Make The Pledge by Nikki Miles

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The day has come. Come! During the last month of food trials at 51, we were looking forward to the day–yesterday–when the doors officially opened and we could invite both vegetarian and non-vegetarian friends to dine, and in particular feast on a roasted vegetable dish rooted in Malabar Coast vegetables and Eastern European foodways. Thanks to another of the Young Creatives for this encouragement on getting non-vegetarians to pledge to add more vegetables to their diet–all it takes is better-tasting veggies, we think, and some creative promotion:

With this playful painting, illustrator Nikki Miles is urging us to make a pinky promise to go easy on the meat and its carbon consequences and enjoy some veg instead.

“I don’t eat a lot of meat but I’m not strictly a vegetarian either,” says Nikki. I have tried being a vegetarian in the past but I found it to hard to give up the odd bacon sandwich or roast dinner with beef gravy.  I only eat meat around once or twice a week because vegetables are yummy too! Eating more veg and less meat is a simple way to make a big difference to your health and the environment.” Continue reading

The Lights Are On by Sylvia Moritz

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As noted yesterday, we will continue highlighting the best of the Young Creatives for the Do The Green Thing campaign. Raxa Collective’s operations teams at various properties can relate to Sylvia’s challenge to all of us to collaborate on conservation of electricity, whether in the hospitality community, the traveler community, in our residential home community or wherever:

Graphic designer and illustrator Sylvia Moritz wants to spell an end to the stupidity of leaving lights on in empty rooms.

“Electricity is a daily comfort we take for granted,” says Sylvia. “It is our sun when it is night, it is our means of living out our modern daily lifestyles. To recklessly exhaust this energy source, to squander something so integral to our survival, is wasteful. I hope this illustrated idiom can switch people’s behaviour.” Continue reading

Still Counting On Do The Green Thing

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Since we started highlighting these posters only during its final week or so, there are many other posters to highlight and we intend to do so in the coming days. Not all, since not all creative output is created equal. In this final campaign poster, about reduction of light pollution, the Young Creatives series concluded on a cosmic note:

The shining star of our 29 Posters for the Planet campaign is Rebecca Charlton, the winner of WWF and Do The Green Thing’s Young Creatives competition. With her intricate and dazzling illustration, she reminds every person in every building in every city that stars not bulbs are the best sources of light in the night.

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Birds In A Coffee Shop

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Thanks to the folks at this fun aggregator site, we learned of Piip Show, a collaborative initiative bright to us by several artists and Norwegian Radio that allows a community of animals to gather in a setting familiar to many in modern urban landscapes around the world:

The story of Piip-Show

When the internet was just a baby sleeping quietly in its cradle, NRK broadcasted live from a bird house decorated like a little dollhouse. The year is 2003, and the mastermind behind the project, freelance photographer Magne Klann, receives attention even from the British Broadcasting Corporation, BBC.

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Do The Green Thing Countdown 29/29

29 Posters Final Template

Today’s the day this series was designed for, and Shiv’s “Less Light” provides a fitting conclusion about doing the green thing this evening:

Illustrator and art director Shiv uses a blend of photography and computer trickery to create a bewitching image to get us warmed up for Earth Hour tomorrow evening. Her poster urges us to switch off, save energy and enjoy the the galaxies above. Shiv said:

“I moved out of London nearer the countryside a couple of years ago and what I love is how much of the sky at night i can see now. I think Earth Hour is a great opportunity to see the stars while the urban lights are down, and that everyone should take advantage of this.”

Why?

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Do The Green Thing Countdown 28/29

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“Let’s Ride” is a cool, clean visual that says it all, whether you are already a member of the biking community, or yet to become one:

Josh Higgins built and led the design team behind Barack Obama’s 2012 presidential campaign and is now Communication Design Manager for Facebook. Using fresh colours and geometrical shapes, his poster rallies the world to do more bike riding and less driving.

“I have always loved cycling and rode a bike since age 6 because it is fun,” says Josh. “Now I am a bit older I realize it is so much more. Riding a bike is a proven stress releaser. It is great for our environment and whether you are riding purely for pleasure or to get from point A to point B, you will arrive feeling relaxed, energized and happier about the world.”

Why?

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Add Cello To The Trinity Of C-Words

 

Welcome To Yo-Yo’s Playhouse…Watch the superstar cellist Yo-Yo Ma and many of his close friends from all over the world in action at a theatrical props warehouse in Brooklyn.

