Vernacular playground

A day out at the Finlaystone estate yesterday yielded the following set of pictures - great, idiosyncratic vernacular play space design.

Christmas commodity fetishism

A few web shopping places that have caught my eye in the search for interesting gifts this year:

Rare Device, Brooklyn and San Francisco

Dosh Wallets in Sydney

Swiss Miss, from New York

The ever-exciting and totally comprehensive Vinçon, in Barcelona...



Design 3000, based in Berlin

See Jane Work, Thousand Oaks, CA

Design Within Reach, USA - not merely shops but 'design studios'

etc etc

Enough, enough!...or I will produce a bucket of designer vomit in disgust at my own greedy hypocrisy.

A convivial culture for health

Here's a link to Jackie's dissertation, written back in 2000 as part of her MA Art in Architecture programme at the University of East London. It's called

A convivial culture for health: case studies in holistic practice

and it gives an account of five key sites for arts and health development in the second half of the 20th Century - the Peckham Pioneer Health Centre, Charlton Lane Acute Mental Health Unit in Gloucestershire, the Bromley By Bow Centre, Vital Arts at the Barts and The London NHS Trust, and Dr Malcolm Rigler's work with artists at Withymoor Surgery in the West Midlands. It could be a helpful reference point for people that want to find out more about the origins and development of the arts in health movement in the UK.

A prospectus for arts and health

A new publication from Arts Council England and the Department of Health, with a foreword by both the minister for health and the minister for culture:

"This prospectus produced jointly by the Department of Health and Arts Council England celebrates and promotes the benefits of the arts in improving everyone’s wellbeing, health and healthcare, and its role in supporting those who work in and with the National Health Service. The prospectus shows that the arts can, and do, make a major contribution to key health and wider community issues.

This publication stems from the recommendations of the Review of Arts and Health Working Group, commissioned by the Department of Health. A copy of the review can be downloaded from http://www.dh.gov.uk."

Taken together with pronouncements from the Scottish Executive on the arts and mental health and also the requirement for all NHS Boards in Scotland to have design champions for new healthcare buildings, there is the potential for quite a head of steam to build up behind these initiatives...although it's not yet clear what the new SNP administration thinks about arts in health, if anything. So the discussions around "Creative Scotland" will be interesting to follow.