Creativist Life @creativistsociety-blog - Tumblr Blog

Hey!

To me, creativist society is a society which create something out of nothing or they do something that have never been done before. Creativity is here there everywhere all we need is to find it in our hearts. It is not something that is gifted to specific people. it is for everyone.

The old dream is dead, long live the new dream!

Although we are quite aware of the many changes, which are happening, we still are putting them into the framework of the old dream, the old paradigm.

The old (and current) dream is and was to live a life like the American middle-class. This means to own a house in a suburb, to drive a car, to have children, to eat meat, to have a holiday and to have consuming as a hobby and lifestyle in itself. Many people, especially in emerging and developing countries are still aspiring to this dream.

However, the reality is that this is simply not possible anymore. The resources that would be necessary to sustain that dream like oil, water, food, land, and jobs are not sufficiently available. Most of these resources are close to depletion. Already in the West we are consuming 3 to 5 earths to maintain our lifestyle.

It is therefor an illusion to focus on this goal. The reality demands that we focus on a new dream and a new paradigm. This is not easy as most businesses and institutions are still inspiring us to chase after that old dream. That is because that old dream is their bread and butter and they are only focusing on short-term gains and not on the long-term impact of their behavior. This emphasizes the need to create a new dream for ourselves.

In order to help you with that process of creating a new, sustainable dream, I am looking at these 12 life areas and what the key changes are.

APPEARANCE

CAREER

FAMILY

FRIENDS

FUN

HEALTH

HOME

MONEY

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT

RELATIONSHIP

SERVICE

SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT

As there is no special order, I will just start with the first one.

Appearance

The old dream focuses on your looks, on your clothes, on externalities. If you look good, you will feel good and be happy.

The new dream focuses on who you really are, your internal beauty, your values and virtues.

Career

The old dream wants you to be an employee at a large organization, where you work until you can retire. Compliance, specialization and fitting into the culture are key.

The new dream knows that lifetime employment is no longer possible and helps you to be an entrepreneur. Differentiation, being a generalist and uniqueness are key.

Family

The old dream is about being married and having two children.

The new dream is about running a single person household, same-sex marriage and all other possibilities.

Friends

In your old dream your friends were physically in your neighborhood.

In the new dream you can connect with anyone, globally.

Fun

The old dream let you being entertained by the big media, it was a passive, consuming role.

In the new dream you are active and are producing your own content.

Health

The old dream lets you believe that there is strict difference between your body and your mind. The doctor is there to fix your body.

The new dream is about ownership and has a holistic and preventive focus.

Home

The old dream is about owning a single house in a suburb.

The new dream is about green apartments in city centers.

Money

The old dream is about making a lot of money so you can consume more and retire wealthy.

The new dream is about being happy and healthy and sharing your resources with others.

Personal Development

The old dream is about having a fixed mindset. It is also about giving your responsibility away to educators.

The new dream is about having a growth mindset. It is about understanding who I am an about using my potential for the greater good.

Relationship

The old dream is about having one wife/husband until you die. The current divorce rates indicate that the new dream is about being flexible and not being limited.

Service

The old dream is doing service, especially when you are retired, or doing service to benefit your own family.

The new dream is about integrating a meaningful purpose into your daily activities.

Spiritual Development

The old dream is going to church and be loyal to that community.

The new dream is about finding your own voice and following your own journey.

In order to survive in these challenging times, it is crucial to take ownership for your own life. We are used to giving our ownership and responsibilities away to others (parents, teachers, bosses, partners etc.).

Now it is time to take full responsibility and define and create our own, new dream.

What is your new dream?

#dream #creativity #life

The transformation from a consumer into a creativist

In the Creativist Manifesto you can read about the difference between a consumer and a creativist. I do believe that understanding this distinction is critical for the transformation of our society. Intentionally I am using the word’ transformation’ as this change will not happen overnight and it requires ongoing effort. Also a lot has to be done to increase the awareness about this distinction.

So how does it look like when we compare the specifics in the various life areas? In general: a consumer is passive and dependent, a creativist is active and responsible.

