Prem Krishnamurthy writes us a letter. A letter that exemplifies the tangle, weaving moments from his collaborative practice into a meandering text on slowing down, embracing bumpiness and decentring direct design processes. In doing so, Prem illustrates the importance of social and human attention to the design process.

The physiological human beings we are today are a direct result of forces and environments that were often outside of our ancestors’ control; the climate, diseases, nearby predators and prey, the local flora or geographical landscape in which they built their homes. The sociological beings we are today are a direct result of the process of learning to control such forces.

A dive into the cultural, social, political and ecological ‘self’, questioning the notion of the ‘individual’ and a call towards connected ways of being.

In their essay, Noam Youngrak Son listens to the silence of the design industry in response to the ongoing genocide in Gaza, Palestine. Critiquing design’s historical involvement with humanitarian crises in this current global context, Noam dismantles the financialised risks of activism assumed by design institutions, seeking and signposting a higher calling for practices of design that reach beyond simply the accumulation of capital.

Being uniquely positioned as those who have a hand in producing our environment; responsibility can be placed upon designers and the power they hold in changing the world for the future. However; power is an elusive and plastic substance that clings to some and slips away from others.

Arja Karhumaa interrogates the relationship between design academics and design practitioners within the realm of publishing; two step-sisterly professionalisms that can struggle to see eye-to-eye in the quest to disseminate ideas. Writing from her perspective as a weaver of many threads of practice, Arja cross-examines the production of knowledge within the design field, embracing and untangling the complexities within her own publishing communities.

Cinnamon buns, connotations and opossum babies are utilised in this essay about language communities in general and the title of this festival in particular.