HOME Yann Arthus-Bertrand

Sourced from YouTube, 13 January 2011

'We are living in exceptional times. Scientists tell us that we have 10 years to change the way we live, avert the depletion of natural resources and the catastrophic evolution of the Earth's climate. The stakes are high for us and our children. Everyone should take part in the effort, and HOME has been conceived to take a message of mobilization out to every human being. For this purpose, HOME needs to be free. A patron, the PPR Group, made this possible. EuropaCorp, the distributor, also pledged not to make any profit because Home is a non-profit film. HOME has been made for you : share it! And act for the planet.'

How to Share in a Dialogue Despite Differences

Reposted in full from Shareable, 2 May 2011

'“I’ve witnessed people change before my very eyes and they are softened by the experience of being heard and listening,” says Kris Miner, executive director St. Croix Valley Restorative Justice Program. Miner’s program, launched in 2001 to serve communities in western Wisconsin, facilitates dialogues between victims and perpetrators, disruptive teens and community members, drunk drivers and families they’ve harmed – people who would normally have no desire to see, no less speak, to one another.

To be sure, if you’re looking for ways to cross difficult divides, the 30-year-old practice of “restorative justice” is a good place to start. Borrowing, among other sources, from ancient Maori tribal rituals for settling disputes, RJ has proven effective in legal systems, communities, and schools throughout the world. It is an example of what psychologist Kenneth Gergen calls transformative dialogue – practices that harness the power of relationship to affect change. Others include The Compassionate Listening Project, The Public Conversation Project, The Seeds of Peace Camp, and The Deep Democracy Institute.

These new practices honor relationship as a crucible of change. They open people’s minds rather than change them. And they encourage the kind of conversation that allows participants to feel safe, which makes it more likely that they’ll override their biases and hard-wired reactions.

Ask, don’t assume. First impressions and snap judgments are automatic, emotional, and barely conscious. But by being open and mindful, “you have more control over your unconscious,” according to Todd Kashdan, PhD., author of Curious? Discover the Missing Ingredient to a Fulfilling Life. When conversing with someone different, keep reminding yourself, “There’s something interesting I can learn here.” Ask questions that help you understand how he or she came to think that way. The Collaboration Project, for example, begins sessions with questions, such as, “How did you get involved with this issue? What's your personal relationship, or personal history, with it?”

If the other person says something offensive, be curious. Miner recalls saying to a woman who “hated” Native Americans, “Please, tell me the story of how you came to that conclusion.” Miner had more compassion for the woman after learning that when she was a teenager, a group of Native Americans in a park had threatened her with a broken bottle.

Kashdan also suggests turning curiosity inward: “We need to question the values, attitudes, assumptions, and beliefs that affect our everyday conversations. Be reflective. Remind yourself, ‘This is what I bring to the table.’”

Tell stories, not facts. People are notoriously bad listeners, and are especially resistant to dry facts and figures. Personal accounts go right to a listener’s heart.

“Stories inspire empathy, even if you don’t agree with the person’s viewpoint,” says life coach Barbara Biziou, who gives corporate seminars in communication. Stories engender connection and transform us from cardboard figures into complex beings. Research has shown that in every context – business, communities, conflict resolution – stories resonate on a profound human level and allow us to cross boundaries.

Collaborative conversation is mutual storytelling. You tell your truth and, at the same time, accept that it’s not the only truth. But if it’s your experience, then no one can say, “You are wrong."

Listen to understand. In restorative justice “circles,” participants pass around a ‘talking piece,' be it a stone, bean bag, or stick. “When I have it, it’s my opportunity to speak from the heart, and speak until I feel understood,” explains Miner. “But when someone else is talking, my job is to listen to understand. That’s different from listening to figure out whether the other person is right or wrong, in which case you either interrupt or bite your tongue.” When a person feels heard, he allows himself to be more open and, in turn, both parties are more apt to find common ground.

Listening to understand also decreases the likelihood that you will, as a Buddhist teacher would say, “argue with reality.” When differences can’t be breached, if you look at the whole person, you might not feel a need to disconnect. “I try to remember that there’s a lot more to him than his politics,” says Judy, whose ultra-conservative husband purposely makes extreme statements in the presence of her liberal friends. “I concentrate on his good traits.”

Go for connection, not conversion. Whether it’s for one conversation or longer-term engagement, focus on creating a relationship with the other person, rather than trying to convince them. Make how you talk more important than what you say. And don’t expect or reveal too much too soon. Relationships unfold in stages. In the initiating stage, we size up the stranger, put our best foot forward, and try to find out the basics like her background, values, details of her daily life – the “safe” stuff. We then segue into the experimenting stage where the “breadth” of disclosure expands. We talk about a greater variety of subjects and, possibly, increase the “depth” of disclosure, revealing more about ourselves. (“I’ve been brought up to believe....” or “In my country, we....”) With each successive conversation, we take one step forward, then pause to get our bearings. If we feel too vulnerable, we take one step back. As you get to know each other, you can begin to see a fuller, more complex person who will seem very different from your first impression.

Reassess and adapt, if necessary. Sue, a direct and highly creative manager, was constantly frustrated by her new boss: “She values work by how much she can assign, and I by how much I can accomplish.” After several months of seeing her ideas and reports “shelved,” Sue realized, “My boss was probably just as frustrated as me.” Sue had to modulate her communication style without compromising her own values. She now piggybacks her suggestions onto topics her boss brings up. “That makes her more relaxed and happier which, in turn, makes her more willing to listen.”