Area Consumer Creativist

Food Ready meals Cooking

Health Corrective Preventive

Education Standard Tailored

Technology Burden Tool

Entertainment Reactive Producer

Work Employee Entrepreneur

This switch has already manifested with people who have experienced obstacles and setbacks in these respective areas. If you are fired at your work, it forces you to think differently about your career. If you have suffered from a serious disease, you will have integrated a different lifestyle.

The challenges in the world (economy, financial, environment etc.) are now forcing us to rethink the old models and to transform into creativists.

Which steps are you taking?

“Human happiness springs from individual creative expression and meaningful participation in the life of society.” — Aristotle

#Aristotle #happiness

Occupy Love - http://occupylove.org/support-the-film/

New forthcoming film from Velcrow Ripper.

"Joint consumption doesn't create intimacy; only joint creativity and gifts create intimacy and connection. You have such gifts that are important.... Everyone has a unique calling... and that is what the future is going to be".

#Velcrow Ripper #Occupy Love

On being a creativist

This is the text of a talk that I gave at LBi in 2010 - or it is what I planned to say, I can't promise it is exactly what I said!

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Thank you all for coming today and the opportunity to speak with you.

Are you a consumer – or a creativist? That is the question before us here today. I believe that the choice between being a consumer or a creativist is the most significant choice that we can make in society today. I am going to discuss what it means to be a consumer, and what it means to be a creativist, and the choices that I believe that we make in everyday life - not only between create and consume, but other choices which impact on who we are and what we do. And how being a creativist rather than a consumer requires us to create a different space, and to participate in the journey of our lives in a different way. And, perhaps most importantly, why being a creativist is about being who we really are – which is a lot more fun, and more of an adventure, than pretending to be someone you’re not.

So. A little bit of audience participation to begin with. How many of you have you seen the title, and thought – I’m a creativist (although I don’t know exactly what that means). And how many of you have thought – I’m a consumer? And how many of you don’t know?

OK, you know what a consumer is. I don’t need to go into that definition. Consumer is the default word for person in over ten languages around the world. Start listening out for it and you will hear it everywhere. Being a consumer is the identity that we have been given, the role that we have been told that we have to play in order to keep our society going. What did Bush tell people to do after the 9/11 attacks – ‘Go shopping’. It is a national duty. But being a consumer means that our identity is created on the outside, we are defined by what we have, what we buy. And we are consuming and destroying the earth that supports us in this process. And I believe that being a consumer shapes us beyond what we buy – it shapes our attidude to work, to play, to government, even our relationships with other people. We look to what our work, our society, other people can give to us – rather than what we can create in that space, with other people, using our gifts.

So what is a creativist? There is no dictionary definition – yet. I first came across the word on a friend of a friend’s blog posting. He is a composer and DJ, who works a job to pay the bills. This was his his first posting on his new site. He was talking about how before he was consumed with the idea of being successful, of making money from his recordings – and this was actually getting in the way of his creativity. And he quoted Eddie Izzard – ‘I’m not a capitalist, I am a creativist. I want to make money so I can create things. Suddenly all these people have come along who want to create things so they can make money’. And Alex, the blogger, wrote that from now on he was going to try and put his love of music making first, just enjoy it and not worry about the money side of things.

This struck a chord with me. And it was probably more his sentiment of putting creativity first, rather than Eddie Izzard’s definition of being a creativist that resonated with me. But the word creativist seemed to me to be a useful word for bringing together the ideas that I had been working on.

A creativist is, for me, a person who creates their world from the inside out, who is driven by their values, and in turn connects and collaborates with with their communities. Where consumers are individuals, creativists are connectors.

And once I had started thinking about the world in terms of creativist vs consumer, a growing amount of evidence seemed to present itself to me to suggest that this was a movement that was already happening, from government to society to business, as well as with individuals.

President Obama, in a speech of in April 2009, called for a national movement to inspire and enable young people to be ‘makers of things, not just consumers of things’.

