Working in this area put me in touch with a number of education bodies that aimed to improve employer involvement in education, through work experience, work shadowing, presentations etc. One of these bodies was our local Education Business Partnership in Tower Hamlets. I felt that it was important that we build a better relationship with local schools and ‘practice what we are preeching’ about employer involvement in the Diploma.

So last week the thinkpublic team were ’shadowed’ by Heetan Patel from Morpeth School in Bethnal Green. Heetan came into thinkpublic with two aims; to find out what it was like to work in a creative/media company and to understand the career paths and education his pupils require to succeed in this industry. After polite introductions we put him in right at the deep end with some customer journey mapping of council services, followed by interviews with all of the team. Heetan then joined us for a spot of lunch in the sun before helping the team in a Social Lab brainstorming session, Ivo then took him through our film production process and gave him a feel for the media side of thinkpublic.

If you are a teacher or school and are interested in finding out more about the creative industry or would like a member of thinkpublic to speak to your pupils, please email me at paul.thurston@thinkpublic.com

This week the thinkpublic team have been painting large public engagement messages around the Cambridge Road and Cambridge Gardens Estate in Kingston. Over the past two days we have conducted in-depth interviews, informal conversations and vox-pops with over 60 residents, and are looking forward to a co-design event with the community in July.

The project has it’s own website www.youcankingston.com where you can keep track of everything that happens.

Today turned out to be an extra special lunch as Paul announced that he is now engaged! We had a toast and wish him and Sophie lots of luck in their new adventures together. We have been having conversations for quite a long time about who might be having the first ‘thinkpublic wedding’ so it is all very exciting!

For more photos of our hooping and veg, have a look at our thinkpublic flickr photo’s.

Recently the thinkpublic ladies attended a workshop entitled Find Your Female Funny, this was an evening session aimed at helping women escape their inhibitions and confidently embrace their inner comic. Although all a little apprehensive at first, we had a great time sharing silly stories and relishing in jokes without any punch-lines;

Alice pulled our heart strings with her Highly Commended Courgette Crocodile, Kerri made us smile with her lack of enthusiasm for vegetables, Jess painted a vivid picture of gliding into a hot tub with Ant and Dec, Cassie entertained us all with tales of Tammy Girl wedding processions, Ella surprised the crowds with her obsessive acquisition of Blue Peter Badges, and Deb’s stole the show with her remote control duck.

If you are interested in booking us for an appearance on the comedy circuit then please do get in touch.

This is a lovely little video about entrepreneurs. Take a look!

Include is a biennial conference and an international network which aims to support people working in the field to make inclusive design a reality. It was a fun, informative three days that saw over 150 researchers, designers, social activists, entrepreneurs and industry partners from 29 countries come together to share ideas across research, design and business communities so that inclusive design can be a tool for social and commercial innovation.

When I was there I encouraged participants to adopt the experience-based design methodology that we use at thinkpublic. The brief revolved around designing a new service for older people with dementia. Solutions emerging from the session included a meals-on-wheels service from a vegetable patch and a smart watch that recorded audio and took photographs as a memory of the day.

To download a full report from the conference, click here.

Wishes vary from ‘a border collie’ to ‘a happy, healthy world’. On Saturday morning, neighbours gathered to add their wishes to the tree and the wishes have started to grow! Already it had been a great opportunity to connect with everyone and meet people on our street that we didn’t know… There are even talks of a street party, as part of the The Big Lunch!

The OneMayWish tree will be up for a month, if you would like to add to it, please email your wish to me, and we will add it.

Anyway I think enough has been written about the logo!…So, how would you like your logo design to sit alongside it at the vast number of community and education events surrounding the games? Well if your aged between 16 and 21 you can enter an Olympic committee competition to design a “special version of the logo that will sit alongside the London 2012 Paralympic logo and be known as the London 2012 ‘education logo’. It will be seen in communities across the UK!”

My advice is to involve the people at schools and community centre’s that will use the logo and find out how it would fit within their work and what would they want to see. Full details of how you can enter can be downloaded here

Final Beta Version 4 has just been released with the full version due soon. The map is based on the Tokyo subway map and shows the 333 leading web domains and the 111 most influential people on the internet. They release the map in Beta format so people can feedback on it before fully launching a full version, in much the same way new web applications are developed.

It is the level of detail that I find most impressive though, for example ‘ Twitter is located in Shibuya this year, as Shibuya is the station with the biggest buzz. Google is placed in the busiest, most highly trafficked train station in the world: Shinjuku‘.