Stone Soup

Last week in Introduction to Design, we had our first creative group collaboration in which Professor Housefield calls Stone Soup. 

(Source: Stone Soup, Illustrations by Marcia Brown)

In the old folk tale Stone Soup, three travelers convince a town of greedy villagers to contribute to the making of a pot of soup that, by the end of the tale, was enjoyed by all. Similar to this folk tale, individuals of each group brought materials to class, mostly materials that were simply lying around within their homes and dorm rooms, and contributed to the group's creative output to make their own "stone soup."

Compared to other groups, my group seemed to be low on the quality of our materials, bringing two pieces of cardboard, a tissue box, an empty Simply Orange bottle, a few tubes of paint, newspaper, hair ties, and a toy stuffed rabbit. Doesn't seem like much, does it? I mean, we're supposed to be creating something amazing from these materials, something that is worthy of being called Stone Soup, something that Housefield can look at and say "Wow, these students deserve to be design students," but what were we supposed to do with materials like this? For some people, this feeling of being limited may be the case.

For a group of design students, there is always unlimited possibilities in creativity, even with a set of materials like this. We weren't just limited with these materials either. As an outdoor assignment, we were surrounded by nature, giving us materials like the trees, the leaves, or even the pavement. With our set of low budget materials, nature, and our creativity, we set out to make our own Stone Soup.

(Image by Me, Daniel Daquigan)

Going back to my first blog post, "Design is everywhere." As design students, we found design in the materials that we contributed to our soups, we found design in the nature that surrounded us, and we found design in our group members, each of us contributing our creativity in the process of cooking up our creations.