There has been a rapid growth recently in community led movements such as Transition Towns. Transition Towns are a community-led creative response to peak oil and climate change, realising that if we leave action to governments it will be too late, and if it will leave it to individuals, it will not be enough. And they have grown from the original Transition Town in Totnes in Devon to over 300 initiatives worldwide, from Brixton, to California to Australia.

In the design world, Tim Brown, the Chief Executive of IDEO, said that ‘we have to get over the idea of being consumers, and into the idea of participants’. He says that we need to leave behind the idea that a great service is one where the consumer sits back and doesn’t need to do anything, and realise that is one where the person is drawn and participates’. And he talks about communications technology is enabling this.

And here’s where you, working in a digital agency, are ahead of the game. You already know that collaboration is where it is all happening. You know all about open source, and why people want to work on developing software, just for the pleasure of the creative challenge, of being part of a community, and the recognition of being valued for their skills, rather than necessarily for any monetary gain. You know how the boundaries of organisations of changing, so that they are more fluid, that there is less of a distinction between inside and outside. You know the importance of creating experiences online, and allowing people to share their creativity.

And so these changes are happening, and people are starting to act in a different way, and to value different things.

And my frustration was that there was all the evidence out there, of a shift that was happening, but there was no movement that was bringing all of these diverse strands of thinking together. People are talking about how we need a new future, a new way of doing things, but for me it starts with a new way being – being a creativist rather than a consumer. Otherwise we are just tinkering round the edges.

So I started to write my creativist manifesto. A manifesto is essentially asking you to make a choice between one thing or other – vote Labour or Conservative or Lib Dem or Green. And I started to think about the choices that we make in everyday life, which ultimately determine whether we are creativist or consumers.

And these are the choices that we make everyday, at our work, in our leisure time, in our relationships. And I have found that by surfacing these choices that we all make unconsciously, that it has enabled me to be more creative, and connected, both with what is important to me, and with the communities that I am part of.

In my manifesto, I outlined nine choices. In this talk I am going to focus on two of them – be vs have and certainty vs uncertainty.

Firstly.

BE vs HAVE

About two and half years ago, I had four sessions with a life coach. One of the first things that she asked me to do was to list out ten things that I either wanted to be, to do or to have.

I considered the question carefully, and then wrote my list of ten on a scrap piece of paper in pencil on the tube on the way home. I still have the list. All of the items on the list were something to be. Top of the list was ‘Be creative’. Others included ‘Be peace’, ‘Be adventure’ and ‘Be wide-eyed’.

At the next session, I explained my list to Cheryl, my coach. I said to her that I thought if I was “being” all of the things on the list, then all of the things that I wanted to do and have would flow from there. I couldn’t see of any other way to approach it.

I think that this was an instinctive reaction that what was important was my values, how I lived my life. If I wasn’t true to my values, then I wouldn’t be successful. And this is true in organisations as well. John Kay, the economist, in his book, Obliquity, which is about why our goals are best achieved indirectly, gives the example that the companies that are the most successful are not those who have as their goal – ‘achieving maximum shareholder value’. The companies that are most successful are those that are passionate about what they do. He gives the example of Boeing. Bill Allen was Chief Executive from 1945 to 1968 and he explained that the spirit of himself and his colleagues was ‘to eat, breathe and sleep the world of aeronautics’. During this time the 747 was developed. But in the 1990s, there was a new CEO, Phil Condit, who said ‘We are going into a value based environment, where unit cost, return on investment, shareholder return, are the measures by which you will judged’. The headquarters were moved from the main production facilities in Seattle, to Chicago. And Boeing was overtaken by Airbus – until Boeing returned to its roots in civil aviation.

Certainty vs uncertainty

In our consumer society, we are accustomed to everything being set out in a linear fashion for us. Goods are produced in a linear fashion, on a production line, and we consume goods in a linear way, throw them away, and start again. This then also shapes our mentality in how we approach projects. We have been taught to set a goal, and then to work out the steps that lead to the goal, to follow a set process. Whereas what artists do is set an objective, and then create the space in which the work can emerge.