Research bears out Sue’s experience. In a series of studies, psychologist Claire Ashton James demonstrated that when joyful or somber music was played prior to interactions with a stranger, or when participants' moods were manipulated by making them hold a pen in their teeth (which forced a smile) or lips (a frown), the quality of conversation differs. When an upbeat state was induced, both European and Asian volunteers were more open. Primed in the opposite direction, however, they fell back on traditional cultural stereotypes and constrained their interactions.

Pull back to see the bigger picture. A web of relationships is like a traffic jam. Only by pulling back – positioning yourself above the fray – can you see the interrelationships of the various people involved. In order to untangle “complexities that are not easily grasped,” Eva Schiffer http://netmap.wordpress.com/personal-profile gave the 17 members of White Volta Basin Board, each who had a different perspective of their situation, an aerial view. Adapting principles of social network analysis, she helped them chart what she calls a “net map.” It is built around four basic questions: Who is involved? How are the players linked? What are their goals? and How influential is each one? You can explore such questions in one-on-one conversations, as well. “The activity of sitting together and trying to grasp what this whole network looked like,” recalls Schiffer, allows conversation partners (or members of a group) “to express their views, to talk about their previous experiences, and to figure out how they can put it all together.”

Practice in low-stakes situations. According to Jennifer Richeson’s research, being thrust into situations with people who are different can exact an emotional and cognitive price. As an alternative, Richeson suggests, “approach behavior,” which involves “intercultural learning, friendship development, and honest dialogue in the service of mutual understanding.”

That’s the goal of many experiments in collaboration and cooperation, such as Eat With Locals, a website founded by Vicki Edmunds of South Wales. The idea was inspired by “home swapping” in Slovenia: “My daughter was intrigued by the spices in the cupboard, and said, ‘Wouldn’t it be lovely if we could sit down to a meal with this family.” Today, EWL attracts members from all over the world who are curious about unfamiliar cultures and eager to meet strangers.

When divergent realities are shared, we get a glimpse of our common humanity.

Although we have been programmed to take care of Number One, if we can see conversation as a collaborative activity – a sharing of minds – we begin to interact as relational beings. And every social encounter becomes not only a way to enrich our own lives, but to build bridges across seemingly impossible divides and to set the stage for a mindset that truly allows us to share this small planet.'

Being Yourselves

Neuroscientist David Eagleman's talk on the multiple selves of the brain - some great stories and insights in this one!

Sourced from The School of Life, April 2011

'If the conscious mind—the part you consider you—is just the tip of the iceberg in the brain, what is all the rest doing? Why can you argue with yourself, cajole yourself, and get angry at yourself? Who, exactly, is dealing with whom? Is there a single true you, or is that just an illusion?

Neuroscientist David Eagleman, is here to show how your brain is like a conflicted democracy engaged in civil war. Perhaps more importantly, he’ll also tell you how you can learn strategies to manage the battles.'

Coalition of the Willing

Sourced from Coalition of the Willing, 27 July 2010

'‘Coalition of The Willing’ is a film that discusses how we can use new internet technologies to leverage the powers of activists, experts, and ordinary citizens in collaborative ventures to combat climate change.'

Das Rad (The Wheel)

"That was lucky!" << gold!!

Sourced from YouTube, 7 November 2009

Before I Die

This is just gorgeous...the pictures say it all.

Sourced from Candy Chang, April 2011

'Candy Chang is a public installation artist, designer, urban planner, and co-founder of Civic Center who likes to make cities more comfortable for people.

With a lot of support from old and new friends, I turned the side of an abandoned house in my neighborhood into a giant chalkboard where residents can write on the wall and remember what is important to them. Before I Die transforms neglected spaces into constructive ones where we can learn the hopes and aspirations of the people around us.'

You Can Change The World

Sourced from Duarte Design, 3 March 2011

Nancy Duarte's TEDx East talk on story structure in presentations:

'This talk reveals the hidden structure that the greatest communicators and persuaders have used over thousands of years. Insights from literature and cinema helped reveal why the greatest communicators are riveting.'

How Great Leaders Inspire Action

A good investment of 18 minutes for changemakers...

Sourced from TEDx Puget Sound, May 2010

Journalism in the Age of Data

Sourced from Datajournalism, Stanford University

'Journalists are coping with the rising information flood by borrowing data visualization techniques from computer scientists, researchers and artists. Some newsrooms are already beginning to retool their staffs and systems to prepare for a future in which data becomes a medium. But how do we communicate with data, how can traditional narratives be fused with sophisticated, interactive information displays?'

Journalism in the Age of Data from Geoff McGhee on Vimeo.

The Ecologist Guide to Data Activism

Reposted in full from The Ecologist, 4 March 2011

'You don't have to be a web geek to join the growing ranks of activists who have told powerful stories using data visualisation. Christine Ottery outlines how you can use data as a powerful tool to press for change

Isabell Long was 16 years old and with little previous computer programming experience when she created GovSpark, an application that influenced government departments to reduce their energy consumption.

At the time, the government's real time energy data had just been released, allowing ordinary citizens, like Isabell Long, to hold the government accountable to meet its target to slash energy use by 10 per cent.

