Creativist Society

The tragedy of mass youth unemployment - loss of consumer demand. Really?

Is this what politicians really think of us? Here is Peter Mandelson, business secretary in the last Labour government, speaking about youth unemployment:

People recognise that it is a massive waste of resource, a ticking timebomb, a loss of consumer demand. It is one of the most important issues this year.

Wow. Nothing about the human factor, the impact on people’s lives, the sheer waste of talent, skills, energy. We are just seen as a resource, a timebomb, and missing cash in tills.

I was speaking to a recent graduate today who wanted to get into environmental work. She is thinking of moving to West Africa as it will be easier for her to get a job there than in the UK. 

Do politicians not recognise that there needs to be a more fundamental overhaul of the system, that throwing money at the problem might help, but it is not going to make it go away? And that the problem might be around longer than just this year? How about if some of these young people were given the opportunity to solve some of these problems? Then we might get some fresh, real solutions. 

The Future We Choose

Think Act Vote is an inspiring organisation which is all about encouraging people to create the future they choose. So I was delighted to be able to contribute my thoughts about the future I choose - one in which we are Creativists rather than consumers. 

Read the interview here:
http://thinkactvote.org/2011/12/27/olivia-sprinkel-the-futures-interview/ 

Creativist companies

This week, I heard Lord Watson of Richmond speak at the RSA on the future of advertising. Lord Watson is UK chair of Havas Media, an international communications company. He was very clear: the aspirations of advertising companies need to change. It is no longer just about selling more stuff. They have conducted research which shows that what people are interested in now is wellbeing and what a brand can contribute to society. It is very important that brands grow roots, and contribute to society. It is about a shift to ‘softer’ values and societal benefit.

As he was speaking, Lord Watson made the distinction between consumers and citizens. This raised the question in my mind – what would the difference be if brands spoke to us as citizens rather than consumers? Or, going one step further, spoke to us creativists rather than consumers?

This weekend, there was an article in the Financial Times about Google Ideas, the ‘think/do tank’ set up by Google. According to Eric Schmidt, the chief executive of Google, Google’s business models remains “to come up with new ideas to make the world a better place. The point is that, as a corporation, we’re trying to do more than just serve our shareholders. We’re also literally trying to serve our citizens, our customers.” (quoted in the FT article).

Google Ideas is still in the process of being developed. An example of an initiative is the Summit Against Violent Extremism (Save) in Dublin, where Google brought together 80 former extremists who now work to prevent radicalisation, together with Google employees, survivors of terrorist attacks, academics and experts to develop solutions to fight extremism.

Eric Schmidt makes the point that they are not trying to become political. “We’re taking a pro-information and empowerment stand”. Which is a stand that fits in with the values at the heart of the Google business.

Anne-Marie Slaughter, formerly at the US state department policy planning unit and now at Princeton, is also quoted in the article. She says the role of corporations need to change. “If you look at the role that companies are playing in the world…these are corporations that have to be part of the solutions of most of the top problems that are on the (US) secretary of state and president’s list”.  The article goes on to say, “She likens Google Ideas to a government policy unit where the goal is to assemble a group of ‘out of the box’ thinkers to examine issues and then work with other departments to deploy solutions. And, she argues, it’s a model more companies need to consider. “This is not just about giving back,” she says. “This is about how companies can contribute to important policy problems.””

Virgin Unite is another example of a company applying entrepreneurial thinking to societal problems, with their initiatives including a Carbon War Room.  

Both Google and Virgin here are actually being creativist companies in their thinking – assessing how they can contribute to wellbeing in the world, rather than just being consumers of resources. So perhaps it is a two-way process – companies need to see us as creativists rather than consumers, and we need to encourage companies to be creativists rather than consumers.

Let us see the beauty of life

I have written before about how I see that the fact that we are defined as consumers is damaging, both to us as individuals and collectively as a society. This morning, I was reading Dispatches, Medecins sans Frontieres newsletter. One of the stories was a report from Dr James Maskalyk, who is working on the Kenya/Somalia border, in the world’s largest refugee camp at Dadaab. He wrote of the conditions in the maternity ward – “several women sprawled on a concrete floor slick with chlorine. 34 women in the ward, labouring, and the staff hurrying from one to the next”.

He went on to write:

‘ “This is where people come out,” Annie Dillard wrote from the delivery floor of a hospital. So too in Dagahaley, blue or bloody, screaming or silent, one after another, life effervesces through women into the cold, clear air.’

He tells of a woman with one blind eye, who had carefully made a necklace of white buttons to put around her child’s neck.

He concludes his piece. “Life is a precious cargo, even here. This is a beautiful world. May the people that come into it live to see it through bright eyes”.

I found this report incredibly moving. The beauty of life evident even in appalling conditions.

And I found myself thinking about another damage that being labelled as a consumer does. It separates us from those who are not consumers. We are divided – consumers/non-consumers. Whereas in fact we are all people. We have all been born into this world the same way – although our circumstances vary hugely.  We all have a responsibility to each other – and to life.

This morning, I saw a bumper sticker. “The earth does not belong to us. We belong to the earth – Chief Seattle”. The consumer sees the earth as belonging to them. The citizen, the creativist, the person sees themselves as belonging to the earth – and acts accordingly.

The ‘Third Place’ Manifesto

Stephen Johnson (@huxley) has written a manifesto which elegantly describes the ‘third place’ that is emerging as a result of social media, a new kind of community, with new kinds of possibilities. Download the manifesto here. 

From a creativist perspective, I was particularly interested in his description of how social media is enabling new interactions, new creations and a new kind of experience. Here’s a taster:

“Social technological advancement is therefore, in ways not possible before now, enabling us to become a value creator within context. It is an environment where personal and professional participation culminate in a reconnection to what is timely, relevant and authentic. I often refer to this ecosystem as a new lens through which to see and experience our environment, where opportunity and interaction are interdependent, presenting us with new paths and narrative. Thus, we are writing the future through and within this narrative, inspiring new stories and a sense of belonging to something bigger than us - an ecosystem where contextual value is the natural byproduct of our participation.”

One phrase that stood out for me is how it is now a context that ‘beckons us to live in a perpetual state of beta’. This sense of experimentation and innovation, of continuously learning and growing, is in contrast to the more static states that perhaps were never natural, but society wanted to us to believe in. This sense of living in a perpetual state of beta also sums up for me that many of us are now doing our growing up and development in a public space - if we choose, and if people choose to tune in, we can now share our process of development in our lives online - and by doing so, we benefit from the feedback and interaction of others, resulting, maybe, in a stronger ‘product’. 

We share ourselves online through stories - whether that is words, video or photographs - and Stephen sets out how through sharing these stories we can collectively create a new narrative. He ends by quoting Raymond Kurzweil, Director of the Imaginary Foundation:

“The opportunity is to be for rather than against, to create solutions rather than protest against what exists. There are things worth believing in; there are things worth being passionate about; and so our action must not be a reaction but a creation”.