Stone Soup

Image from http://hostilefork.com/2005/07/

The concept of “Stone Soup” is one that I have known for probably the majority of my life and here is what I am going to refer to as the “Erin Sayson Abbreviated Version”:

There are some soldiers visiting a village in hopes of finding a good meal or a nice bed to sleep on.  However normally, when soldiers would come to visit a town, they would take advantage of the poor peasants and villagers.  So naturally, these villagers did not give the soldiers very much food.  But the soldiers decided to make due with what they had.  First they took a large pot and added stones and water.  Then eventually all the people in the village came out and brought a little bit of what they had, and together they made a soup for the entire village to share.  Then, in response, the villager’s view of the soldiers shifted from a negative one to a positive one, simply because everyone was included and working together.

What does this story have to do with design?  Well first of all, today, Housefield assigned us a “Stone Soup” activity.  In this assignment, all of the members of my group brought a little bit of something creative from our homes.  After that, plain and simply, we had to create with it.  Definitely the hardest part was figuring out what on earth we were going to create with a bunch of cardboard boxes, paper plates, construction paper, ribbon, and other really random items.  As our group stared at the taunting supplies in front of us, we all just started spitting out ideas ranging from an article of clothing to even a teepee.  In the end, we agreed on this “well dressed” robot/ man that would be sitting casually on a bench waiting for a date.  Then one thing led to another, and all of us got to working on whatever needed to be done, helping each other out, and creating our very own “Stone Soup.”

I’d definitely say that our project was a success.  We easily got along throughout the whole process, and everyone threw out his or her own great ideas.  In the future, as a designer, that is exactly what we will be doing: working together with the people around us to create.  No one person can design completely on their own.  We will always need the help of those around us.