Emma Mulqueeny, digital media expert and director of hack day events organizers Rewired State, tells me that GovSpark was part of a ‘really effective strategy' to reduce the government's energy use because it showed at a glance how departments were competing. 'We were calling up the press officers from different departments and saying you could do something about what is causing the spikes in energy,' she says.

According to Mulqueeny, 'The government energy and carbon emissions data is still very much an underused resource.' This is because data can differ in file format or even units of measurement from one department to the next, creating a hefty amount of work before it can be compared meaningfully.

Could another reason be technical knowledge barriers? If you want to work at the coalface of data activism the best thing to do it roll your sleeves up and learn a programming language.

Otherwise, there are free programmes that can carry out at least parts of the process - but you might have to rely on developers as well. One example of open source software you can use is the data visualization tool Many Eyes, which can display your data attractively in bubbles, graphs or maps.

Here are some tips that will help you get started, whether you decide to learn to code or not:

Identify sources

Data can be numbers or text. The first thing to do is identify the data sources that you want to analyse or cross-reference. In the UK, public data is released on Data.gov.uk, which is licensed by the National Archives and paid for by UK taxpayers. Other sources could include international governments, quangos or the UN.

It is worth considering making a Freedom of Information (FOI) request if the information you want to use is not already publicly available. You can use WhatDoTheyKnow.com to help you generate emails to the relevant government department's FOI office.

Be careful, however, with commercial data. 'You have to abide by their licensing laws otherwise that's just nicking,' says Mulqueeny. Needless to say, data theft is illegal.

Sometimes you can get permissions to use private data, however. For example, Premasagar Rose, founder of web apps company Dharmafly, created a game called Carbon Copies to raise awareness of carbon footprints with data from Mike Berners-Lee's book ‘How bad are bananas?'. This was as part of a climate hack day run by Rewired State.

Digging for data

When web developers run programming language code to pull data with specific criteria from websites, it is called data scraping, data mining, or data hacking.

ScraperWiki is one platform for scraping data. Developers can write code into ScraperWiki browsers to get started. Those who can't code can use the data from the database, or request new data scrapes. Aine McGuire, director of Scraperwiki, describes ScraperWiki as 'a social network for data prospectors' - there are 1,700 developers in the community and numbers are increasing by 20 per cent each month.

However, be cautious when you are drilling down into cross-referenced geolocation data because you risk identifying individuals, which can have legal ramifications. Mulqueeny recommends consulting a statistician to be on the safe side - contact the Royal Statistical Society to find an expert.

Tell the story

Data visualization can be powerful. David McCandless' graphics and animations, for example, are renowned for their ability to put a perspective on large numbers in comparative datasets.

One of the simplest ways to visualize data is if you have geolocation information. For example, 38 Degrees used a Google map to pinpoint forests endangered under the government's recently proposed (and retracted) sell-off. You can do something similar with Mapalist. Other visualization tools include: Google Charts, Many Eyes, Wordle, Tableau Public and Open Heat Map.

Interactivity is a hot new field, led by Hans Rosling's Gapminder Foundation, which animates global statistics. "Trying to find a way to engage a human with hard data is the challenge," says Rose.

James Darling, a developer at designers Berg London, says, 'Telling stories with the data is the crucial part, and the bit that's often missing is a really good narrative.' He recommends reading Ben Griffiths' history hack blogpost to check out masterful storytelling with statistics.

Also, ‘Journalism in the Age of Data' is a brilliant video on the challenges of telling stories with data.

Learn to code

By now, you might want to learn how to code so you can scrape data and build your own applications and visualisations. But how hard is it to pick up?

'If you have good skills in Excel then it is relatively easy to pick up a computing language like Ruby. You would then be able to take the data out of your spreadsheet and turn that into a mobile application or web application that you can visualize,' says Mulqueeny.

It is time to choose a programming language. Ruby is considered the easiest. Darling says he prefers Ruby because it is more readable as a kind of 'semi-English', which can help you to learn it. Rose, however, calls JavaScript 'liberating' because every browser, mobile phone and increasingly servers are running Javascript.

Mulqueeny says that the best way to learn coding is get a developer to talk you through it. She days: 'There are lots of informal developer's communities who meet in pubs across the UK who welcome newbies, for example Ruby in the Pub. You can find them on Twitter.' Alternatively, Rose recommends starting your own group of nascent data hackers to learn together and collaborate together.

To learn off your own steam, you can try O'Reilly books. Darling suggests: 'Hackety hack is written for children and will teach you the basics in a fun way.''

Triggering Behaviour Change with Game Dynamics

In Seth Priebatsch's talk at TEDxBoston he makes a mind-blowing observation about Farmville - which has more users than Twitter! - in relation to 'appointment dynamics', or the need to return to water virtual crops; if the makers wanted to grind world productivity to a halt, they could change the cycle from 24 hours or 8 hours to 30 minutes!!

He also makes the amusing observation:

'School is a game - it's just not a very well designed one; if we called Valedictorian 'White Knight Level 20', people would probably work a lot harder...'

Sourced from Social Creatives, 18 January 2011



"Human beings are not rational actors. We rarely make decisions based on logic alone. That’s why social change can be so frustratingly complex. People won’t act even if their own well-being is at stake.

That’s why social innovators have learned to look to neuroscience and psychology for pointers. Some key insights into human behavior have shown up in games people play – online and offline.

To learn how to effect change, we need to learn “game dynamics” and how to use them.'