Ever on the lookout for stories that have one or more connections to our primary interests–community, collaboration, conservation–we are particularly fond of bifectas and trifectas, double-dips and triple plays. Versatility and eclecticism are signatures of Yo-Yo Ma, so no surprise that today we see a bit of all our interests combined in this story on the National Public Radio (a USA radio network funded by listeners, corporate/foundation donors, and taxpayers) website:

by ANASTASIA TSIOULCAS

When you’re lucky enough to have cellist Yo-Yo Ma and members of the Silk Road Ensemble, some of the world’s premiere instrumentalists and composers, gather for an afternoon of offstage music making, you’ve got to think long and hard about where to put them. And we decided that the perfect match would be ACME Studio, a theatrical props warehouse in Brooklyn.

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Do The Green Thing Countdown 27/29

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Better By Bike” speaks again on the topic of bicycle power, in the interest of Earth Hour as promoted by WWF and which Raxa Collective’s community will be participating in:

Today we are delighted to present a poster from a man who needs no introduction, but that won’t stop us from introducing him anyway. Sir Paul Smith is one of the most admired figures in the world of fashion: a style guru, a gentleman and a mad keen cyclist. He has created a piece of heartfelt pro-pedal propaganda featuring one of his own cycles and a message in his own writing: “it’s better by bike”. We agree.

Why?  Continue reading

Do The Green Thing Countdown 26/29

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Today’s is a dark one, darker than our normal post content but in the spirit of going with the flow we link out to this poster appropriately called Extermination Workshop:

Step forward Michael Wallis, a left-field thinker and co-founder of branding agency Corke Wallis. In this satirical poster-cum-drama set in the future, he speculates on the totally ridiculous idea of standby mode, and makes us ask ourselves: “why on earth would humanity come up with such a hopeless invention?”

Michael says: “I’m supporting Green Thing and Earth Hour so that when the apocalypse comes it is at the hands of something really epic like aliens or cyborgs or giant reptiles from another dimension, not DVD players.”

Why?

 

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Libraries Old And New, Big And Small, At The Core Of Communities

Cover_The_Public_Library_bookThis book by Robert Dawson pays attention to one of the institutions we care most about, libraries–specifically public ones. Why do we care so much about them? Because of the essential role they play in so many communities, both small and large, with regard to education and egalitarian opportunity.

Toni Morrison’s assessment of the book is that “Robert Dawson’s work is an irrefutable argument for the preservation of public libraries. His book is profound and heartbreakingly beautiful.”  From the author/photographer’s own website the text that introduces the work is a mix of promotion and fact:

This project is a photographic survey of public libraries throughout the United States featuring essays on libraries and the public commons from prominent American writers. The book The Public Library: A Photographic Essay will be published in April, 2014 by Princeton Architectural Press. ISBN 978-1-61689-217-3

Smallest library, now closed, Hartland Four Corners, Vermont

There are over 17,000 public libraries in this country. Since I began the project in 1994, I have photographed hundreds of libraries in forty-eight states. From Alaska to Florida, New England to the West Coast, the photographs reveal a vibrant, essential, yet threatened system.

For the past two centuries public libraries in America have functioned as a system of noncommercial centers that help us define what we value and what we share. The modern library in the computer age is in the midst of reinventing itself. What belongs in a library? Continue reading

Pro-Environment Posters For WWF’s March 29 Earth Hour Initiative

Walk the Walk by Marina Willer for 29 Posters for the Planet

Walk the Walk by Marina Willer for 29 Posters for the Planet

We appreciate collaborative efforts to raise awareness about environmental issues, especially when they come from places where the focus is not normally on conservation. Design agencies are generally designed to sell more stuff. Publishers are generally designed to use ex-trees to communicate stuff. But some designers are on the other side of the consumer behavior-influencing fence. And some publishers use those ex-trees to publicize a more tree-centric future.  Ethics sometimes prevail over ambition. Education sometimes jumps the line.

