinema, Cafe and Bar on 50 Dundas Street. The schedule includes workshops galore, networking opportunities aplenty and talks packed with practical hints on all aspects of the industry, including scripts, production, and auditions. While a few sessions with limited seating did require pre-registration, there are plenty more which simply ask for koha at the door.
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Hamilton-based graphic designer and illustrator David Creighton-Pester was last week announced as the winner of an international t-shirt design competition, set up to fundraise in support of Christchurch. It was organised by Chicago-based Threadless, a community-centreed online
apparel store that prints designs created and chosen by its global online members
(a respectable 1.5 million). And as part of its sub-site Threadless Causes, it put out a pitch asking artists from around the world to submit inspirational
designs under the theme “Rebuild”. The rest is history: online members voted Creighton-Pester’s design, depicting several hands each piecing together a broken section
of the Christchurch Cathedral, to the top. His t-shirt is on sale for US$20, with a quarter of net proceeds going toward the rebuilding of Christchurch.
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Vinnies restaurant doesn’t just serve up food. It also happens to be home to Auckland’s smallest art gallery: the Vinnies Art Box measures just 610mm wide by 1100 tall and only 210 deep. Every three months a new artist joins Vinnies to unveil a featured piece, followed by a “meet the artist” dinner. This time around chef/owner Geoff Scott is giving over almost the entire restaurant to current resident artist Lester Hall to show a selection of works from his Ngati Pakeha Inks collection. For $130, you’ll also enjoy an evening of cocktails, canapes, a three-course dinner and matching wines on Wednesday April 6 from 7pm. Hall will share stories about his interest in stamps, his career and the inspiration behind some of his work. Email info@vinnies.co.nz or call 09 376-5597 to book.
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Quote of the week
When 50 percent of the world’s building is
happening in China, that’s statistically the norm—everywhere else is the exception. —
Mark Wigley on the astronomical growth taking place in Asia
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