One Good Cut - Cut Benefits to Bankers, Not Public Services

Money for nothing? How would you feel if someone lent you something that had no real value, had not cost them anything to create - and they asked you to pay it back with interest?

Wondered why we have a Growth Monster on our hands? Fake wealth is driving real social and environmental devastation!

Sourced from One Good Cut, a campaign by Positive Money UK, 21, February 2011

Connected Conversations - Tackling Big Issues By Linking Small Conversations

Reposted in full from the new economics foundation, 10 February 2011

'Reflecting on nef's decade of experience in democracy and participation, Connected Conversations argues that tackling the biggest issues, from climate change to social inequality, needs to start with small conversations between friends and neighbours. By linking these small groups together we can sow the seeds for new social movements.

On 21 April 2010, seven members of Age Concern met in the echoey hall of a community centre in Ilford to talk about who they trust with their most sensitive personal information. Armed with the key facts, they discussed what their health records meant to them, how they should be safeguarded and who should have access. After 90 minutes they were better informed, more opinionated and more engaged. When it came to their health they left more ready to be active citizens. As participation goes it was nice, although hardly earth-shattering.

That spring and summer, though, a lot of other people were having the same conversation. Students in lecture theatres, families in living rooms, patients in doctors’ surgeries. In total 1,500 people used the same information to draw their own conclusions at more than 100 events across England. Another 1,500 learned more about the issues at stalls in libraries and museums, while 3,000 young people talked about the same issues in school science lessons. And more people used materials specially designed to help people with learning difficulties to get involved.

All told, more than 6,000 people talked about the topic of health and patient records that spring and summer. Those conversations were linked through a project called Who Sees What, an attempt to stimulate hundreds of conversations and link them together to create a rich picture of public views, with the potential to inform and shape public policy.

Meeting future challenges

The UK faces an interlinked set of economic, environmental and political challenges that have led nef to call for a ‘great transition’ – a fundamental shift to a more sustainable, socially just way of living. But transition cannot be achieved from the top down. It will require central and local government, businesses, communities and individuals to develop their own understandings of sustainability and social justice and to debate and negotiate with each other about the way forward.

At the moment, however, there is no easy way to get this kind of debate to happen. Our social fabric is fragmented, and opportunities for debate are few and far between. There is little space for groups to deliberate about complex, pressing issues and even less space for them to share their views with each other. The internet is at best a partial solution: there is no substitute for face to face discussion.

Processes such as Who Sees What offer a clue as to how problems like this can be overcome. We call this kind of approach ‘connected conversations’. Unlike many forms of public engagement, connected conversations are not about settling issues or reaching consensus. They simply let citizens engage in public discussion with friends, family or colleagues in their existing networks and then link these discussions together. Rather than seeking to generate a collective decision, they reflect that tackling the biggest issues means making many small decisions and then finding the links between them. They are, in effect, talking shops – and we are proud to describe them as such.

Many of the biggest issues are ‘wicked problems’: thorny topics that bring about disagreement about the very nature of the problem and repeatedly defy solution. Policy interventions in wicked problems often bring about unintended consequences. For example, efforts to reduce the harm caused by illicit drugs by restricting their supply have led to drugs that are available being adulterated with more harmful chemicals, leading to greater health risks to users.3 Such problems cannot be fully solved but they can be managed. Successful management involves drawing on the information, insight, ideas and energy of as many of us as possible.

The connected conversation approach has evolved over more than a decade of work at nef, primarily in the field of science communication. Through projects such as Democs, Open Up and Science on the Street we have explored how and where deliberation can take place and what can link it together. We are grateful for the support of the Wellcome Trust, which has consistently been willing to support innovative and untested work in this area.

Our understanding of the connected conversations approach owes a debt to other work, including Involve’s recent work on distributed dialogue. Such publications have identified the need for distributed engagement approaches. This paper is our own contribution to the growing body of literature in this area, drawing on our experience to suggest a practical model for societal debate. It sets out what we mean by connected conversations, and explores the role they can play in addressing some of the major challenges we will face over the next decade.

Our paper is divided into four chapters, each covering one of the four features that define the connected conversations model. These chapters are entitled ‘Openness’, ‘Deliberation’, ‘Information’ and ‘Connections’.

‘Deliberation’ and ‘Information’ describe the way in which individual conversations take place, and explore the specific challenges encountered when running events at arm’s length. ‘Openness’ and ‘Connections’ describe the structures that link the conversations together.

Connected conversations that embody these four features can help mobilise individuals, civil society groups and government to solve the challenges of the twenty-first century and to ensure that they are not only taking action, but doing so together.'

World Without Oil - Collaborative Alternative Reality Game

Sourced from World Without Oil

World Without Oil was an alternate reality game run in 2007, a massively collaborative simulation of a global oil crisis.

www.worldwithoutoil.org

'WORLD WITHOUT OIL invited people from all walks of life to contribute “collective imagination” to confront a real-world issue: the risk our unbridled thirst for oil poses to our economy, climate and quality of life. It’s a milestone in the quest to use games as democratic, collaborative platforms for exploring possible futures and sparking future-changing action. WWO set the model for using a hot net-native storytelling method (‘alternate reality’) to meet civic and educational goals. Best of all, it was compellingly fun.

WORLD WITHOUT OIL simulated the first 32 weeks of a global oil crisis. It established a citizen “nerve center” to track events and share solutions. Anybody could play by creating a personal story – an email or phone call, or for advanced users a blog post, video, photo, podcast, twitter, whatever – that chronicled the imagined reality of their life in the crisis. The WWO site at worldwithoutoil.org links to all these stories. The game encouraged excellence with daily awards and recognition for authentic and intriguing stories...'

