Consumer or Creativist?

My Creativist Manifesto: Consumer or Creativist is now live on ChangeThis.com. You can read the manifesto at this link:
http://www.changethis.com/66.03.CreativistManifesto

Please download, share with others, and share your thoughts.

PS – am excited to be sharing a space with Seth Godin, whose manifesto is Brainwashed: Seven ways to reinvent yourself – http://www.changethis.com/66.01.Brainwashed

The alternative to consumerism

Worldwatch Institute are publishing a report on 12 January, entitled ‘State of the World 2010: From Consumerism to Sustainability’. From a quick skim read of the preview of the report, it looks like it will be an important contribution to helping move forward the culture change that is required.

However, I believe that there is a fundamental flaw with it. Whilst it sets out the background to the consumerist state that we now inhabit (for example, in at least 10 languages, consumer is interchangeable with person – my argument that our identity is now as consumers), it does not provide an alternative to consumerism. Sustainability in itself is not an alternative to consumerism. It is the goal of where we want to get to, but it is not how we are going to get there. As consumerism is the root cause of the unsustainable situation that we are now in, we need to define what the alternative is that will lead to the sustainable future that we desire. As consume is the verb, the action that defines our lives at the moment, what do we want the verb to be which will define our lives in the future?

I believe that verb, that action is to create. As we have become defined by consuming and become consumers, my hope, my vision is that we will become defined by creating and become creativists.

I have chosen to use the word creativist rather than creator. Creator implies an individual creating on their own (plus has unhelpful religious overtones). My definition of a creativist is of a person creating with other people, with a common good in mind. The definition needs revision, and I would welcome any input, but hopefully it provides a good starting point. It is important that we consume less, but also that we create together more.

We talk of a post-consumer society, but don’t paint a picture of what the future looks like. Sustainability is too vague, it means different things to different people – and it is not a doing word. I believe that if we start to paint a picture of a creativist future, in which people are free to use and enjoy their inherent creative talents, we will start to create that shift. And the great thing is that the evidence of that shift is starting to occur. For example, a recent New York Times headline was ‘The New Normal – Buying Less, Doing More’. We need to do all that we can to accelerate this shift – and make it attractive to people, the natural choice.

If we are really going to manifest culture change, we need to start to change the language that is used in society, as the language that we use defines our world. So, as a start, each time you hear the word ‘consumer’, think about what difference it would make if the word ‘creativist’ was used instead – how would it change the dynamic, how would people be acting and behaving differently? Please share your examples, and I will do the same.

If you would like to find out more about ‘creativist’, my Creativist Manifesto will be published on Changethis.com later this month. I will keep you posted.

Seven steps to Ecotopia

The purpose of the Cineforum: the Road to Ecotopia, an inspirational one day event held in London, was to bring people together to imagine what a sustainable future, Ecotopia, might look like. The outcomes of the day have been captured in a film which is being taken to Copenhagen.

It is so important that we create this vision. Bill Becker, Executive Director of the Presidential Climate Action Project, opened the conference by talking about the power of a positive vision, which he said that we have not yet begun to tap. He gave the example of the ‘Futurama’ vision which was showcased in 1939 at the New York World Fair, of a highly mobile car-centred society, and which has shaped urban development in the United States for the last 70 years.

But as Jobeda Ali of Fair Knowledge, the organiser of the event, said in her summing up at the end of the day, ‘It’s really hard to think about and talk about what we don’t know’. During the course of the day, we divided into five strands, to consider what the future might look like in each of those areas – from community to energy. And we certainly found in the group that I was in that we were much more comfortable generating ideas about what to do, rather than what we would like the future to look like. As one person said, ‘We are talking about the how, without having defined the what’.

John Arnold, who works with Bill Becker on the Future We Want project, showed us an example of a vision of the future that he has created to begin to start a conversation about what a sustainable future might look like. Real people are included along with the computer-generated graphics so that viewers can begin to imagine themselves in such a scene.

I asked John whether he thought that such tools would be made available to community groups in order to help them envision the future they wanted. And his reply was that you don’t always need high-tech solutions – pen and paper can be just as good. And I know from my own work with the Transition Towns community that pen and paper can create highly visual images. The two statements of our Transition Towns vision that resonated most with me were specific and simple – ‘vegetables being grown in front gardens’ and ‘people talking in the streets’.

So if you are looking to conduct your own visioning exercise, what might some principles be to keep in mind? Here are 7 points for starters:

1. Keep it simple
The vision of Remade in Brixton, part of Transition Town Brixton is simple – ‘There is no such thing as waste’. This sends out a powerful call to action to us to begin rethinking waste – both at a personal level and at a societal level.

2. Keep it specific
In our group, John Arnold shared his vision of ‘I can walk to 90% of places that I want to go’. By being so specific, it helps to make the vision more real – and immediately starts you thinking about what the conditions would need to be in order to make it happen – for example, schools, workplaces, health and leisure facilities all within walking distance – and what the benefits would be.

3. Keep it creative
Think about what creative techniques you might use, both to develop your visions in the first place and then to communicate them to others. This might be in the form of drawing, collages, creative writing – or even performing arts. In her closing remarks at the end of the day, Dianne Dillon Ridgely read ‘A Woman’s Creed’ – this in itself articulated a powerful vision:

‘Bread. A Clean Sky. Active peace. A woman’s voice singing somewhere, melody drifting like smoke from the cookfires.’

From these few words, you can already begin to create a picture in your head. You can read the full poem here.

4. Keep questioning
When developing a vision in a group, it is important to keep questioning, as you might do in a coaching conversation. Keep asking the question ‘why?’ and it will help you to go deeper into the vision, beyond the surface idea.

