In a bid to help people harbour meaningful connections in an increasingly digital world, Viennese coffee roasters Julius Meinl is helping bring people together “in real life” in its latest initiative. The idea is simple, on World Coffee Day, those who take their friendship offline and meet in coffee houses can claim a 2-for-1 coffee at Julius Meinl locations – all in exchange for co-writing a story or poem explaining how they met. Consumers are invited to share a photo of their poem on social media to be in with the chance of having their poem turned into a song.

Taking place in over 25 countries on World Coffee Day (October 1^st), consumers are invited to meet a friend over a coffee or tea and rekindle their friendship using poetry as a creative outlet for expression.

With communication now defined by swipes and clicks, our friendships are taking a toll, existing primarily on apps and networking sites. Yet online communication often leaves us feeling isolated, with screen time dramatically affecting how we experience human connection. Now, we are beginning to see a dramatic shift away from a culture that standardises always-on connectivity and with this comes an awareness to schedule real-time catch-ups with friends. Julius Meinl’s unique scheme is encouraging people to come together and bring more poetry into the world, by using tea or coffee as the fuel to ignite more poetic and creative moments in life.

Julius Meinl’s global ambassador, platinum-selling singer-songwriter and coffee lover, JP Cooper knows the importance of written communication to express oneself- drawing parallels with song writing and poetry. He comments: “It’s no secret that social media gives us a false sense of connectedness, encouraging us to communicate in half-written sentences and emoticons.

For this next campaign, JP Cooper will be partnering with his long-term friend and music producer, Hannah V, the session musician behind major powerhouses such a Rihanna, Jessie J and Jason Derulo.

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From 18th to 23rd September, one of Trafalgar Square’s iconic lion statues was joined by an additional florescent red lion to promote London Design Festival. The interactive installation was created by ES Devlin in collaboration with Google Arts & Culture as part of a year-long project. Exploring the parameters of design and artificial intelligence, the installation incorporates a deep learning algorithm developed by Ross Goodwin, creative technologist at Google.

Following the Festival, the sculpture will be digitised as part of an online exhibition on Google Arts & Culture so people all over the world can experience the groundbreaking artwork. The project is supported by digital commissioning body The Space as part of its work to ensure the broadest access to the arts through digital technologies. Cast in 1867, the four monumental lions in Trafalgar Square have been sitting as silent British icons at the base of Nelson’s Column for the past 150 years.

This new lion was not silent: it ‘roared’ poetry, and the words it ‘roared’ were chosen by the public who were invited to “feed the lion,” words. By daylight, the ever-evolving collective poem was shown on LEDs embedded in the mouth of the lion. By night, the poem was projection-mapped over the lion and onto Nelson’s Column itself: a beacon of streaming text that invited others to join in and add their voice.

Devlin says the idea for the sculpture was prompted by a walk through Trafalgar Square with LDF Chairman Sir John Sorrell during last year’s Festival. “He said: ‘Landseer never wanted those lions to look so passive; he proposed a much more animated stance, but Queen Victoria found it too shocking.’ The thought lodged in my mind. What if we could invest the lion with a diversely crowd-sourced collective poetic voice?”

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