An Australian Idyll - Part Four

The Australian idyll does not really begin within a room but in the cottage garden.

What do you really know about nature, and productive gardens?

What do you already know about the cottage itself?

How much have you already explored here?

The sitting room here may have been where you have mostly been responding to the questions posed in the workshops.

You may have been learning about cottage industries here, or in the sitting room or in the attic.

Do you consider an Australian idyll to be a public experience or a private one, or a communal one, or something else entirely?

What have you been learning about the idyllic, and from whose point of view?

How do you compare cottage industries with other experiences of working from home?

What have you been learning in the library here?

Do you usually associate cottages with the information industry?

There is much to learn from history.

You may or may not associate the cottage with creativity.

Do you consider idyllic cottages to be locations of sweetness and light?

There are many cultural considerations to make.

If your ideas of bliss are sentimentally romantic, or even kitsch or camp or cuteness, you may associate cottages with the modern tourism industry rather than the folklore of earlier times.

You may or may not associate a cottage with a creative culture, or with barbarians or philistines.

An Australian Idyll - Part Three

How relevant is money to a good way of life?

How relevant are governments to a good way of life?

You may not think these questions have much to do with an Australian idyll, at least in relation to Australians with considerable personal and business debts to repay and inadequate incomes with which to do so.

An Australian Idyll - Part Two

You may not necessarily consider an idyll to involve project management.  Yet your life itself can be managed as a project.  After all, it has had a beginning, a middle and an end.

You may have some knowledge of where and when your life began but probably very little awareness of that beginning in terms of memories to recall.

You are now at the stage of taking over the management of that project from whoever has been managing it up to this time.  It is up to you to make an assessment of how the project needs to be adjusted.  It is also up to you to reassess what the project now aims to achieve.

What do you already know about project management?

Do you already consider your life to be a project?

Do you consider happiness to be a long-term goal or part of your daily practice, or both?

What have been your prior experiences of project teams, in any context?

What have been your experiences of individual and collective projects?

What would be your ideal idyll and where would it take place, both physically and digitally?

What would be the social and cultural features of your ideal idyll?

What would be the technological and design features?

What would be the financial features?

What would be the environmental features?

What would be the permanent features?

What would be the temporary features?

Who and what would be permanently excluded?

Who and what would be permanently included?

Who and what will be temporarily included, and for how long?

How would you prefer to explain your reasoning in relation your answers?

You may associate an idyll with a journey more than a destination.

What would be truly idyllic for you at this stage of your life, and why?

Do you usually consider the idyllic in terms of the temporary or the permanent?

Are you more interested in seeking an idyllic holiday than an idyllic life?

Perhaps you associate the idyllic with the hedonistic.  Perhaps you think of an idyll as an escape from duties and responsibilities rather than a justified response to problems.

What do you know about the poetic origins of idylls?

What is your acquaintance with the etymology of idyll?

An Australian Idyll - Part One

You may associate idylls with the rustic, the rural, the pastoral, the peaceful, the innocent and the gently unsophisticated.

You may mainly associate idylls with everyday life in non-urban areas in pre-industrial times, or not as the case may be.

Perhaps the idea of an idyll is mainly a figment of the imagination with no actual basis in reality, whether in the past or present.

What, then, is an Australian idyll?

How is it possible to experience the idyllic in Australia, or anywhere else, with environmental disasters, experiences of violence and other unpleasantness?

You may associate the idyllic with a village-like Utopia and with Arcadia and with the natural aspects of vernacular architecture.

You may associate the idyllic with humble lives, and with humble origins.

You may associate the idyllic with dwellings merging into nature, including reasonably comfortable rural shacks, simple huts, chalets and log cabins as well as, or instead of, picturesque cottages.

You may associate the idyllic with rustic furniture, possibly made from logs and recycled materials, including pallets and second-hand items. 

The idyllic may be associated with the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi, and with the 19th century Arts and Crafts movement in Britain and elsewhere.

It may be associated with the practical use of plaster, and even a few decorative uses of it.

It may be associated with practical uses of terracotta, and even a few decorative uses of it.

It is often associated with wood, and stone, and cobblestones. 

An Australian idyll does, however, require effective, long-lasting damp proofing and fire proofing.

You may be aware that death is everywhere, even amidst youth and vitality and budding blossoms.

An idyll is a diversion from thoughts of death, destruction and competitiveness.  It is the opposite of the stark newness and mass production of modernism.  It is also the opposite of the contrived, ironic kitsch of postmodernism.

You may not usually associate an idyll with progress.

You may associate it with crafts.

The Cottage and Character - Part Four

What do you already know about the cottage garden here?

The Cottage Garden - Part One

The Cottage Garden - Part Two

Do you usually associate outdoor spaces with character even more than indoor spaces?