5. Tell a story
Storytelling and improvisation techniques can also be useful in helping to develop a vision. For example, the improv technique, ‘Yes, and…’ is a great way to quickly build a picture together in a pair. ‘I would like to live in a community where….’ and the other person responds, ‘Yes, what I like about that idea is…. And I would like to live in a community where’. So as the conversation goes you are building on and expanding on each other’s ideas.

6. Root the vision in values
A useful way to start off the process is to consider what values are important to the group. By placing these values centre stage at the beginning of the process, this will help to ensure that the visions which develop are rooted in the values which are important to people.

7. Visions will reflect people’s interests
There will not be a ‘one size fits all solution’. The richness of the vision will come from the diversity of interests in the group, whether this is to do with transport or food, community or education.

What do you think? What would your top tips be? What experiences have you had of visioning? It would be great to begin building up this knowledge. We need to develop these skills now – for the future.

This article is one of a series inspired by the Cineforum: A Road to Ecotopia conference held on 4 December 2009 in London.

Local democracy and sustainability

“This is about re-engaging people in local democracy,” said Rob Hopkins of Transition Towns, on the occasion of adding another award to his growing list of gongs – in this case the Green Community Hero award.

“We need to engage optimism and get people fired up about doing what they are passionate about,” said Hopkins.

I was going to ask where the leadership is going to come from to do this, but then realized that the answer was obvious. The leadership is going to come from the communities, which is why the Transition Towns model is proving so successful.

But I think that the government could learn a few lessons too. At a recent community event I attended, Ed Miliband kept on repeating that he was in the ‘persuasion’ game. Is this the right game for him to be in? How about if he was in the inspiration game or, through funding, enabling others to be in the inspiration game, rather than spending money on TV advertising – inspiring communities, as Hopkins says, to get involved in what they are passionate about. Active, healthy communities – sounds like a government strapline.

We need to start making the link, as Rob Hopkins suggests, between healthy local democracies, active citizens and resilient communities.

The culture change to a user-driven government

At the ‘Crowdsourced Council: online tools for participative policy making’ event on 23 November 2009, there were plenty of good tools on offer which make it easy for people to give their opinions in different ways. And all of us there were excited by the possibilities that these tools offered. And a few Councils, such as Southwark, were even trialling these approaches. These tools included Uservoice, a simple way to gather people’s ideas on a particular topic, Audioboo, allowing people to share audio and QuietRiots, enabling people to start their own, hopefully not too quiet (from their point of view anyway), riot.

But there seemed to be two major problems, the elephants in the room, amongst all the excitement. The first is that people are generally not interested in taking part in local democracy, being more interested in voting on X Factor. The second is that politicians, generally, are fearful of more people participation.

Take the first problem: people not being interested. The Hansard Society’s Audit of Political Engagement this year revealed that 50% of people do not want to be involved in decision-making at a local level. The reasons for this include lack of time and feeling that they lack influence because ‘nobody listens to what I have I say’.

Which leads on to the second problem: the culture of politicians. Andy Williamson of The Hansard Society, is quoted in a BBC article, Moving towards Government 2.0, as saying: “In order to effectively engage citizens, an organisation needs to believe that the voice of citizens matters and there is still a culture of ‘I’d rather not’. Web 2.0 is, by its nature, user driven and government isn’t.” One of the participants at the conference voiced the fear that asking people what they thought would generate lots more work. It may generate some additional work, but what about the associated benefits – maybe it is a question of reallocating resources? And at what point between getting elected and being in office do politicians become disconnected from the people that they were elected to represent?

It is all very well for politicians to be talking about increased localism. But what impact is this going to have in practice if the ‘local people’ to whom power is being given are not interested? We have managed to create, as David Howarth, the Liberal Democrat MP said at a recent Hansard Society event, a ‘spectator democracy’. So whilst the online tools that we now have are useful for enabling discussions and conversations, they are not the magic bullet. What we need is a cultural shift, amongst both citizens and politicians. And we need to reframe the question ‘Why would I want to be involved in politics?’ to ‘Why is it important for me to be involved in my local community?’ This question is based on the belief that everyone has gifts to contribute to their community – and by contributing people are actually improving the quality of their own life. And hopefully the discussion around this question would start to unlock new energy and interest.

Who are the service providers?

In her new book, The Unheard Truth, Irene Khan, Amnesty International Secretary General, says the following:

‘It is currently fashionable to speak of government agencies as ‘service providers’, but they should be seen as duty bearers, entrusted with obligations to deliver on specific rights. This strengthens the link of accountability between the government and the government’ (quoted in Amnesty Magazine, November/December 2009).

And if it is fashionable for government agencies to be service providers, then those who for whom the service is provided become users – passive consumers rather than active creative people, who are involved in shaping their own future and that of their communities, with the associated dignity that comes from that.

Irene Khan argues in her book that the foremost challenge in regards to poor people is ‘not their enrichment but their empowerment’. True co-production (as opposed to consultation dressed up as co-production) aims to provide this empowerment. As explained in the New Economics Foundation pamphlet, Co-Production, we need to ‘reduce or blur the distinction between producers and consumers of services, by reconfiguring the ways in which services are developed and delivered: services can be most effective when people get to act in both roles – as providers as well as recipients.’

The pamphlet provides examples where these roles have been blurred successfully. For example, ins some of the most deprived schools in Chicago, disaffected 16-year-olds are acting as tutors for 14-year-olds, with the result of achieving major academic improvement for both and reductions in bullying.

We need more of this type of social imagination thinking to both empower and enrich the communities in which we live.