this May Earthaware has been asked to contribute curriculum and teaching to a ground breaking endeavor building a week long program for 8-12 year old kids to teach heart centered creative techniques that will lead to innovative thinking in them called Camp Mosaic.

we join a team of educators, scientists and creatives from varied backgrounds to catalyze a short camp-like program which will run during holiday periods when the kids are not in regular school. content will be tied together across four disciplines through "awareness of our inner and outer universe"

after two days of activities led by the other contributors we ran a three hour mock Earthaware program with the team out in the jungle. we started by drawing basic shapes then into the humid, chirping, dripping forest... first order is beating trees with sticks to scare off pythons and cobras (not joking) then trimming and gathering materials both organic and manmade for transport in our trusty sheet back to camp. next we followed the standard proceedures of cleaning the materials and forming them into the chosen shape: the Singapore mascot, a MerLion (bottom half is a fish and top is a lion).

we all reassemble in Singapore in late September to run the curriculum in a test manner then again in December for the real deal with 120 kids over two weeks of back to back week long events

we join a team of educators, scientists and creatives from varied backgrounds to catalyze the program which will run during holiday periods when the kids are not in regular school. content will be tied together across four disciplines through "awareness of our inner and outer universe"

we ran a mock Earthaware three hour program with the team out in the jungle gathering materials both organic and manmade. next we followed the standard proceedures of cleaning the materials and forming them into the chosen shape: the Singapore mascot, a MerLion (bottom half is a fish and top is a lion)

This April saw the second annual three day workshop for the first year graduate students at Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA) which runs the program in coordination with the Oregon College of Arts and Crafts (OCAC).

17 students participated this year for the three, three hour sessions. In keeping with the theme of three we broke them into three teams. The challenge was to make a play oriented "thing" that a kid could make most anywhere in the world.

The sessions led through a stage of awareness building and materials gathering, into a drawing and designing session with discussion of the materials they scrounged from within the building and within a five city block radius. Next came forming and fabrication with the ensuing tests and failures (also known as elimination sucesses). Finally each team presented to the class and demonstrated what they made while describing how the creation is a useful play thing and can be made of found materials by kids.

and here is some video to prove it: The Cart, The Swing and The Tetherball

we especially love how Aaron points out that he bis saving these from the landfill! way to go!!!

the seed company memo book is dead: long live the seed company memo book

We are so happy to read in The Ecoligist today an interview with revered Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh. The interview crosses many topics including the effect of human consumption (and the alternate: Unconsumption). He speaks from a calm and detached point of view with no judgement, only reference and example.

Read the first section of the article focusing on the issues of mass extinction and global temperature rise here.

Read the second section here, where he illustrates that you do not need to live like a monk to have a smaller impact on our environment while living a rich and full life.

"My mindful consumption is the way out"

We take these teachings as further acknowledgement that making decisions in our daily lives to consume significantly less leads to a better life.

in section one and two HHDL connects environment with individual, political and spiritual decisions among other topics

in section three we hear about education, science and spirituality

 we are beyond humbled in being asked to write an environmental curriculum to be taught in the Tibetan Children's Villages throughout exiled Tibet, overseen by HHDL

Earthaware soul sister Karen Weiss runs a bi-monthly project in Vancouver, Washington for girls going through a number of challenging life situations. she uses shared creation art projects as the vehicle for personal transformation with groups of girls ranging in age from 8-16.

starting with a kit of re-use and found objects the group worked this past Wednesday to weave Native American Dreamcatchers, objects that they can place thier bright future visions into for manifestation in thier lives.

Karen lists the ingredients used to cook up this amazing project:

• reclaimed "bailing wire" I cut myself @ a friends barn when feeding and working her horses - RE-USE
• Freshly cut birch branches from my weeping birch in front yard - RE-USE
• Polished sea glass I collected from all around the world - RE-USE
• Misc shells, wood and beads also collected from around the world - RE-USE
• Green string I saved from Tibet.... that was braided into my hair by an elder - RE-USE
• Heavier string to create the web **** this was the ONLY item purchased***

Karen taught the girls to suspend the shells and glass, weave the sticks and sew together the elements into personal Dreamcatchers that they could take with them. we are so happy to have Karen and the Brave Girls on the Earthaware team!

we couldn't agree more: recycling can be great however it does require more energy consumption to gather, transport, reprocess, refabricate and redistribute the materials being recycled: REUSE on the other hand does not take the material out of the consumption stream, it keeps it in play and that truly reduces the footprint of the consumption at hand!

last week we met with Anthony Brown, Executive Director of Heart of Los Angeles (HOLA), an urban non-profit organization serving 2,400 youths in central LA by offering a multitude of after school programs as an alternative to the all to prevalent gang culture of the area.

Tony and Owen agreed to March 17 as the date for the first Earthaware and A+D Museum ArchKIDtecture+Design program to be held at HOLA. We will work with the HOLA kids, A+D kids and local landscape maintenance materials plus trash we will gather off the area streets to collectivley create 3D art structures. We are capping this event at the first 50 kids that register. It will be a day long program of learning the connections between materials and environment: creativity and conservation!