The Naked Presenter

Anyone who uses (or who has been subjected to BAD Powerpoint presentations, anyone? Anyone?) will love this! 'If Darth Vader did a Powerpoint it would look like this...' LAUGH!!

Sourced from Presentation Zen, 4 January 2011

http://vimeo.com/14493347

Bearing Witness: Chris Jordan on Art, Grief, and Transformation

Check out Chris's amazing work at www.chrisjordan.com

Reposted in full from YES! Magazine, 14 April 2010

'Photographer Chris Jordan is used to working on the large scale. His most famous works try to capture the sheer scope of American consumer culture: discarded circuit boards spread out like a city, teetering stacks of crushed cars, two million plastic bottles (the number Americans use every five minutes) compiled in a single photograph.

But with his most recent project, Jordan is narrowing his focus. Last fall, he led a team of artists to Midway Atoll, a tiny, remote island in the middle of the Pacific where throw-away culture is having a major impact: albatross chicks are dying by the thousands, choking or starving after trying to eat small chunks of plastic carried to the island by the North Pacific Gyre (also called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch). The result is a relentless series of photographs of decomposing birds with bright, colorful plastic where their stomachs used to be.

For Jordan, opening himself up to the horror of what’s happening on Midway—all the while recognizing that it’s “just one of the tragedies that’s happening in our world”—was painful and intensely demoralizing. But, together with the writer Terry Tempest Williams, he’s now planning to return several more times to further immerse himself in the island’s hard truths—and to discover whether transformation can be found on the other side of grief.

---

Brooke Jarvis: Some might expect that, having seen one photo of an albatross killed by unknowingly eating plastic, you’ve seen them all. But it really does get sadder the more you see. What was it like to actually be there?

Chris Jordan: The experience of being out on Midway, for me, was mostly an experience of pure shock. Despite my efforts to allow myself to feel the tragedy that I was witnessing out there, I was working so much that it was difficult to be really present. It took a couple of months for the experience to really hit me on an emotional level. The way it happened for me, it was a kind of descent into something that looked a lot like hopelessness.

I’ve realized that the metaphor that I carried with me when I went to Midway was that Dante's Inferno scenario—you walk through the fire, and you come out the other side with renewed energy or perspective. What actually happened, though, is that I felt like I walked through the fire and then just burned up in it.

For example, I thought that after returning from Midway, I would much more rigorously eliminate my consumption of plastic. What actually happened was a feeling like, “No matter what I do, this problem is not going to be affected.” So I kind of let go—for a while there, I didn't even care if I used single-use disposable plastics. The problem was just so huge and overwhelming that I didn't feel like I could make any difference one way or another. It's taken me a lot of work to begin to have more of a perspective on that issue for myself personally.

Brooke: What has that work consisted of?

Chris: Right now I’m trying to focus on being more present, on trying to experience what's happening right now, on letting go of the future and circling the wagons in the present moment. For me, that means focusing on who I am and what my values are; working out how to connect with others and how to live with integrity; and keeping right on doing my work.

Brooke: When you went to Midway, you assembled a team of artists. Not, say, an artist and a biologist and an anthropologist. Why?

Chris: One of the fundamental problems of our world, underlying a lot of the disasters that are happening, is that we’re disconnected from what we feel. I think it would be fair to say that American culture is the culture that is most detached from its feelings of any culture in the world. We've become separated from nature and urbanized in this weird, new, overwhelming way—and the only way many of us have found to cope is to disconnect from the anxiety and the fear.

The nature of the information that we have to deal with compounds that disconnection even further. We converse daily in numbers of millions and billions as if we understand them. When I say we use 210 billion plastic bottles in the United States every year, I assume that I understand what that number means, and whoever is listening assumes they do, too. In fact it's totally incomprehensible. There are all these sociological studies that demonstrate vividly that the human mind cannot comprehend numbers higher than a few thousand. There are all these phenomena around the world, whether it's the 1.2 billion people in the world who lack access to safe drinking water or the 10 million tons of plastic that are swirling around in the Pacific Ocean. We can't see those phenomena, and the only information we have available to try to relate to them is in the form of numbers we absolutely cannot comprehend. It’s no wonder that we can’t relate to our global culture on any kind of feeling level.

That's where I think art comes in, and why I think it's so important right now, because feeling is the kingdom of art. I've gotten to meet lots of scientists who are uniformly wringing their hands in frustration at their inability to convey to the public any sense of the extreme urgency they feel about the issues that they're studying. The underlying phenomena are profoundly important, and yet the information we're receiving is fundamentally dry and incomprehensible. Art can act as a mediator between science and the public, translating what science can tell us into a visual language that we can understand, that allows for personal connection and feeling. My hope for all my work, and especially my Midway work, is to make the global personal.

Brooke: Your series Running the Numbers: An American Self Portrait dealt with the same problem: trying to literally, visually represent those vast numbers we can’t conceptualize. Now, it seems you’re saying that the best way to relate isn’t to try to show the whole problem at once, but to ask how we can understand a huge problem by looking at one very small, but more emotional, part of it.