The importance of creating this space struck me when I was watching a video in which Keith Tyson, the Turner prize winner artist, was interviewed. He said:

“It’s a process for me in having great faith in how these things will evolve, and after a few years experience of doing it, you learn that instead of trying to control the work, you just try and find the correct circumstances for the work to come into being’.

He mentions the faith word. And the idea that instead of trying to control the work, you just try and find the correct circumstances for the work to come being. This is the antithesis of the consumer, production line mentality. So, for example, he has a large studio, in which he can work on a number of projects simultaneously. He has a very gestational practice, he often doesn’t know about the precise direction something is going in – so having things out in open, and by surrounding himself with his early thoughts, creates the circumstances in which thoughts can develop and connections can occur.

And for me, my instinctive answer, to say ‘go skiing’, at a time when I was listening myself, was my recognition of the space that I needed, in order to create the circumstances for my work to emerge. I didn’t know what it would lead. And when I was writing, I didn’t know what that would lead to, but I was just enjoying the process. When Evan Williams, CEO of Twitter, was asked at South by Southwest recently, about Twitter’s business model, he responded by talking about organising for experimentation. In 2009, Twitter set out the objective – ‘if we have a billion users, we will be the pulse of the planet’. A big, hairy, audacious goal – and the creative space for Twitter employees to make this happen.

Ray Anderson, CEO of Interface Carpets, a leader in sustainability, having set his company Mission Zero, to have zero negative impact on the planet, said of Mission Zero – ‘An aspiration so audacious that it takes the breath away, that is how to unleash creativity in an organisation’.

As creativists, we set ourselves an audacious aspiration.

We create the space for our work to emerge.

We embrace being, faith and uncertainty.

The Creativist Journey

Being a creativist is ultimately for me about being a journey towards an audacious aspiration, thinking big, being full of possibility, whilst at the same time being content in the moment.

And maybe that is the biggest distinction of all between a consumer and a creativist – a consumer is always in pursuit of the next thing which is going to make them happy. A creativist is on a journey too. But it is not a journey which is motivated by the lure from the outside. It is a journey which the creativist themselves chooses, and is driven from the inside out. And it is about enjoying the richness of each moment of that journey, rather than saying, ‘I will be happy when….’

I showed an earlier version of this talk to a friend of mine, who suggested, why don’t you give more suggestions about what your audience can do or be, for example step 1 awareness… And I think that the most useful thing that I can do is share with you the structure of my own journey so far. Since 2007, I have had a theme for each year. 2007 was my year of saying yes. This was my year of opening myself up to the world, trying different things out, having fun, generally saying yes. 2008 was my year of radical change. I clearly knew at the beginning of the year that I was up for a radical change, but at the beginning of the year, I wasn’t listening to myself, so was still asking myself the question, ‘change into what?’ But I think that because I opened myself up to the possibility of change then I was ready to respond to the opportunities that came my way. 2009 was my year of dancing and flying – of spreading my wings, of finding my feeling of freedom.

That year, I read Jospeh Campbell’s Hero of a Thousand Faces, in which he outlines the structure of myths and stories which is common across the world and across the ages, from Star Wars to ancient Greek myths. Stage one is departure, including the call to adventure. Stage two is initiation, including the trials that are necessary to go through in order to bring about transformation. And stage three is the return – when the hero brings back the wisdom that he or she has learnt. I remember reading this, and thinking that over the last three years I had unconsciously created my own version of the hero’s journey – stage 1, saying yes, or the departure; stage 2, iniation or the year of radical change, stage 3 – the return, or the year of dancing and flying. And then realising that the timescale was actually unimportant – I could rewrite the story a different way, and have stage 1 starting years earlier, or sometimes it seems like I am at the first stage of stage 1 – and sometimes it seems that all three stages happen in a day. The key thing is about taking responsibility for being the hero of your own story, and the richness that can bring to your life, and to the life of others. Initially I thought – being the hero of your own story sounds rather self-centred – but if you think about heros in stories, they are people whose exploits benefits others. 2010 is, for me, the year of Olivia’s Kitchen – a return to earth after my year of dancing and flying, recognition that I need to create a space for my work to emerge, space to be creative, to be experiment – but a kitchen is also a space that you share with others, it is the heart of the home, it is where the cook prepares food, sharing their gifts with others, feeding them.

