Portland’s opera van 
The food carts that have turned Portland dusty lots into food halls have offered an enticing model for the opera in Oregon’s largest city. A Grumman Olson van, transformed into a stage, has been pitching up at festivals and farmers’ markets with a chalkboard menu offering a selection of arias. “We wanted to break down barriers that define opera as elitist,” says Clare Burovac, the company’s artistic operations director.

In the 1990s, Canada’s Saturday morning children’s television was a boisterous affair. Yet amid cheerful presenters and cartoons there was always a moment of elevated pause. Heritage Minutes, first broadcast in 1991 and produced by the Historica Canada charitable foundation, was a history lesson in miniature – 60 seconds from start to finish – profiling a prominent person, a significant place or a notable episode from Canadian history.

It was a pervasive presence, made to promote lesser-known chapters of Canada’s past and shown during TV commercial breaks, on the big screen between movie trailers and in classrooms. Production ended at the turn of the century but the slot was revived in 2012. Each film is a quietly potent pillar in shaping Canada’s sense of self, which is important in a country where national identity is an elusive notion. “Canadians have a reputation for not being loud or celebratory about their history,” says Davida Aronovitch, Heritage Minutes’ manager. “But Minutes has a broad viewer base and we have our super fans. We’re bringing lesser-known stories to the national consciousness.”

Heritage Minutes and its audience are, however, changing. In June it told the story of gay-rights activist Jim Egan, which was the first time the strand had covered Canada’s lgbt history. It was watched online more than 2.5 million times within the first month of its release, one of the highest audiences for a Heritage Minute since the format debuted nearly 30 years ago. “Americans are seen as more patriotic but we have just as many incredible stories and just as many heroes and heroines,” says Aronovitch. “Those are the stories we’re trying to tell.”

The way we work has changed but not in the way many imagined. A few years ago, promises were made about our laptops freeing us from the nine-to-five. An office? Pah, we’ll answer emails between cocktails from our deckchairs, thanks very much. Needless to say, it didn’t pan out that way. We still work from offices – but the way we use them is undergoing an almighty shift.

WeWork is one of many companies that offer co-working spaces. Last year it counted 175,000 members and its shift from fuddy-duddy spaces to trendier digs has also affected office design. Gone is uniformity or vast walnut desks to show who’s boss; here instead is colour and carefully choreographed “personality”. Say goodbye to your Vitra Aluminium Series chair and hello to slouchy armchairs and Panton seating. How about a bean bag? Or a plastic sphere suspended on a rope from the ceiling? Perfect, you’ll fit right in.

But beware: some of these “fun” spaces look remarkably like sad catalogue shots. “The co-working set-up fits the individualistic, slightly self-focused frame of mind, which embraces an ‘anti-bought’ and ‘anti-branded’ cliché,” says Ove Rogne, founder of Oslo-based furniture-design firm Northern. “This sector is giving us plenty of work creating strange, crazy and creative spaces.” We may still be some way from working from deckchairs but it seems we may get that cocktail after all.