Cleaner, Talking, Town!

During the Design Studies lecture on Friday I had to pick three words from a wide selection contained in the slides. The ones that caught my eye were: cleaner, talking and town. Our task was to come up with a story connecting these three words, and I have to admit that I struggled!

To help form some sort of idea I completed a short brainstorming session. I even got my mum and dad involved in order to see how these words are perceived by different people. The issue of location was raised and how depending on what country this indiviudal worked, their outlook on life would completely differ. For instance a cleaner working for a town in either Germany or Holland may feel they have a fulfilling job. These countries tend to take much more pride in the environment and their town's appearance. Therefore a cleaner working here may be talking about job satisfaction.

However if you consider a cleaner working in India, a very different picture would be painted. The standards of cleanliness would be much lower and the cleaner themselves would probably be much younger. It could be a child doing this job; working long hours for very little pay. What would they be talking about?

What about the UK, how are cleaners perceived here? It is fair to say that they probably don't get enough credit and in all honestly we tend to be a society who under values them. Afterall if cleaners didn't do their jobs disease would follow. I would therefore presume that cleaners probably feel that they don't get enough credit or respect for the job that they do.

So back to the three words - cleaner, talking and town. I decided to link them with the following situation: A cleaner working in a run down area in the UK is discussing how neglected the town is. They feel that the work he or she does is completely pointless - forever picking up litter and washing off grafiti. Is there any point? How is it going to improve things? Can removing a little vandalism solve the 'real' problems in this town? The answer is yes! As the 'Tipping Point' explains small changes can have big results, so these tedious jobs which feel pointless at times can infact be extremely worthwhile.