Parents' behaviour 'can influence teen drinking'

Children who see their parents drunk are twice as likely to regularly get drunk themselves, a survey of young teenagers has suggested.

Poor parental supervision also raises the likelihood of teenage drinking, said the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
The Ipsos MORI survey found the behaviour of friends is also a powerful factor in predicting drinking habits.
The more time teenagers spend with friends, the more likely they are to drink alcohol, it suggested.
In a survey of 5,700 children aged 13 to 16, carried out for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, researchers found one in five claimed to have been drunk by the time they were 14.
By the age of 16, half of those questioned said they had been drunk.



Influences 
But the study also looked at what influences excessive teen drinking - and the habits of parents seem to be particularly powerful.
The odds of a teenager getting drunk repeatedly is twice as great if they have seen their parents under the influence, even if only a few times.
And the authors say that parental supervision is also important - if parents don't know where their children are on a Saturday night, or let them watch 18 certificate films unsupervised, they are more likely to have had an alcoholic drink.

Teenagers' friends also have a significant impact on drinking behaviour.

The odds of a teenager drinking to excess more than double if they spend more than two evenings a week with friends.
Spending every evening with friends multiplies the odds of excessive drinking more than four times.
Pamela Bremner from Ipsos MORI, the lead author of the report, said: "For the first time in the UK, this study ranks what most influences young people's drinking behaviour.
"It found that the behaviour of friends and family is the most common influential factor in determining how likely and how often a young person will drink alcohol."
Conflicting evidence
But there is conflicting evidence on how to introduce young people to alcohol - leaving parents with some difficult questions unanswered.
Researchers found mixed messages about the ideal age and ways of introducing teenagers to alcohol.
Generally, those introduced to alcohol at a very young age had greater odds of being a regular drinker and of having been drunk multiple times.
But there were differences in the pattern for young people of different ages.
"This research shows that parents can have more influence on their teenagers' behaviour than perhaps many assumed," said Claire Turner, Programme Manager for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
"Both what parents say, and how they behave, have a strong impact on their teenagers' drinking, drinking regularly, and drinking to excess.
"Being introduced to alcohol at a very young age - for example, under 10 years old - makes it more likely that they will drink and drink to excess as teenagers.
"But there are differences in patterns across the group. So for the older teenagers, if they are introduced to alcohol later in life via friends, away from adult supervision, they are also more likely to drink to excess."
Don Shenker, Chief Executive of Alcohol Concern, said the report confirms that from the beginning of a child's life parents have a strong influence on their children's future drinking patterns.
"Parents have to realise and accept that whether intended or not, their own attitudes towards drinking, their own rate of drinking and any drunkenness are clear signals to children that this is acceptable and standard behaviour.
"In addition, parents must accept that allowing children to drink unsupervised can increase the risk of their children being drunk and this can have harmful consequences.
"Government ministers must also look at some of the causes of why it is so easy for children to obtain alcohol, usually from the home.
"Government should look to see if they've done everything they can to stop the large supermarkets from continuing to heavily promote cheap alcohol which incentivises more alcohol purchases and therefore results in more alcohol being stored in the home."

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Design Miami/Basel | Hella Jongerius, in Print and in Porcelain

Hella Jongerius designed 300 porcelain vases for Phaidon Press to accompany the publication of her monograph, “Hella Jongerius: Misfit.” The vases are made in the Netherlands by Royal Tichelaar Makkum.

At Design Miami/Basel, the Dutch design superstar Hella Jongerius will feature limited-edition vases to go with her new monograph.

Jongerius asked that the factory preserve the flaws in each vase, which is layered with traditional and modern glazes, and acrylic paint.

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Seeing Things | The L.A. Design Festival

 

Design has long found a supportive atmosphere in Los Angeles. So it’s surprising that it has taken this sprawling city so long to join other creative capitals around the world and organize a design festival. But next week when the first edition of the L.A. Design Festival opens, Los Angeles will celebrate design of all kinds.

Inspired by the success of design festivals in Miami, San Francisco, London and Tokyo, L.A.’s citywide celebration of innovation and talent, which runs from June 16 to June 30, includes architecture tours, open studios, lectures, exhibitions and showroom events. Dwell on Design, a three-day series of conversations and presentations by design industry leaders, is the West’s Coast’s largest annual event of its kind, and is the anchor around which the design festival’s myriad activities are clustered. In the city’s Silver Lake neighborhood, design aficionados can tour architect Richard Neutra’s iconic midcentury VDL Research House and the studios of up-and-comers like Ball-Nogues Studio, Oyler Wu, P-A-T-T-E-R-N-S, and Materials & Applications, which, under the direction of Jenna Didier and Oliver Hess, has nurtured east side design talent through a series of outdoor installations. At the A+D Museum, in the middle of the city, the exhibition “Come In! 2” includes designers from all disciplines — including the graphics whiz Ashkahn Shahparnia and Electroland, a team known for its ambitious high-tech installations — who will take over every corner of the museum to create site-specific works on the themes of “Surf, Skate and Bike.” Fill up your tank or, better yet, hop on a bike to experience design L.A. style. The festival’s co-founders, Michael Sylvester and Haily Zaki, hope that, given the overwhelming response they’ve received this year, the event will grow even bigger in years to come.

