Embrace Change: Redesign the Oval Office

Have an interest in designing President Obama's Oval Office? Here's your chance. Ikea the Swedish furniture company has created fun drag and drop furniture to place inside an illustrated Oval Office. The site actually allows you to change color and rotate the furniture too. You can even share your email with a secret service man. I'm not sure a canopy bed, piano or bunkbeds make sense in any office, but certainly Ikea's great design and economical DYI prices may not be a bad way to help "Embrace Change."

"We have never had an opportunity to do anything surrounding the message of change from a national standpoint," says Ikea PR manager Marty Marston, "[Obama's] notion of change and his commitment to fiscal responsibility match the Ikea philosophy of practical and affordable home furnishings for all."

Gotta love the little dog and mat. Very creative!

REFUGEE REALITIES GAME

A few years back I wrote a story about the Games for Change Conference, which is slated this year for June 2 to 4, with Sandra Day O'Connor as the closing keynote speaker.

Recently, Oxfam Australia developed a Refugee Realities game that is a free interactive experience that puts you in the position of a refugee or internally displaced person trying to find safety from war. Each year over 500,000 people are killed in war, the livelihoods of many more are destroyed, and families are torn apart. Often they are left with no choice but to live in camps, which are usually unplanned and occupied by thousands of people.

Refugee Realities is both an interactive performance event involving moving image, improvised theatre, audio-visual and photographic art forms as well as an ongoing online project to document the various realities refugees face.

Refugee Realities will navigate you through a mine field, find you on your way to a refugee camp, and have you search for basic needs like water and food and building a temporary shelter. At the end of the game experience you will have the opportunity to try to seek a permanent solution to displacement, outside the conditions of the camp.

Find out more about Games for Change