Professional communities–whether design firms, publishers, hotel companies or take your pick–all have latent collective action lurking in their futures. We hope nature and culture are the beneficiaries. Thanks in particular at this moment to publisher Phaidon, which is in itself worthy of a post on its series of environmentally-friendly books and initiatives, for bringing this initiative of design firm Pentagram to our attention:

Pentagram’s carbon free foot print

Design agency works with Do The Green Thing charity on environmentally friendly posters

The gulf between our high-consumption lifestyles and the kind of sustainable world many of us hope to inhabit is vast. Yet the changes that could take us there aren’t unthinkable, as our recent book, The World We Made, makes clear. Continue reading

Creating CommuniTEA

Since I am a new writer for RAXA Collective, here is an introduction. My name is Kayleigh Levitt and I am currently a Sophomore at Soka University of America in Southern California. My major is in Environmental Studies with a focus in urban sustainability. I am an avid gardener and biophiliac. I believe in the transformative power of community.

I love when I meet people who show me that there are different ways to live than what is expected of us. Guisepi Spadafora serves free tea out of a mini-school bus that runs off recycled vegetable oil and biodiesel. There is a solar panel on the roof of his bus that powers his refrigerator, lights, outlets, water pump and anything he needs electricity for. He gets herbs for his tea donated on a continual basis, so he is able to have a steady menu. The companies give to him freely because they believe in what he does and he believes in what they do.He travels the land, and during a tea party, he opens up his bus and sets out chairs and rugs and serves tea for people.

The way he got started serving free tea for people was not actually on purpose. He honestly started because of loneliness in a big city. He was living in Los Angeles, in his pick-up truck, working full time and did not really have friends other than the friend he was working for. He started going to Hollywood Boulevard and would open up his tailgate, pull out his camp stove and cook a bit of dinner. He would cook a little bit of extra dinner because inevitably someone would say ‘What are you doing?’ and he would say, ‘Oh, I’m cooking dinner, would you care to join me?’ and people would then sit and eat with him, and to keep those interactions going he would just make tea for hours. Every walk of life would sit down with him, from street performers to Japanese tourists to television producers. He got really excited about the actual genuine human interactions he was having.

He had tried to go to the bars, one of the only places where you can know no one and meet people. Girls would come up and talk to him and ask him to buy them a drink, which he considered as the least genuine type of interaction one could have because the only thing they were looking for was his money.

He realized so many of his interactions with strangers were over money. Continue reading

If You Happen To Be In Denver

We are always on the lookout for more information about counter-intuitive relationships between various communities of outdoor enthusiasts–including those involving people with guns, bows & arrows, and fishing rods–and their collaboration with/as conservationists. An op-ed article today on the Atlantic‘s website, by Tovar Cerulli, got us thinking about posting something we would title “Hunters, Anglers, Conservationists:”

For many environmentalists, the word “hunter” suggests a mindless brute, an enemy of nature who loves guns, kills for fun, and cares nothing for biodiversity or ecological integrity. For many hunters, the word “environmentalist” suggests a self-righteous tree-hugger, an enemy of freedom who hates guns, has no respect for hunting, and imagines nature as a Disney-like fantasyland where humans should not tread.

Though these stereotypes contain grains of truth, hunters and environmentalists aren’t as separate as many imagine. The Nature Conservancy counts many hunters among its members and staff and works closely with hunting-conservation organizations. Likewise, Pheasants Forever has thousands of non-hunting members who appreciate the organization’s work on behalf of native prairie habitats, wetlands, butterflies, and clean water.

Then we clicked through his byline to see that he is affiliated with this organization that is hosting an event this weekend in Denver and decided this would make a more interesting post: Continue reading

Women’s Empowerment In Kerala, A Success Story

Vishnu Varma. A Kudumbashree worker involved in community farming near the Kerala village of Kadakkanad. Around 260,000 workers currently till and harvest more than 60,000 acres throughout the state.

Vishnu Varma. A Kudumbashree worker involved in community farming near the Kerala village of Kadakkanad. Around 260,000 workers currently till and harvest more than 60,000 acres throughout the state.

Thanks to India Ink, and Vishnu Varma, for this article about several million women, in communities across the state where we call home, collaborating their way to empowerment:

ERNAKULAM, Kerala — In a country that has been criticized as lacking commitment to women’s rights, one program in the southwest state of Kerala has been quietly serving as an example that a government can indeed successfully empower women, both economically and socially. Continue reading

Community, Collaboration, And Gran Chaco Conservation

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In about 10 minutes, this National Geographic video gives a great primer on why you should care about the conservation of one of the planet’s largest intact ecosystems, with a storyline focused on community and collaboration.

