If you teach at a New England middle school, and you’re interested in this thing called Design Thinking that we’re doing at my school, save the date! On April 6, 2013, from 9 am to 3pm, we’re going to be doing it again.  You can register for further information on this year’s symposium, which will be about “Food and Landscape”, and I’ll be sending out further information as details are developed.  The core elements are:

1. A team is 3 to 7 students in middle school;
2. ‘middle school’ is defined as 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th grades
3. They need an adult advisor who is somehow connected with the school
4. The ‘school’ is actually any sponsoring organization, such as a Boy Scout or Girl Scout troop, that we can contact;
5. There will be a participation fee, probably under $75 per team, for materials and judges;
6. Each team will develop a portfolio of a problem they notice in their community connected to food;
7. At the Symposium, they will attempt to develop a solution to some other team’s portfolio problem.

In the meantime, you can see Julia Child ‘singing’ the joys of good cooking (happy 100th Birthday!) as a reminder that food is at the heart of what we do as human beings:

Julia has some great advice for designers at the start of this video, because chefs are a kind of designer, too. What makes a great designer?

1. Training and technique
2. a great love of good design
3. a generous personality, and…
4. the ability to invent!

This coming year, with record-breaking droughts in the American midwest, an incredible rise in the number of obese students and persons, and Middle Eastern riots over food helping to drive the Arab Spring earlier this past year, it makes sense to build on last year’s program on “landscape” to consider the role of Food and Landscape this year.

More news to follow.  Keep your eyes and ears open.

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