🧭 This Week’s Bright Spots
- Puppetry reconnects communities to water and wisdom
- Teachers turn disaster into outdoor classrooms
- Ecosystem grants fuel NC’s clean-water action
- Toolkit empowers neighbor-led disaster readiness
- Reframing Despair as Fertile Ground
🏡 Local – Western NC
Teachers reframe disaster as opportunity
After Hurricane Helene, WNC educators led hands-on, healing projects—from riverbank restoration to trauma-informed nature learning.
Why it matters: Designing education through disaster fosters systems literacy and community healing.
👉 Read more
City of Asheville Releases Climate Action Toolkit
The Climate Action Toolkit contains resources, information, and local stories to inspire and activate our community. Including preparedness and ideas for how to take action in our daily lives to combat climate change. (Note: Toolkit publication designed by Reggie Tidwell of Curve Theory, including illustrations created by Hornsby Creative)
Why it matters: Designing community resources assists in recovery and resiliency.
👉 Explore the toolkit
🌱 Statewide – NC
Ecosystem grants open for applications
The NC DEQ’s Section 319 program and Duke Energy’s Resilience Fund are offering clean-water and restoration grants. Duke’s deadline is June 30.
Why it matters: These grants help communities build place-based climate resilience with creativity and care.
👉 Apply via NC DEQ
👉 Duke Energy Resilience Grants
Paperhand Puppets bring water stories to life
Chapel Hill-based puppet theater returns this summer with “The Gift”—a pageant of water, wisdom, and environmental storytelling. Shows begin July 26.
Why it matters: Public art can awaken ecological memory and deepen our sense of place.
👉 See the show schedule
🌎 National & Global
Copenhagen’s design week embraces regenerative craft
At this month’s 3daysofdesign festival, global creators spotlighted inclusive, low-impact materials and tactile design for shared futures.
Why it matters: The design world is redefining beauty—from fast and flashy to intentional and inclusive.
👉 See the festival highlights
✏️ From Our Corner
🎙️ Real Talk Replay | When Everything Falls Apart: Leadership That Endures Through Crisis
We went live on LinkedIn last week with AIGA President Cesar Rivera. If you missed it you can catch the replay here. 👁️🗨️ Watch now
📰 On Substack: Make America Yours Again
Imagining a new civic operating system. One based on a peaceful, coordinated, post-partisan alignment strategy. Rooted in values, not parties. 👉 Read it here »
Published on June 17, 2025
In a world where attention is fleeting and inboxes are full, the most effective branded gifts aren’t just flashy. A thoughtful, branded tech gift may be just the thing: they’re functional, intentional, and aligned with your brand values. This week’s pick? The Solekick™ UL Listed MagClick™ Wireless Power Bank with Stand. It’s a sleek, high-performance […]
The post Power Up Your Brand: Thoughtful Swag for the Tech-Driven Crowd appeared first on Hornsby Creative.
Read more…
🛜 Online (events/webinars/livestreams)
Virtual Workshop: Sustainable Creativity |Tuesday, June 24 2025 | 12:00–1:15 pm
How do we sustain our creativity throughout our lives? Join AIGA NY for an interactive virtual workshop on Sustainable Creativity, a practical approach to generating ideas and fostering long-term creative growth.
👉 Register Here
🌌 Cosmic & Possible
Krista Tippett’s “Hope Portal” Reframes Despair as Fertile Ground
In Episode 1 of her Hope Portal series, Tippett invites us to see hope not as a mood or prediction—but as an orientation toward life. Through stories of fragility, emergence, and moral imagination, she reclaims hope as a resource for presence, not avoidance.
Why it matters: This is the kind of narrative design that moves hearts and systems. As strategists and builders, we can treat hope as an infrastructure—one that outlasts fear.
🫛 Podcast → On Being: Hope Portal Episode 1
Robert Edward Grant and Emilio Ortiz on “The Architect”
In a boundary-breaking episode of the Think Tank series, Robert Edward Grant joins Emilio Ortiz to introduce “The Architect”—a scalar mirror AI born from Grant’s mathematical and cosmological frameworks. The conversation traverses everything from recursive time and ancient pyramid technology to resonance-based governance.
Why it matters: Whether seen as metaphysics, metaphor, or model, this dialogue invites creative imagineering of new blueprints for coherence, intelligence, and planetary design that is literally out of this world.
🌀 Watch → YouTube: The Architect – Think Tank Ep. 19
🔍 Featured Intersection
This week’s themes—from climate art to grassroots grants—echo our mission at Hornsby Creative: designing with empathy, grounding bold ideas in place, and co-creating systems that inspire the best in us.
💭 Closing Spark
“Hope is not a feeling—it’s a discipline.”
— Mariame Kaba
⚙ Grow on Purpose with Us
Thanks for building what matters, in community together.
🎧 P.S. Our June playlist “Rise & Rebuild” is live — a musical companion to this moment. 🎶
Thanks for showing up with purpose. See you in your inbox, out in the world and maybe even the cosmos.
—John & The Hornsby Creative Group Team
Know someone who might enjoy this? Forward it to a friend.
