iran's solutions

Photos by Poolad Javaher Haghighi. More here.

Here are the solutions that the Iran think tank provided:

Solving the problems of Wales

"Sazmanab Project" think-tank

1. To solve the communication problem of the Welsh, we came up with a couple of solutions. The main issue all these resolutions point to is that we should find the basic common interests between people. This will be act as a strong foundation for all the resolutions we have to offer.

• We thought that the main reason why people are unable to communicate is their fear of being so much different from others. This led us to the idea of designing and making T-shirts all carrying the owners' smiling portraits. Imagine you're walking down the street, seeing a serious neighbor passing you by everyday. Everytime you see him/her you think to yourself "How on earth would I ever communicate with this frowny ol' face?" Now the next day, you see the same person wearing a T-shirt with his/her smiling face on it. This image will make it a lot easier for you to imagine the person in a casual easy mood. You'll definitely feel a lot more comfortable breaking the ice with him/her.


• As the second resolution, we thought of a little social game in which a small sign –a wristband or a small piece of body language- in one passenger invokes a certain social interaction in the other passenger. This could be a smile, a simple "Hi!" or such.

2. To encourage people to fill up the empty shops, we thought of the following solutions:

• Adding a little bonus feature to that certain shop. Imagine a shop selling clothes, which offers a unique little refreshment on the side. This will be like the old saying "Come for the clothes, stay for the lemonade".
  
• We also came up with a discount system that does not necessarily rely on purchase, but it relies on frequent visits of citizens. The system works like this: we create a chain of shops each offering a discount card on each visit. If you collect cards from Shop A, B, and C, you will get a discount in Shop D.
  

3. The question was very vague, so we could not offer any solutions.

4. The basic concept for the solutions in this section is to encourage the patients to express their inner thoughts. So we thought of:

• Putting up a blackboard in the hallway of the hospital which functions as a message board. On this board all the patients and staff can write what they want weather it's their present status or a sentence they like. Other patients and the staff will possibly reply to what the former person has written and then this will turn into a dialogue between the patients and the patients. The nurses will face the thoughts of their patients and possibly respond to them. This type of communication could also be made virtually through Twitter.


• A group of artists can talk to the patients about different matters whether public or personal and then create a piece of art using the views of different patients mixed with their owns. The art form (whatever the media is) can be presented to the staff and other patients and possibly out of the hospital.

5. What connects people with the elderly is to understand that they were once young and did what the young generation do or maybe worse. So we could invite a group of elderly to write their memories of the past , focusing on their sexual memories. We call it "Funny Dirty Memories" and this could be shared with others through the internet and on a web log.

6.

• We could create a red carpet path at some pavements with a "High Heels Only" sign at it in intervals.


• We could also put up some "No High Heels Passing" signs at very uneven pavements.
  

Anita Esfandiari, Bijan Moosavi, Makan Ashkwari, Mani Nilchiani, Sohrab M. Kashani and Tara Fatehi Irani from Tehran, Iran.

Photo documentation of the project was done by Poolad Javaher Haghighi.

Sazmanab Project / September 2009
www.sazmanab.com