Need to Know
09 : 10 : 19

US – This direct-to-consumer (DTC) cookware brand puts a spotlight on how multicultural urban living is shaping at-home dining.

Our Place aims to inspire households to spend more time cooking and eating together, while celebrating the myriad flavours behind modern home cookery. ‘Our mission is to create products and experiences that celebrate cultures, honour traditions, and cultivate connections,’ reads its website. In support, its latest marketing campaign features candid photographs of designer Akua Shabaka and her family dining together.

With an Anti-choice Homeware ethos, Our Place’s edited range of products responds to the more communal yet confined nature of city living, with its plates, cups and bowls sold in stackable sets of four, rather than the traditional six. Its hero product, the Always Pan, has a nesting spoon, pour spout, and steamer basket to serve multiple uses.

Each future homeware collection from Our Place will be centred on a cultural food traditions. It upcoming Nochebuena collection, for example, is inspired by Latin American Christmas Eve, with designs produced by Mexican artisans, to which the brand will give back through charitable donations.

Global – Designer Arthur Carabott has teamed up with composer Anna Meredith to create a new spatial audio app that immerses users in a personalised digital soundscape.

The Moonmoons AR app allows users to tailor their aural experience by placing six digital 'speakers' anywhere within their immediate surrounds. Each speaker plays a different instrument that combine in concert to become a soundtrack. Holding their phone, users can move throughout their environment to vary the volume and direction of the sounds played, creating a unique audio experience.

The app was created for listeners to experience Moonmoons – an Anna Meredith song composed specifically for the experience – in their own way. ‘Augmented reality and spatial audio enable a way of exploring the details of a piece of music that is very natural, and allow the listener to play an active role in their own experience of a piece,' she explains.

As consumers become visually overstimulated in their day-to-day lives, brands will need to leverage new audio technology to create unique sensory experiences that set them apart.

According to recent research from the Population Division of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), an estimated 272 million people are currently living outside of their country of birth, with international migrants making up 3.5% of the global population.

DESA reports that one-third of all international migrants originate from just 10 countries, with India leading as the largest population of migrants living abroad, with a diaspora of 18 million people. The US is the top destination for Indian migrants, but economic incentives are drawing more Indians to the Persian Gulf, with numbers in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Oman steadily increasing.

'Indian American entrepreneurship has been quite prominent,’ explains economist Nirvikar Singh. 'It’s a very important engine of economic growth.’ Singh further notes that although only 1% of the US population is Indian, they represent 8% of high-tech company founders, and one-third of the technology start-ups in Silicon Valley.

As explored in our recent interview with ReDI School of Digital Integrations, initating migrants into valuable positions and fostering their creativity in the workplace will be key to rewriting national narratives on migration.