Took a walk yesterday in the Botanic Gardens at Cambridge, where Bristol based artist Luke Jerram will produce a work with plants in the glasshouses later this week (as part of the NightJar festival) and spent some time considering the history of the rose, not through looking at books or walls, but by wandering around the displays which are living, scented, tangible, real flowers growing laid out in chronological beds which somehow all look the same now it is autumn and apart from a few pale tea-roses most flowerheads are dead, shiveringly leafless.  What strikes me most is how the history of English roses in the past two centuries is bound in with China - how Chinese models provided the basis for development of the hybrids which have become most familiar today. It strikes me most clearly as I am currently developing a summer school, with colleagues at the RCA in London and at Tsinghua University in Beijing, which we hope to hold next year there, exploring co-design and participatory processes, linking older people (including retired professors) living in Beijing with researchers in fields of textiles, ageing, communication technologies, industrial and product design.....to achieve a mutual flow and hopefully successful hybridity.....design for an ageing society is one potential title, the other (which I prefer) is design environment, art, research......or DEAR for short. I'm also busily working with Vanessa - a bricolabs network colleague - on a project related to the Kogi people who live in the Sierra Nevada in Colombia....who are also Elders, or Elder Brothers as they name themselves in their writings - they say 'in the strength of the Mamo's wisdom lies the force of our roots...'.and preparing to return to Brasil on Halloween for the Sergio Motta Instituto anniversary events in Sao Paulo before heading to Florianopolis to Santa Catarina for a talk, with Paralelo colleague, Karla Brunet, about art, technology and environment......we are all working hard in 'this trembling world' as the Kogi Mamos have named it.