South America’s Gran Chaco region spans a complex mix of land, climates, and species. National Geographic Emerging Explorer and conservation biologist Erika Cuellar shares her passion and know-how with the people who live there to protect their natural treasure from unsustainable development.

Inspiration, 51

Photograph by James Pomerantz.

Photograph by James Pomerantz.

This post is for the team at 51, a new restaurant we are opening soon, located on the waterfront of Fort Cochin’s harbor in the history-intact, spice-trading Mattanchery neighborhood. That team is a group of men and women, chefs, support cooks, self-made cuisine historians, and other interested parties collaborating on a new concept.  It is a concept, but deftly avoiding pretension. More about fun historical convergences, good taste, and communities interacting over long stretches of time to create new food ways. Following is a restaurant review whose accompanying photo was the main draw, but so was the notion of foraging that has become so compelling to foodies of late:

It seems strange to say that the best thing at a place that specializes in juice cleanses is the porchetta, but Foragers Market and Table encapsulates the contradictory nature of the New York diet, serving quality food that feels “healthy,” and is often local and organic, but with none of that dull avocado-based asceticism. Continue reading

Community And Collaboration In Italy

Matteo Renzi in Florence, Italy on January 4th, 2014. Photograph by Laura Lezza/Getty.

Matteo Renzi in Florence, Italy on January 4th, 2014. Photograph by Laura Lezza/Getty.

We studiously avoid politics on these pages, but we studiously make occasional exceptions like this one. After an undeservedly long stretch of time, decades that became generations, of Italy in political turmoil this may be a moment of, dare we say it, change we can believe in. Alexander Stille provides a pithy summary of why this is so on the New Yorker website.

Leave ideology out of the consideration, if possible, and observe the new Prime Minister’s focus on community and collaboration; and the bicycle; one more reason to visit Italy this year as a show of support for his vision for change and his vehicular choices:

Sixty-three governments in sixty-eight years, with twenty-seven different Prime Ministers—so why should we care that Italy has a new government, with yet another Prime Minister, Continue reading

If You Happen To Be In Muzuris

The ancient port city of Muzuris came into the spotlight in 2012 with the critically acclaimed Kochi-Muzuris Biennale, but the Muzuris Heritage Project highlights the region in a more historical context.

Located just 30 km north of Kochi in Paravur and Channamangalam, the four museums–Kerala History Museum, Lifestyle Museum, Kerala Jewish History Museum, and Jewish Lifestyle Museum–were inaugurated this Sunday.

The four museums together present a comprehensive picture of the political and cultural history and lifestyle of the region….

…The Muziris Heritage Project, spearheaded by the Tourism Department, envisaged a group of heritage and tourism plans around key historical monuments in North Paravur, Kodungalloor, Chennamangalam, Pallippuram, Mala and other areas. Continue reading

Welcome To Raxa Collective’s Learning Laboratory, Cardamom County

Cardamom County, by Maxine Relton

Every year right about now, a group of painters arrives to Kerala from England. They are led by a professional artist who also teaches, and during their several days’ stay at Cardamom County we enjoy watching their sketch books fill up. The watercolor above is an example of what we have seen in the past, and we are looking forward to this year’s new collection.

It is not only the colors and impressionistic views of our property we enjoy seeing, but the learning process itself.  Each of the last few years, as Raxa Collective has expanded the number of properties in its portfolio, Cardamom County’s unique value as a learning laboratory has become more and more clear. Interns, trainees, and most of all guests–many of whom, while still at Cardamom County or after returning home, choose to share news about their experience with us, or on the themes of community and/or collaboration and/or conservation from around the world) are all essential components of the learning laboratory’s chemistry.

Today, we welcome a group of nearly one dozen new employees to Raxa Collective. Continue reading

MC’ing Christmas & New Year’s Eve

When I was asked to be the “face of RAXA Collective” during the Christmas/New Year’s Eve celebrations at Cardamom County, my impulsive nature overtook any kind of rational thinking and I said “yes”. I didn’t stop to think for a minute if I could do a decent job or not. But once I’d already made a commitment, I realized that I shouldn’t think too much of it and decided to go with the flow. So when the day dawned, I was my usual self, but honestly, quite anxious.

There were about 120 guests and to keep the crowd occupied is one thing, and entertained is another. Continue reading