‘Handmade’ book of inspiring projects
By Ed Mitchell 21st February 2011
Hand Made is a beautiful collaborative book of 26 innovative projects from around the world about new ways of creating connection and community. It’s a joy to read and we recommend it keenly. All the 26 project outlines are in separate chapters which you can download and read at your leisure, or embed on your site. It’s an open source project meaning that the authors wrote their work to share widely from the start (which we also think is cool).
The projects, which include Transition Towns, have been carefully selected because they have all been developed with new thinking and methodologies and involve Learning, Sharing or Making. We’re big fans of Tessy Britton (the author), and our very own Rob ‘slug jumper’ Hopkins wrote a chapter on Transition (although his favourite chapter is pie lab).
The projects generally break through normal dynamics by integrating design thinking, systems thinking, new understanding of networks and human functioning … with an inspiring dose of imagination.
The aim of the book is to highlight some truly original and inspiring projects to spread ideas and encourage doing things in new ways … Encourage people just to try things in fact, to experiment, to work around the system and, together with other people, make communities they want to live in.
You can read the chapters on the Handmade website, and we’re trying to embed the chapters below: