#futuresproject

Microsoft Nacs is a futures project done by 4 Central Saint Martins students in collaboration with Microsoft, June 2014

Brief: Re-imagining the future of work in 20 years

In this project, we started at a future scenario of Automated jobs giving rise to scrapping of low skilled jobs meaning the only jobs remaining would be of high skilled workers.
These high skilled workers could be either a male or a female (+others)
Female workers would either postpone having babies or through our research, we found out they mostly quit jobs in order to look after them.


To prevent this from happening, and in order for companies to maintain this talent pool of female workers, we are investigating into the lives of the female workforce and how they could balance work & family life.

Go through the video to understand how they could do it.

CLA Public Programs are an essential part our quest to reinvent what a contemporary art center can be for our time and build our community through the arts. Our public conversations and films  help open a dialogue that amplifies Futures Project, and engage Mobile in ideas that matter to the Gulf Coast and the larger world around us. Equally important to the success of our mission are the strategic partnerships we have forged during the past two years with area cultural, civic, and educational organizations that allow us to reach outside of our own audience into potential new constituencies.

In his groundbreaking book Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, Pulitzer Prize winner E.O.Wilson speaks about unifying the sciences with the humanities to offer a holistic approach to learning and investigation. In that spirit, partnering with the University of South Alabama, McKemie Place, the Junior League of Mobile, Strategic Wealth Specialists and the Women’s Business Center to take a serious look at the lives of women from around the world, offers a more meaningful conversation than would be possible with one perspective alone.

Last night CLA hosted a screening of the documentary Half the Sky:Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. Half the Sky, a four-hour television series inspired by Kristof and WuDunn’s book, by Independent Lens for PBS tells the story of women and girls from Cambodia, Kenya, India, Sierra Leone, Somaliland, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Liberia and the U.S. who are living under some of the most difficult circumstances imaginable, while fighting bravely to change them. The University of South Alabama has chosen this book for their inaugural Common Read/Common World program, and has scheduled a full slate of discussions and public programs to investigate one of our era’s most pervasive human rights violations: the oppression of women and girls in the developing world.

Following the screening was a thoughtful post-film discussion on the topic by panelists from the Mobile area who exemplify empowered women in our community. On hand to speak were: Vicki Bowers – Assistant Director of McKemie Place, Kathryn Cariglino – Owner, Never Give Up Enterprises and Founder and first Executive Director of the Women’s Business Center, Inc., Pamela W. Gayles – Financial Representative, Strategic Wealth Specialist, Andrea Moore – 2013-2014 President of the Junior League of Mobile, and the event organizers Krista Harrell, Ph.D – Associate Dean of Students & Title IX Coordinator (University of South Alabama) and Peggy Delmas, Ph.D – Assistant Director of Student Advising (University of South Alabama.)

  The discussion brought up many interesting points about economic empowerment of women locally and around the world. The thoughts that resonated for me personally focused on issues closer to our home here on the Gulf Coast:

  Vicki Bowers felt compelling connections between the women she works with at McKemie Place and the brave women in Kenya who started their own village, Umoja, to protect themselves from violent abuse by the men of their tribe.

  67% of homeless women in the Mobile area experience violence and, perhaps even more frightening, are victims of human trafficking.

  Andrea Moore spoke about Mobile’s intact homeless families and the efforts of Family Promise, a coalition of area churches that work to shelter these individuals in ways that preserve and protect the family unit.

  It falls on the shoulders of only 2 social workers to organize the transportation of Mobile’s 2000 homeless children to school each day.

  I encourage you to watch or read Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, and to find ways to connect and contribute to work being done in Mobile and around the world to empower women. Zainab Salbi, the founder of Women for Women International said one of the most powerful things I have ever encountered during the documentary:

“A country can never fly if one of its wings is broken.”