The RSA’s ‘home is where we start from’ panel consisted of Gerard Lemos, Sarah Gaventa, John Swinney, Mary MacLeod, Lynsey Hanley, it was chaired by guardian columnist, Polly Toynbee.
I have been searching for my own home within the last month, so it was of particularly interesting for me. I think the concept of a home is really intriguing, what is it that makes a home, a building, bed, garden, vegetable patch, cat, fridge, next door neighbour or a family?
There was a lot of debate around the importance of building homes, to house family relationships in their layout, structure and ideology that are essentially free, open and safe. We all remember our family home and the area that we grow up in and it is often underpins a lot of our own values and our view on the world.
Gerard Lemos said that when something goes wrong we are not likely to call the local authority, but infact we turn to our friends and families. This suggested the importance of doing everything we can within and outside government policy to build and nurture family relationships.
See Polly Toynbee’s guardian column here
Apr 10th, eilidh said:
I completely argree with you alice, i think this is a really interesting are “what is a home” It can be so many things, but people always tend to think of buildings when they hear the word “home” During uni we had to design a sustainable product/service for a “home” so prior to this i did quite a bit of research into what people percieved to be one, one of my favourite comments was
“a home is somewhere that feels normal, even if everything else in your life doesn’t”
there are some other opinions here:
http://www.eilidhdickson.co.uk/Re-Create%20Project%20Website/home1.html
Apr 16th, jez said:
this is kind of the direction the latest ikea ads have taken.
with luck, the current situation with house prices stagnating or even falling, will cause people to take stock of what they already have-and try to make the most of it.