So my final thought on being a creativist - being a creativist is about being the hero of your own story, rather than as a consumer being content to be a supporting player in someone else’s story. It is about taking responsibility for using the gifts that you have and sharing them with others. And my vision is a world in which we can all be connected with our gifts, living our potential to the maximum and creating a world which is richer for all of us. I like to think that this is what Obama meant when he called on young people to be makers, not just consumers.

And what happened to Alex, my musician friend after his first creativist blog posting? This last year has been a good year. After years of trying, in the last year, he has written the score for a short ballet which has been performed at a London theatre. And he is working with a choreographer on a piece which they are taking to the major dance companies.

I am still at the beginning of my journey. I published my Creativist Manifesto on the website changethis.com and received comments and emails from people around the world. One of them, in the Netherlands, asked me what I was going to do next. I said that I wasn’t sure, had a vague idea for a book, did he have any suggestions. He suggested a Skype call, and as a result of that, one Sunday afternoon, we are now creating a site, where we are going to ask people to share their vision of a creativist society, and share what they are taking personal responsibility for. So please do get in touch if you would like to find out more or would like to contribute your ideas in any shape or form – I am on Twitter at @sustainable_

I began by asking – are you a consumer or a creativist? Next time, you are in a position where you need to make a decision, I would invite you to take a step back, and think, how would I approach this as a consumer? And how would I approach it as a creativist? We can each make that choice, in each moment – and you might find the results are surprising.

So are you a creativist – or a consumer? The choice is yours.

#creativist #Eddie Izzard #Tim Brown #Joseph Campbell

The aspirational commons - creating the future we want

In a recent interview, Annie Leonard, maker of The Story of Stuff, discusses what we share. She mentions the cultural commons (music, recipes, murals), physical commons (libraries, bike lanes, parks) and social commons (the people who work to make society better for us all – teachers, social workers). She adds a fourth category, which I hadn’t considered before in this context:

“The aspirational commons: hope, passion, commitment, the future. These belong to all of us, and it is up to all of us to protect and nourish them – because a society without hope and passion, and without possibility-rich future, is a dreary society indeed. And, of course our democracy: it belongs to all of us and only works when we engage”.

How can we encourage people to see our hopes, our dreams, our passion, our future as something that is shared? All of these are so often viewed in just an individual context, but not as something shared by us all when in fact, of course, our future depends on the actions that we all take now, not just the actions that we ourselves take. Hence the vital importance of encouraging people to consider what their hopes and dreams are, and then place them in the context of our collective future. I like this idea of ‘nourishing the future’. What can we do today that will nourish the future. And it is only together that we will be able to realise our individual aspirations. To paraphrase Margaret Thatcher, ‘There is no such thing as the individual”.

#'aspirational commons'#Annie Leonard #Story of Stuff

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.

#Google Ideas #Virgin Unite #RSA #Lord Watson

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".

#'third place manifesto'#stephen johnson #narratives

' "You can't understand Google," vice president Marissa Mayer says, "unless you know that both Larry and Sergey (founders of Google) were Montessori kids. In a Montessori school, you go paint because you have something to express or you just want to do that afternoon, not because the teacher said so, " she explains. "This is baked into how Larry and Sergey approach problems. They're always asking, why should it be like that? It's the way their brains were programmed early on." '

Wired, UK edition, May 2011

#Google #Montessori

"Our world desperately needs leadership in achieving sustainable social justice, not simply learning the answer to a test question." The Prototype Design Camp provides the space to explore a new way of learning - and motivate a desire to create change.