Chris: I was looking at these huge global issues and trying to figure out a way to make them personal. To some extent, with the Running the Numbers series, I had to let go of the personal a little bit. If I were to critique it myself, there's a kind of conceptual coldness to that work. It felt like a sacrifice I had to make to be able to address those giant issues, but I wanted to figure out a way to get out of the conceptual and into something that's more about direct feeling.

You know, just an infinitesimally tiny percentage of all the plastic that's in the Pacific Ocean ends up inside the stomachs of dead baby birds on Midway Island. But where else is there? That’s what’s so hard about these mass cultural issues—there’s nowhere you can see the full impact of the problem. We try to relate to these issues through the neocortex, the intellectual part of our mind that analyzes numbers, but that’s not the part of our mind that feels things. I wanted to really feel the Pacific Garbage Patch. There's no way that I know of other than going to Midway.

Brooke: Earlier, you used the word “witness” to describe your role on Midway. Is bearing witness a useful way to think about your work?

I talk a lot about despair and shame and hopelessness. People come up to me and say they feel such a relief to talk about those emotions.

Chris: Yes—in fact, I spent time recently with the writer Terry Tempest Williams, who talked to me quite a bit about the value of bearing witness. It means more than just going there and seeing something. There's a kind of holding that happens, and a making of meaning. I stand in awe of how fearless she is to go all the way into grief and pain. I told her about my hope of going all the way into the horror and grief of what’s happening on Midway as a way of trying to come out the other side. And she said, "There is no coming out the other side. You just learn to live with the grief."

What I realize now, after talking to Terry, is that I need to go back there. The project is just not finished—there’s more to uncover, more to witness.

Brooke: In what way?

Chris: Well, when we were there we never saw a live albatross on the island. The birds are born in the spring and die through the summer, but decompose so quickly due to the heat, rain, and insects that by November or December there’s nothing left but piles of plastic. So we went in September, which happens to be the time of the year when all the albatross are out at sea.

Terry's going to go with me when I return there in June, and again in the fall, and possibly also for the winter solstice. By June the albatross will all be close to adults—almost a million of them. There will already by thousands of dead birds on the ground, and we’ll see more dying.

I’ve been told that we’ll actually see toothbrushes going down throats and chicks whose body cavities are filled all the way up to their necks with plastic—their parents try to feed them one more piece of plastic, one more cigarette lighter or magic marker, and the baby chokes to death. It's a long process of the babies just kind of flapping around, making an awful gagging sound, and then crashing into the ground and expiring. There’s a huge abundance of life and an overwhelming noise, day and night—and at the same time there’s death all around.

Brooke: And that emotional experience is very different from an intellectual one.

Chris: It’s the only way we really believe what’s happening, or how wrong it is. Even in the green movement, there's a tremendous amount of denial about how bad things are. I constantly hear the message, "We're just about to save the world. There’s going to be a giant transformation. It's just around the corner."

But there's a dark side that we aren't facing. Until we do, I don't think we're going to make any progress. You know what it's kind of like? The alcoholic who says, "I can stop whenever I want. It's going to be tomorrow. Please pass the vodka bottle." Until we start acknowledging the scope of our problem and face what we actually feel, the conversation can’t change.

Brooke: How can giving up on denial change the conversation?

Chris: I don't know. I don’t think we can know. It seems to me that that's a portal we have to step through. We have to let go of what's on the other side, and go through.

That’s the intention for my Midway work. I'm allowing myself to fully experience the horror of just one of the tragedies that's happening in our world. I'm letting go of how that's going to affect me.

How do we face our grief and despair without getting lost in them?

When I do my public talks, I talk a lot about despair and shame and hopelessness. People come up to me and say they feel such a relief to talk about those emotions. We’re all feeling lost and disempowered and like some things are fundamentally wrong. And yet people are pretending things are fine: The economic bailout's going to get us right back where we were a few years ago and we're going to keep right on with the party. But I think we all know that isn't going to happen.

I believe that we need to allow ourselves to feel grief deeply. Anger and rage and shame—those are surface feelings. Grief is deep. Grief and love might be the two deepest human emotions. When we allow ourselves to really grieve, it's a transformational experience.

People I've known who have gone through the long slow death of a loved one from cancer, who have fully grieved and fully said goodbye and fully experienced the process, have come out of that experience transformed. They know more deeply who they are and what their priorities are. The Dalai Lama is not the only person in the world who has access to that kind of wisdom. We all do, but it gets clouded and fogged over by our daily rush and the messages we keep getting from our consumer culture, that material things will bring us happiness. We're all so involved in this headlong rush to a more materially luxurious lifestyle that we forget who we are and what really matters. We so badly need to reconnect with that right now.

If the conversation is going to turn in the direction of collective cultural wisdom, I believe we need to grieve first.'

The Empathic Civilization

Sourced from YES! Magazine, 4 November 2010



See related posts The Empathic Civilisation and The Empathic Civilisation: From Geopolitics to Biosphere Politics

'Jeremy Rifkin, economist and founder of The Foundation on Economic Trends, believes it is possible to expand the reach of our empathy to the entire human race, and beyond. He cites new research showing that humans are soft-wired with mirror neurons that cause us to empathize with one another. This emotion has evolved over time: What began as a feeling reserved for those of the same family has expanded to those of the same tribe, to religion, to nation.'

No Community Consultation in 2011

I LOVE this guy!!

