The Futures Company

Anouk Van Den Eijnde writes:

So here’s something I don’t do very often – I built a house, decorated it and put it up for rent all in one night. I wish it were that easy in real life. Last week at the Shunt, the (literally) underground exhibition space and late night bar under London Bridge station hosted an installation event called Home Sweet Home. For the whole week the arena space in the vaults was transformed into a community created by shunt members. A range of materials were provided to embellish your newly bought flat packed house – glitter, paint, play-doh, fake grass, you name it. There was a real buzz in the air, a feeling of togetherness while young arty Londoners sat around sipping beers and getting creative. You could listen to Residents’ FM and chat to the postman doing his rounds. On the last day there was even a street party.

It’s a world away from the highly digitised society we live in. One of our ‘cultural frequencies’ for d_Code, our youth intelligence research, is “Analogue Living”. It highlights this back to basics mentality that’s increasingly important to youth. The dynamics of Home Sweet Home – with its hand-made products, simplified forms of entertainment and media, and even traditional community structures, is right at the heart of this frequency.