#Prototype Design Camp #design thinking #education

"Our world is increasingly filled with play that makes kids passive consumers instead of active creators. Here's how we can change that." Article by Frog Design

#play #creativity #children #creators #consumers #Frog Design

House or home? Shaping our environment

By Martin Pot

If there is one issue that keeps coming back in discussions among (interior)architects it is that on housing, home, privacy, etc.

If there is one choice in which this is relevant it is the one on the Creativist website: ‘we can be a creativist or we can be a consumer.’

Since this is a choice not completely free of understandable simplification; let me add some ever current complexity but also try to shed some light in this; especially because this discussion will become more important in the rest of his decade, due to some developments.

It was Gaston Bachelard who said: ‘ the house we were born in is more than the embodiment of home, it is also the embodiment of dreams.’

This was – and still is – the perfect illustration of the difference between ‘house’ and ‘home’: the first being a building, a structure: something physical. The latter being something abstract, untouchable; but nevertheless the most important condition to make us feel ‘at home’ .

Being at home is not about technology, not about bricks and tiles: home is about memories, images, smells, sounds, etc. (The actual question now is: do we need a house to have a home? But I will leave that item for another moment)

If we buy or rent a house nowadays we have hardly any choice in this: the housing-market in the Netherlands is largely supply-driven, not demand-driven. Hence the always returning discussion on the variety and amount of houses build; the impossibility to adapt houses to individual (changing) demands, based on changing private circumstances: family-expansion, working at home, hobbies, etc.

Usually the plans of current housing do not allow the realisation of simple changes: we build as if we build for centuries to come, in which demands will not change, as if a society will remain as it has been for years and technology is still something out of the 20th. century. Technology however so far is applied to the building, not to the – personal -environment created by that and attached to that.

Soon there may appear 2 ways to make a paradigm-shift; and therefore become more of a creativist:

1. the increasing demand for a way of building in which the inhabitant is the first important. We do not build anymore for people we do not know: we supply possibilities to create environments where each individual can determine his/her ‘sphere’. That means a significant simplification of the current ‘building’-practise and more importance for other professions.

2. the development of the Internet of Things: in about 5-8 years we will witness the increasing possibilities to identify, recognise and influence our environment and therefore adapt it to our personal needs. Next to that the increasing development and supply of smart materials: materials that react on presence, touch, temperature, sound, light.

Our environment, whether we call this ‘home’ or else, is/should be something that we will be able to determine and shape according to our wishes and needs, with a personal attached privacy-level to fit with it. This should enable us to create spheres, circumstances, to (re)create our experiences, (re)live our imagination.

We all want to add meaning to our (way of) life, and therefore our homes. Basically home has little to do with technology; but technological developments can facilitate the addition and articulation of this meaning.

Then we can, according to Heidegger, feel ‘at home’ , simply because we can ‘build’.

[1] Gaston Bachelard, the Poetics of Space., page 15

Excerpt from Vaclav Havel - Power of the Powerless

Consumer society as a form of post-totalitarianism

It would appear that traditional parliarmentary democracies can offer no fundamental opposition to the automatism of technological civilization and the industrial-consumer society, for they too are being dragged helplessly along by it. People are manipulated in ways that are infinitely more subtle and refined than the brutal methods used in the post-totalitarian societies. But this static complex of rigid, conceptually sloppy, and politically pragmatic mass political parties run by professional apparatuses and releasing the citizen from all forms of concrete and personal responsibility; and those complex focuses of capital accumulation engaged in secret manipulations and expansion; the omnipresent dicatorship of consumption, production, advertising, commerce, consumer culture, and all that flood of information: all of it, so often analyzed and described, can only with great difficulty be imagined as the source of humanity’s rediscovery of itself. … In a democracy, human beings may enjoy many personal freedoms and securities that are unknown to us, but in the end they do them no good, for they too are ultimately victims of the same automatism, and are incapable of defending the same automatism, and are incapable of defending their concerns about their own identity or preventing their superficialization or transcending concerns about the their own personal survival to become proud and responsible members of the polis, making a genuine contribution to the creation of its destiny.

(Written in 1978).

#Vaclav Havel #Power of the Powerless #consumer society

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