Sourced from David Engwicht's 'Creative Communities' newsletter, December 2010

'Let’s face it. Community consultation is a failed experiment. All it has done is train-up professional axe grinders, then given them a forum in which to grind their axe. In spite of the best intentions of dedicated, hard-working public servants like yourself, the community consultation experiment has resulted in disengaged residents (apart from the professional axe grinders), lowest-common-denominator solutions, and decision-making mired in endless debate...

‘But,’ I hear you ask, ‘What am I supposed to do if I don’t do community consultation?’

Good question. Here are ten suggestions:

1. Abandon customer model. Implement citizen model instead

Over the past thirty years, cities have dramatically changed the way they relate to inhabitants.

For centuries, the concept of the city was built on a notion of ‘citizenship’. For the Greeks, citizenship in the polis was not so much a rank or reward as it was like being in a school, a kind of discipleship that would cultivate a new kind of being: a cultured citizen. As a citizen of the polis, you were part of a cooperative enterprise in building a nurturing environment in which others (including yourself) could reach their highest potential. For the Greeks, the streets and squares were the democratic heart of the city – the place of genuine citizen engagement.

But all this has changed. Instead of relating to inhabitants as ‘citizens’, cities now relate to them as ‘customers’. For example, when traffic colonises a residential street, residents demand that the city calm the traffic. As customers, they have paid (through rates and taxes) for a product – slower traffic in their street.

Under the citizen model, people take personal responsibility for fixing their own problems. If young people burn rubber in the street, they ring the door bell of the young people and work it out. Cost to the city, zero. Under the customer model, these same people ring the council and demand that the city traffic calm their street. Cost to the city, $400,000. Note that the customer model is only viable under conditions of affluence. Outsourcing your civic responsibility is not cheap. Outsourcing civic responsibility also demands ‘community consultation’. Instead of an informal meeting on the doorstep of the offending youth, residents now attend a formal meeting with city authorities to debate where the speed bumps should go. The tragedy is that the real issues, the residents’ psychological retreat from their street and abandoning of their civic duty, is not addressed. The consultation is a smokescreen for avoiding personal responsibility.

Note that this move from the citizen model to the customer model has been a two way street: cities have taken a paternalistic role and residents have abandoned their civic responsibilities. However, the role that cities have adopted is an impossible role. A vibrant civic life is not a ‘product’ that can be delivered by a city bureaucracy. It can only be created by civic-minded citizens working cooperatively.

2. Create authentic place, not more plans

Most community consultation is a substitute for a genuine, authentic experience of place – that is a real experience of community and civic life. The Greek concept of the polis was that each time a person went into the public realm, they would come home a little more civilised and a little more cultured. In a forthcoming book on place, I discuss the power of place-ness to transform us.

I once erected a throne that folds out of a suitcase in a deserted Los Angeles parking lot, home to homeless people. A homeless lady sat regally on the throne, and in that moment was transformed from a homeless lady into Queen of Los Angeles. Every time this homeless lady comes back to her home in the parking lot and remembers the night she sat on the throne, she is transformed once again. This is the essence of place making: creating memorable experiences that are transformative. Place-ness snaps us out of our preoccupation with set plans for the future, and opens up cracks in the wall of our ‘reality’. Through the cracks in the wall, we glimpse possibilities we never knew existed. Who knows, but on that warm, muggy evening in the parking lot, a future mayor of Los Angeles may have been conceived.

Community consultation talks about creating these transformative place experiences. Place making creates the experiences. As Place Maker for the city of Wodonga, charged with turning the main street into the civic heart of the city, the ‘community consultation’ did not involve endless meetings. Instead we organised a street party every Friday night for 12 weeks. People were invited to bring their lounge chairs and reclaim the street as civic space. We watched how people used the street, and as ‘home-maker hosts’ we found ways to enhance that experience – including permanent changes to the streetscape.

Place making is like home making. Part of feeling at home in a space is that you stop being an observer and you become a participant in the experience offered by that space. So, for example, when someone puts their feet up on the coffee table we say they are ‘making themselves at home’. They are making themselves comfortable in the space by taking psychological ownership of it. It is a genuine experience of an authentic place. It is not a hypothetical conversation about what they think would need to change for them to have an authentic experience. The host works with them in helping them construct this authentic experience - organically.

3. Return to incremental planning

By very definition, if you involve the community in the authentic making of place (rather than hypothetical discussions about creating place) then the process will be incremental. In Wodonga we started with a ‘low-hanging fruit plan’, things that we could do instantly that we thought would get the reclaiming of the street moving in the right direction. We also constantly experimented with our Friday night events, watching what worked and what didn’t work, then instigating changes based on these observations.

Sure there is a place for some master-planning in a city for things like future rail lines. But this must be balanced with an incremental, organic approach to the way places evolve. For example, in Beach Haven, New Zealand, the city had $50,000 to spend on the revitalisation of a shopping street. Normally this money would have been eaten up in creating a master plan. I convinced the city to put this money in the middle of a table. I then educated a group of 40 residents on what created great public space and then broke them into teams. They competed to find the most creative way to spend the $50,000. By the end of one-and-a-half days they had reached consensus, and formed a group to oversee the spending of the $50,000. Instead of a consultant’s report, the residents got $50,000 worth of improvements, plus significant altruistic contributions from various sectors of the community. The project is incremental in nature and the residents are involved in the actual creation of their civic space.