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The Venice Biennale, by Design | By HELENA NILSSON STRÄNGBERG and MARCO VELARDI

Last week the art world descended on Venice for the opening of the Biennale, which will run through Nov. 27. Masses of devotees came together to celebrate Bice Curiger’s directorship of the 54th International Art Exhibition, “Illuminations,” to attend banquets in fancy palazzos, on private boat parties and at rent-your-own-island dinner parties (as Frieze magazine did to celebrate its 20th anniversary) — and to check out some art. This year, there was also plenty to see from the perspective of architecture and design.

The talk of the opening was the Fondazione Prada’s new Venetian address in the freshly restored Ca’ Corner della Regina, an impressive 18th-century palazzo. There, the curator Germano Celant brought together an interesting mix of work, including sculptures by Anish Kapoor, Michael Heizer and Jeff Koons, playful pieces by Damien Hirst and an installation by Louise Bourgeois. The exhibition also includes a scale model of the OMA/Rem Koolhaas-designed Fondazione headquarters, which are scheduled to open in Milan in 2013. And as part of the full Prada experience, the museum attendants are impeccably dressed.

Another great space with an almost magnetic attraction is the spectacular Palazzo Fortuny, where the designer Axel Vervoordt has, for several biennales now, curated wildly popular shows. This year’s effort, “Tra,” includes some 300 artworks from all over the world that are shown to genuinely fascinating effect throughout the three floors of the palazzo. Artists like Marina Abramovic, Fernand Léger, Auguste Rodin and Lucio Fontana, and even the designer Enzo Mari, are all part of the mix.

Meanwhile, back in the Giardini, the public gardens that are the “sanctuary” of the Biennale, the longest-line-to-get-into-a-pavilion award went to Britain, where the artist Mike Nelson installed his labyrinth piece, “I, Imposter.” Only 40 people were allowed in at a time, and the wait was more than an hour. But once inside, you were transported from Venice to Istanbul. Nelson spent three months transforming the pavilion beyond recognition — even removing part of the roof — and into a series of crumbling Turkish courtyards and artisan workshops that remind viewers of the two cities’ intertwined histories.

At the Arsenale, the Biennale’s other main site, highlights included Urs Fischer’s life-size wax candles, one of them a replica of Giovanni da Bologna’s 16th-century sculpture “The Rape of the Sabine Women,” which will slowly but dramatically melt as the exhibition goes on. On the same theme of time passing was Christian Marclay’s 24-hour film “The Clock,” which juxtaposes clips from the history of cinema into an entertaining study of time (and for which Marclay won the Golden Lion award for the Biennale’s best artist). Moving along, we were completely absorbed by the Turkish pavilion’s “Plan B,” where the artist Ayse Erkmen’s simple, almost minimal and fully functional purification system drew upon Venice’s complex relationship with water. A cool tote bag was designed by Konstantin Grcic especially for the project and could be seen on the shoulders of the more stylish Biennale visitors during the press days.

Traveling the byway between the Arsenale and the Giardini, we stumbled upon something unusual amid the lines of Venetian laundry that were hanging out to dry. “Flags for Venice,” produced by the Swiss Institute, was a refreshing take on the pop-up phenomenon — not to mention one of the most interesting and eye-catching installations from a graphic point of view. Twelve artists were invited to design a flag to represent a new group — real or imagined — resulting in stylized works like “The Classic Migraine Flag” or the “Immigrant Flag.” The show was only up for six days, but there is a very nice catalog with the flags in the form of postcards.

Although some areas of Venice are best avoided during the high tourist season, we braved the Piazza San Marco to see the Olivetti showroom. Designed by the Venetian architect Carlo Scarpa in 1957 as a showcase for Olivetti’s high-design typewriters and business machines, it reopened to the public in April as a museum and cultural center, thanks to the space’s owner, Assicurazioni Generali, and the Italian cultural institution Fondo Ambiente Italiano. In Scarpa’s hands, classic Venetian materials like marble, teak, stucco and mosaic were given a modernist twist. (Scarpa even factored in smart solutions for the high waters that regularly flood the piazza.) We loved the staff entrance, hidden in the exterior wall of the shop, as well as the original wooden fixtures, including the storefront logo and window blinds. And if you make it there, you might even find that you have the space to yourself. It’s one of the few places in Venice not (yet) overwhelmed by art pilgrims.

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