OPEN RELIEF

When we picture crisis response, we tend to picture logistics: trucks, tents, supply chains, spreadsheets. We rarely picture a designer. Yet some of the most persistent failures in emergency preparedness are, at root, design failures - and fixing them will take the very skills that the cultural and creative sectors have in abundance. Consider the objects that fill emergency kits and relief distributions. Too many are single-use, awkward to repair, and poorly matched to the climates, cultures...

A Community of Practice is a group of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do, and who deepen their knowledge by interacting regularly. The term was coined by researchers Etienne Wenger and Jean Lave, and the idea is deceptively simple: people learn best not in isolation, but together - by sharing problems, comparing approaches and building knowledge collectively over time. What sets a Community of Practice apart from a mailing list or a network is that its members are...

Frugal innovation is the art of doing more with less: designing effective solutions using the fewest possible resources, and making them affordable, accessible and easy to maintain. It is less about big budgets and cutting-edge labs, and more about ingenuity - solving real problems with what is actually available. The concept is often associated with resource-constrained settings, where necessity drives creativity. A water filter made from locally sourced materials, a charging light powered...