Jo Bloggs...

 

 

 

If you are think that all the artistic creations that come home from school with your children, all the clay piggy-banks, moody self-portraits and whacky surrealist explosions are going nowhere, then I urge you to cram yourself into the back-room at the Victoria and Albert Museum where the Thomas Heatherwick exhibition currently shows the direct route from squeezing play dough through a plastic mould and enjoying the curly, mushy shapes that come out, to the multi award winning design firm whose groundbreaking creations topped the stunning Olympic ceremony - particularly the flame design. On show is the original model of the flame. It does look rather like it might have sat on your teenager's desk as an ambitious, but zany school project; when revealed at the peak of the ceremony, more than anything that had preceded it, his realisation of the idea of the eternal torch carried by all the nations taking part, took the breath away from a billion viewers around the world, as the individual petals of bronze rose to form one roaring flower of light - symbolism not even lost on a pre-occupied sixth former, and beautifully simple; moreover, it answered that nagging question - 'how could this Olympics ever be individual, representative, and  creative on a global stage after the 'star wars' scale of Beijing?'
 

 

The notes and ideas that permeate Heatherwick's studio are a testament to the purity of his ethic - all different disciplines within the studio are physically and creatively on a level, so that a kind of democracy of innovation means that the designs leave behind the usual strictures of any single discipline - the rolling bridge they made for paddington basin is artistically pleasing as much as it is a triumph of modern material, but also basic maths and engineering.
 

 

 

 The cafe at Littlehampton is amusing in design and commercial, but beyond original in the way it's architecture fits the lines of the long beach. Everyone knows who eats there that they are in Barney rubbles house for fish and chips, but like the best creation you think this is so simple, I could have done it. But we didn't, he did.

 

 

 However, maybe our children will too, if we can facilitate passing on the baton, the one already handed from Brunel through Turing and Jonathan Ive (the british designer of the iPhone) and onto Thomas Heatherwick - 'workshop UK,' a small but

perfectly formed hotbed of originality.

 

 

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Jo Blogs..
The Flame

Today the sun blessed us in an embarrassing generosity, freinds turned up at Sugarbag Blue to join in and we set out drinks on the street in a propriatorial way. The pavement became ours, our neighbours in the flower shop and the hairdressers all came and sat out - kids ran in and out grabbing drinks, the travellers all came to watch. Our crowd seemed to be the rowdiest, and were busily jousting with the blue sponsored inflatible clubs supplied by sponsored fore-runners. Will we ever see the streets of Earlsfield bursting in expectation in the midsummer heat again and the traffic righteously brought to a standstill? ( pedestrians took precedence and stood between the frozen traffic, pitying those stuck on their way home but most of all awaiting the arrival of the flame.)

No, not in a hundred years

 And this all for a runner we had heard about on the news.  Just as my camera lost power cries went up 'He's coming.. Here he is ... He's coming now. ..'

 I suppose it's our children who will value having been here - there is an egalitarianism about the Olympics -people who honestly couldn't get excited about the jubilee were out cheering their heads off. We all  hope that the supreme effort of the athlete and the team work will bring us what? Glory ?

 It's not like the day was all about this and all work stopped - it didn't, and workers were still forcing their way through the crowds to get home.
 But it was a day to remember! We are at the centre of something - one of my boys gets up at 5 am and  puts on a hard-hat to build the gymnastics stage; I met an actress yesterday who's busy rehearsing the opening ceremony - no, she wouldn't tell me about it, except to say 'it's epic!'
Our lives are full of the mundane - can we rise above the traffic problems and inconvenience to allow a city where for a couple of weeks things are different, where the imaginators pull us through,; can we suffer a bit of traffic and inconvenience, because soon all  that will be gone and replaced by more of the same.

                                                          
                                                               (Lawrence Okoye)
 When  Lawrence Okoye, a 19 year-old schooolboy from a poor background who was in the year above my son at school is seen around the world by billions, in his attempt to spin his disc to a medal, or even a record that will still be talked about in 100 years time, we can rouse a little chaos on our street . As the headmaster said  - 'boys, if that can happen, then remember as you go through life, anything is possible.'
  Epic. 

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