The tattoo artists throughout Russia's prison system have never had lessons in painting technique (nor, apparently, hygiene training). They don't have ink and tools at their disposal. And yet they create entire murals on one another's chests and backs: onion-domed cathedrals, intricate cobwebs, chilly grim reapers. And they're not just beautiful decorations—they are coded biographies, telling those in the know their bearer's history and affiliations.

One would be hard-pressed to find a tougher environment than the jails where these artists work. Their ink is made from soot shaved off their shoes and mixed with urine. It's injected via guitar strings attached to electric shavers. The tattoos are a brutal mafia ritual. But they're also a mark of determined resourcefulness and self-expression.

When we think of creativity, we think of Mozart, Picasso, Einstein—people with a seemingly fated convergence of talent and opportunity. It's too narrow a set of references, because the truth is that all sorts of people, possessing various levels of intelligence and natural ability, are capable of engaging in fulfilling creative processes. Just because you'll never be Brando or Balanchine doesn't mean that you can't harness your idea-generating powers and make your life your own masterpiece.

 

PopTech 2009 Social Innovation Fellows from PopTech on Vimeo.

Meet all the Fellows in this video—and then learn more about each organization’s work in their individual PopTech presentations below.

You can watch their videos from the 2009 Fellows page (click the link under each project description), from their Vimeo channel, or follow the links below:

Aviva Presser Aiden & Hugo Van Vuuren of Lebônê

Jason Aramburu of re:char

Eben Bayer of Ecovative Design

Paula Kahumbu of WildlifeDirect

Deb Levine of ISIS, Inc.

Derek Lomas of Playpower Foundation

Josh Nesbit of FrontlineSMS:Medic

James O’Brien of Brooklyn Community Arts & Media High School

Emily Pilloton of Project H Design

Hayat Sindi of Diagnostics For All

Taylor Stuckert & Mark Rembert of Energize Clinton County

Nigel Waller of Movirtu

Congratulations to our 2009 Social Innovation Fellows!

All video is released with Creative Commons Noncommercial-Attribution-ShareAlike license—and we hope you will embed and share these videos widely to help the Fellows continue their work.

GOOD Magazine and Wooster Collective have teamed up to bring glimpses of art for the masses, aka. graffiti. Really, it represents the mash-up of public spaces and any form of open source media: wall art, installations, ad "fixing", and eclectic personal projects taken to the streets.

Above is a video page-through of a sketchbook produced by the artist Blu. It is amazing on two levels: (1) the surreal images executed in clean, crisp lines and (2) the fact that this is just one of the hundreds of weekly sketchbooks Blu produces each year!

What is Vark? VARK is a questionnaire that provides users with a profile of their learning preferences. These preferences are about the ways that they want to take-in and give-out information. (www.vark-learn.com)

V - Visual

A- Aural

R-Read/Write

K- Kinesthetic

Yesterday I was invited to come into the classroom and share with them what visual learning means to me.

And so I packed my "Magic Mary Poppins" bag of journals, markers, information graphics, art cards and quilts and headed in to talk about visual learning.

I wanted to share with them that I am a doodler. I have always drawn. I am sure they draw too. It was funny as I started to talk the teacher said, "I want to address the class real quick. I know I just talked with you about doodling and not paying attention in class." She was trying to explain is that you need to doodle for understanding instead of distraction. 

What is doodling? As a visual learner, my pen has to be moving in order for me to be listening. I can not hear if I do not have a pen.

What do I do? Good question. I shared with the students that I draw in front of people big complex business ideas. I draw on the computer for people located around the world so they can "see" what they are talking about. I draw big fancy models with illustrator that are printed out as big posters for companies. I also showed them how I draw for my children. How I take my drawings and routine charts for my kids. How I take a simple drawing and turn it into a quilt. 

Everything about me is visual. It is how I see and communicate with the world. 

I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to talk with these students. When I left the teacher and students had agreed to get some journals for the class and some cups of pens and markers to have out on the desks for them to take their notes. I wish I had been allowed markers in my classroom and I can only say, "AWESOME!! Keep Drawing!!"

America stands at a complex crossroads, economically, technologically, socially and geopolitically. Major forces are reshaping the idea of America, its government’s contract with its citizens, its brand, and its role in the world. And there is not a single global challenge that can be addressed without it.

Zoe Keating performs a unique, soulful "Amazing Grace" | Photo by Kris Klug

The speakers and performers at Pop!Tech this year are examining the questions: Is reinvention possible? What would it look like? Here’s the beginning of this conversation >>

Peter Durand illustrates in real-time a presentation using sumi ink, pastels and acrylic paint.

Alphachimp Studio is on-site in Camden for the 6th year to capture each speaker's vision of an America re-imagined.

View more PopTech art on Flickr >

For afternoon inspiration, check out any of the places their work resides:

http://www.yeehawindustries.com
http://yeehaw.etsy.com
http://www.yeehawindustries.blogspot.com

COME EARLY, STAY LATE! BRING YOUR COUSIN IF YOU CAN'T GET A DATE!
OPENING RECEPTION FOR YEE-HAW EXHIBITION
THIS TUESDAY, OCTOBER 6 from 7-9PM
CHELSEA MARKET
75 9th Avenue (Between 15th and 16th Streets), New York, NY

 

From OCTOBER 4-JANUARY 2, 2009, Yee-Haw's work will adorn the vast and cavernous Chelsea Market, located in the Meat Packing District in Manhattan's West Village. Chelsea Market is an enclosed, urban food court and shopping mall in New York City. It is housed within the former Nabisco factory complex where the Oreo cookie was invented and produced. The 22-building complex fills two entire blocks bound by 9th and 11th Avenues from 15th to 16th Street.
www.chelseamarket.com 

Kaizen (改善) means "improvement" — "kai" (改) means change/make better, and "zen" (善) means good — but as the term is used as a business process it more closely resembles in English “continuous improvement.”

Kaizen is one of the keys to the steady improvement and innovation found at successful companies in Japan such as Toyota. Says Matthew May, in his book The Elegant Solution: Toyota’s Formula for Mastering Innovation, “Kaizen is one of those magical concepts that is at once a philosophy, a principle, a practice, and a tool.”

Though Kaizen is a tool used by corporations to achieve greater innovation, productivity, and general excellence, it’s also an approach, an approach that we can learn from and apply to our own lives as we strive for continuous improvement on a more personal level. We can call this “Personal Kaizen.” Others have applied the personal kaizen approach to personal efficiency or GTD. You too can take the spirit of kaizen and apply it to your own unique personal kaizen approach to improve — step-by-step, little-by-little — your design mindfulness, knowledge, and skill. READ MORE >>

Minneapolis-based designer Chad Hagen takes our love of infographics and turns our little heart inside out. For these are no aesthetically-plotted data sets full of statistics. In fact, we see no handy information at all, just the colors and shapes that typically make an infographic chart pleasant to examine in the first place.

When A.G. Lafley was named CEO of Procter & Gamble during the summer of 2000, her job was remarkably ambitious: Make innovation happen at P&G.

To remain the world's preeminent maker of useful stuff for the house, P&G needed to make a lot of changes very quickly and appointed Claudia Kotchka as the company's first-ever VP for design strategy and innovation in 2002.

Her job was remarkably ambitious: Make innovation happen at P&G!

And she did through up-endeding the status quo in P&G's product development process. She made several bold moves that any company may want to consider.

The brown paper bags that McDonald's hangs out along with Happy Meals and fries are an unlikely art medium, but artist Yuken Teruya has managed to turn the grease-stained vessels into beautiful, delicate paper forests.