4. Stop fixing problems and create DIY Kits

Cities should develop a range of self-help kits that show residents how to address a range of issues, such as traffic and anti-social behaviour. Whenever residents complain about these issues they should be given the DIY kit and told to come back if the kit does not help them resolve the issue. Residents should not get physical design interventions in their street until they have demonstrated that they are taking civic responsibility. This probably means abandoning the Traffic Calming Department and calling it the Department of Civic Responsibility.

5. Establish a Red Tape Reduction Party

The customer model requires increasing levels of regulations. Moving back to a citizen model requires handing back responsibility, which requires a serious commitment to reducing red tape. The Red Tape Reduction Party would be charged with reducing red tape by a set percentage each year along with being a ‘can-do’ trouble-shooting group that helps citizens overcome red tape when it stops them from taking civic responsibility. This would seriously change the culture in the organisation. The first port of call for addressing any issue should be to build citizen capacity, not to introduce new regulations.

6. Take out the traffic signs

The late Hans Monderman was a Dutch engineer who pioneered the removal of traffic control devices from villages. His grand vision was the ‘re-democratization of public space.’ He said, ‘As an engineer, it is not my job to try and forecast every potential problem the village may have in the future and resolve that potential conflict, in advance, through design. Every time I resolve a potential conflict through a new regulation or white line, I de-skill the community in resolving its own conflicts. And resolving conflict is at the heart of building robust, resilient communities.”

7. Change your relationship with developers

There was a time when the creator of a building was allowed to place their building wherever they liked. But they had a civic duty to place the building in a way that contributed to the magic of the public realm. The result was the organic streets and public squares of Europe, full of surprise and inherent genius.

Today developers no longer have a civic duty to ensure their building adds to the magic of the public realm. Instead the city tries to create this ‘civic benefit’ through regulations and master plans. The result is a sterile public realm because the developer, like a naughty child, sees how far they can push the boundaries.

Change your relationship. State exactly what you believe a developer’s civic duties are and what your city’s expectations are. Set the bar high. Then give developers a choice. They can go the regulatory route or the expectations route. The rewards for going the expectation route will be greater flexibility, faster turnaround, and the warm inner glow that comes from altruistic actions.

8. Ban red dots. Real action plans only.

A lot of community consultation has become farcical. Residents (usually the professional axe-grinders) are asked to generate wish-lists on butcher’s paper. They are then given ten red dots to spend on their favourite items on the wish-list. The result is a community vision, with priorities indicated by the clusters of red dots. The butcher’s paper is rolled up, taken back to the office and stuck under a desk. That night, the community consultation fairies come out and sprinkle magic dust on the items with most red dots, and hey presto, they magically spring into being.

I refuse to run community conversations that are bitch and moan sessions or simply result in wish-lists. I have created processes, like ‘Speed Dating Action Plans’, that force every individual to think about what they are prepared to do, and make a commitment to that action. (Detailed instructions are available at www.creative-communities.com/?page_id=69.) People are not allowed to discuss what other people should do. If people are not prepared to take civic responsibility, I give them an opportunity to leave the conversation and go home.

9. Ban public meetings. Parties only.

Meetings provide a venue for professional axe grinders to bitch and moan. Cut them off at the knees. Ban public meetings and have a party instead.

10. Ban stakeholders. ‘Real citizens’ only

Community consultation, as currently practiced, encourages people to wear a ‘single-identity-stakeholder hat’. Every issue a city is asked to deal with is the result of the clash between inherently contradictory human needs. We all have a need to move, and we all have a need to ‘reside’. A sense of place requires us to become rooted to a locality. The conflict between ‘motorists’ and ‘residents’ is not therefore a conflict between two groups of people in the city, but a conflict between different ‘modes of being’ that are deeply ingrained in our psyche. When people arrive at a community consultation meeting, almost everyone will be wearing a single hat: resident, motorist, parent, business owner, environmentalist, cyclist, pedestrian, lover-of-order, lover-of-spontaneity, etc. If we allow people to stay in this single-identity (or worse still actively encourage it by making them a representative of a stakeholder group), we aid and abet citizens in abandoning responsibility for their internal contradictions, and allow them to externalise the tension between their internal contradictions. So, for example, the tension between the motorist and resident in their head is externalised into tension between one group of people wearing their resident hat and another group of people wearing their motorist hat. The result is that each group grinds the other down towards grey neutrality – lowest common-denominator solutions. The only way for people to reach highly creative and sustainable solutions is to own their internal contradictions.

If I am asked to run an already established community consultation process, the first thing I do is find a way to get people out of their single-identity mentality. For example, I may get everyone in the room to exchange identities with ‘their enemy’ and for the rest of the process they must role-play that person (after all, ‘their enemy’ is the part of their psyche currently locked out of the discussion about whatever the issue is that they are struggling with)...

Imagine a world where there are no more community consultation meetings.

Imagine a world where children, those with a disability, the elderly, the disenfranchised are once again part of authentic community, authentic civic life, all happening in authentic places...

If you would like to be on the cutting edge of what is happening in our cities, I am running a series of two-day workshops in 24 cities worldwide in 2011.

David Engwicht
david@creative-communities.com
61 (0) 7 3366 7746

Everything's Amazing - and Nobody's Happy

...very funny and very perceptive!

'...and then when you ran out of money, you'd just go 'well - I can't do any more things now...'

The Digital Story of the Nativity

Very, very clever...

‎'Avoid Romans' on Google Map Directions indeed!!!

Sourced from YouTube, 13 December 2010