A couple of weeks ago Elmwood held its first Hoo-ha! It’s our new members-only event where FMCG brands and retailers get together to creatively come up with their next big innovative ideas, using design. Custom-designed to poke, stoke and provoke, we took 35 top-notch FMCG and retail clients, as well as entrepreneurial guest speakers and global Elmwood people, on a 48-hour ride of non-stop stimulation and freewheeling observation.

The article is written by Greg Taylor, Director of Brand Provocation at Elmwood, London

Here in the UK last week, we hit the first double-dip recession since the 1970s. But there wasn’t wall-to-wall coverage or even that much front-page news. Do we have a collective sense of inevitability? Are we a nation resigned to economic depression? Or do we have a growing determination to take matters into our own hands and build our own futures? Now is the time for each and every one of us to reboot our own ‘home’ economy and build a new ‘homestyle’, a way of living that makes more of the spaces we find ourselves in. After all, home is where the heart is.