Cultural Futures

cultural futures :: creativity and the new societylinda carroli :: guest lecture, qut :: april 2009

how are we to live?

If success or failure of the planet and of human beings depended on how I am and what I do ... How would I be? What would I do? R. Buckminster Fuller

The fate of the world depends upon the way we live. Lawrence Ferlinghetti 1971 (from Las Vegas Tilt in Open Eye)

Martin Luther King Jr. didn't change the world by saying, 'I have a complaint.' Artist Chris Jordan (reported in Fast Company October 2007)

social innovation

NEW strategies, concepts, ideas and organisations that meet social needs of all kinds - from working conditions and education to community development and health - and that extend and strengthen civil society.

how are we to live together?

social change climate change


apology intervention


highway hub

Source: Urban Advantage http://www.urban-advantage.com

where are we to live together?

http://www.urban-advantage.com/

an inquiry, not an answer

learning thinking

reflection in action, action learning process, generative learning, double loop learning - questioning the role of the framing and learning systems which underlie actual goals and strategies.

see: Chris Argyris & Donald Schön; Peter Senge

beyond judgement and critical response; escape your point of view; critical and creative thinking; cognitive patterns; cogneticsNot taught in schools – only taught as a by-product, not a skill in itselfsee: School of Thinking, http://www.schoolofthinking.org

an inquiry, not an answer

futuring / futures community

anticipatory methods, transformative action, emergence, capacity building, strategy, backcasting, scenarios, scanning etc. From the future to the present. Systems thinking.

See: Sohail Inayatullah - http://www.metafuture.org

social and cultural agency; community is not the same as society or culture; relationship to self; social and cultural space of negotiation and sharing; communities of practice; social networks; wikinomics; crowd sourcing etc.

http://www.metafuture.org/

social innovation

who is involved

Generating Social Innovation: setting an agenda, shaping methods and growing the field

by Robin Murray, Geoff Mulgan & Julie Caulier-Grice

http://www.socialinnovationexchange.org/files/attachments/Generating_Social_Innovation.pdf

those who contribute to helping societies think, adapt and innovate

governments and policy-makers who can do so much to create the conditions for innovation, or to crush them;

foundations and philanthropists with free money;

NGOs and associations trying to meet needs more effectively;

entrepreneurs and innovators.





social innovation

The arena of social innovation includes public policy, design, technology, business, community organising, the professions and social entrepreneurship. Some of the threads include:innovation in public services. The experience of Scandinavian countries is particularly instructive. Governments are increasingly recognising that innovation isn't just about hardware: it is just as much about prisons and healthcare, schooling and democracy. growing interest in social entrepreneurship and community economiesbusiness, which is increasingly interested in innovation in services eg crowdsourcingnew methods of innovation inspired by the open source fieldsocial networking, peer-to-peer and informatics linking social innovation to theory and research in complex adaptive systems to understand its dynamicscollaborative and interdisciplinary approaches to social innovation.Source: Wikipedia

creativity ... stimulus

What we might call "the creativity stimulus" goes far beyond job creation and even economic development. Culture is not just something conservatives wage war on. The arts are not just something liberals dress up for on weekends. Creativity can be a powerful form of organizing communities from the bottom up. The economic crisis gives us a chance to rethink the role of creativity in making a vibrant economy and civil society. Artists as well as community organizers cultivate new forms of knowledge and consciousness. One of the unsung stories of the past twenty-five years is how both have used creativity to inspire community development and renewal. Creativity has become the glue of social cohesion in times of turmoil.http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090504/chang/single?rel=nofollow

urban creativity, innovation and futures

a cultural writing project by linda carroli

funded by the australia council

http://placing.synthasite.com

the placing project

the placing project

scope

Placing is a critical and cultural exploration of place, writing place and place writing. The project will result in writings and publications addressing the intersection of cultural and urban life.

The objective of the project is to draw out emerging and changing ideas about urban environments with particular emphasis on the role artists, designers, planners, architects and other urbanists can play as changemakers.

the placing project

three componentsplace :: self initiated projects and collaborations with others placed :: concerned with urban practices and projects that demonstrate the built environment in process, as living and lived in. It is concerned with projects that have captured some emerging, unsettling and ‘other’ directions and solutions for planning, design and artistic practices and practitioners. placing :: adopts a more facilitated, consultative and process-driven approach (deliberative dialogues) rather than one of theoretical or critical reflection and writing.

placed

In the projects gathered and discussed in Placed, as a publishing/writing project, something different or ‘other’ has been brought into existence.

They are beginning to chart an Australian experience of how artists, designers, planners, architects and other urbanists are creatively pursuing changemaking in the current system, potentially with a view to transforming that system.

placed

street party, sandgate renew newcastle

local practices and economies developed through flexibility, opportunity and informality

http://www.renewnewcastle.org

placed

greenlight system

http://www.environmentalhealthclinic.net/product/greenlight/

Greenlight System by Natalie Jeremijenko

health, design, sustainability

placed

home loan

Home Loan, an exhibition curated by Kate Shaw and Larissa HjorthSee: http://placing.synthasite.com/placeblog/placed-home-loan

creative divide?

creative suburbs?

placed

CV08

http://www.maynardarchitects.com/Site/houses/Pages/CV08.html

placed

This Suburb Eating Robot called CV08 is a creation of Andrew Maynard Architects. The project description reads:

“The Australian suburb was born out of our dependence on the car. With Peak Oil rapidly approaching, the epoch of the automobile with soon come to an end and with it so will the Australian outer suburb ... Andrew Maynard Architects proposes the CV08 as the answer. CV08 is a robot that consumes the abandoned suburbs through its front 2 legs. It processes the materials and fires off compacted recycling missiles to awaiting recycling plants. CV08’s middle legs and one rear leg follow the front legs to terra-form the newly revealed earth with native Flora and Fauna. Vast stocks of the Flora and Fauna are stored within CV08 in carbonite sleep until they are required to colonise what was previously suburban wasteland.”

placed

rider spoke

http://www.mca.com.au/default.asp?page_id=14&content_id=4719Rider Spoke by Blast Theory

cultural methods can inform planning & design

placed

Presented at The Rocks in Sydney earlier this year, the interactive and participatory performance involved a touchscreen computer mounted on bicycle handlebars that guided the rider through The Rocks. In Real Time, David Williamson described it thus: “The format of Rider Spoke is simple. The voice in my headphones encourages me to ride in any direction I wish, to discover the city for myself; to feel its wind on my face and breathe in its air; to use the cycling experience to take account of the city, and of my physical presence within it. At various points, I am asked to stop and offered the opportunity to record responses to given questions. Each of these acts of recording are referred to as ‘hiding’, and each time I ‘hide’ to reveal a personal story, the process is marked on the handlebar screen by the image of a flock of birds. The birds swirl outward, circling and returning, as if enfolding my story in their feathery embrace. There is never any sense of coercion or compulsion in these acts of hiding, simply calm requests for stories framed by the gift of other small anecdotes.”

linda carroli

writing

http://flytrapper.synthasite.com

placing project

http://placing.synthasite.com

consulting

http://harbingerconsultants.blogspot.com

Design

Cultural Futures