Imagination Pit Stop
Starting 2020 with a Changemaker Residency at Hawkwood College...
I spent the first week of 2020 at Hawkwood doing a Changemaker Residency. In the space of a year Hawkwood has become quite dear to my heart! Matthew McStravick introduced me, inviting me to be part of his own Residency. I came back with the RSA and Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth as part of their Economic Security Impact Accelerator. And most recently Matthew McStravick, Ellie Osborne and I have been working with Hawkwood on the Deepr Learning Marathon.
2019 was hard work. I finished the year pretty depleted. And I didn’t want to feel depleted; I wanted to feel ready for the next decade! Ready to do my bit for people and planet (this includes remembering that for every challenge in the world, there is still abundant magic, beauty, kindness and humour that deserves to be vigorously celebrated).
With this in mind I gave some thought to the title ‘Changemaker’. I thought about computer game The Sims (which I obsessively played as a child), in which you manage many needs for your Sims at the same time, to keep them in balance. If you fail to do this you can’t achieve larger, more important goals — like getting them to make out, get in bed together or get a promotion! Maxing out one or two needs to compensate for others doesn’t cut it. You need to manage all the needs, at least to a sufficient level — or you hold your Sims back.
In the spirit of not holding myself back I thought about what my own set of health bars might look like. I decided the residency would be about bringing myself into balance as best as I could, to fuel new decade joyfulness and useful ness! I decided to pass up more ‘direct’ action in favour of this approach.
There’s at least one health bar I have which the Sims do not. Imagination. How creative or imaginative I feel has an impact on my energy and wellbeing. And I wonder if our collective ‘imaginative health’ is pretty important too.
“It seems as though we are becoming less imaginative at the very time in history when we need to be at our most imaginative. Our imagination muscle should be taught and well exercised: instead it is flaccid and untoned. I worry that the deeper we get into a crisis such as climate change, the harder it becomes to imagine a way out.” — Rob Hopkins
My work requires lots of instrumental creativity, but there’s rarely space for my imagination to run totally wild. So I decided to go free range for a week, and allow my imagination to wander off in different directions, as it pleased, without a tiresome adult (me) holding the reigns. I spent 5 days responding to 5 creative briefs, some set by me, some set for me by others. None of the briefs were instrumental to the future success of anything else, and all were about following curiosities and impulses. None were focused on Enrol Yourself (although, inevitably, this process provoked some useful thinking about our future direction as a byproduct).
Brief no. 1: Habits
How could you continue to develop your work around creative approaches to motivating the habits you want to build?
Background: Over the past few years I’ve been exploring habits. How do we form them? Why do we repeatedly try and fail to embed them, even the ones we think we care most about? I developed creative methods to building habits, like running. I would run in the shape of letters, capturing the shape using the Nike app, gradually spelling out a message over time, run by run. This motivated me because I had the incentive of adding the next letter to my message. I also started keeping (and washing!) my used dental floss. Yes, I know it’s weird. I’m gradually using the thread to create an artwork that will take me years to finish. A bit mad perhaps, but it works.
Process: I spent some time thinking about which habits were going to be important to me in 2020. Two areas stood out. Firstly physical movement (I want to be running, cycling, swimming and dancing at least once every week). Secondly, I wanted to work out how I could bring a little more spiritual practice into my daily habits. I fast every year during Ramadan. In 2020 I want to extend my practice, in a manageable way.
Outcome no. 1: patchwork patterns
My previous work had taught me that if I can associate each tiny, habitual step with a step required to create something visual — then the desire to take the second step motivates me to take the first. A bit like gamifying my own actions. I thought about visual pursuits which require clearly definable, individual steps to bring them to life, and decided patchwork could be perfect. I could define a set of colours representing the daily/weekly habits I wanted to embed, and I could document my progress by adding gradually to a patchwork. I drafted a number of designs that I could work with.
Outcome no. 2: ‘5 times a day’ alarms
I set 5 daily alarms (just on vibrate). This is an experiment in the spirit of 5 daily prayers. Each alarm has a different nudge. At the moment I really like this because it’s subtle. If I’m in a meeting I just dismiss it, but it might trigger something useful nonetheless. If I have more space I can take 3 minutes to think or respond. Let’s see if I still like this a few weeks from now, or if it’s driving me nuts ;)
Reflection: I started thinking about whether putting on an exhibition about habits might be fun… There are a few pieces of work I could contribute, but I could find some collaborators also working with this subject matter, whether that’s in the context of the collective habits we need to change, or development of habits on a personal level. If you’re working on something connected to this, get in touch!
Brief no. 2: High streets
How could we transform our dying high streets to bring communities together through food?
Background: I asked my friend Rahul to set me a brief for the week. Being a designer he sent me an actual, proper brief with information and everything :)
Coincidentally I had just been to visit Crickhowell, a small town in the Brecon Beacons that won overall best UK high street in 2019. So I had already been wondering what makes a great high street when he sent me this.
Process: I spent time; researching great high streets like Crickhowell; getting into the problem (why our high streets are changing); discovering all kinds of food interventions and projects to take inspiration from. I came up with lots of ideas and chatted to others at Hawkwood about them. I further developed the ones that seemed to resonate most with others.
Outcome no. 1: Community Supperclub
Whilst most articles and commentators I came across were fairly doom and gloom about the future of the high street, I did find some more positive voices too. They acknowledged that high streets are going to transform, but looked for the opportunities. These voices tended to focus on the experience economy, and the idea that coffee shops, co-working spaces, hair dressers and even escape rooms can thrive on the high street whilst other more traditional residents are floundering. I thought about how food might fit into this trend.
I looked at Kook Met Mij Mee, a training kitchen in the Netherlands that can be used by schools, families and local residents, promoting a pattern of good, healthy eating. I wondered if supper clubs like Eating with Elephants (started by Janice Johnson as part of her Learning Marathon) — which act as an engine for human connection — could benefit from a community kitchen of this kind.
I wondered whether pop up supper clubs could become local clubs that you might join for a year or more, and in doing so develop meaningful new relationships with others in your community. I got excited about modelling a peer-to-peer community supper club, with the idea that an empty high street unit could be turned into a space for cooking and eating together.
Based around a membership of 100 locals who want to get to know their community, if the club were to operate Monday — Friday year round, individuals could expect:
- Dinner at the supper club once a week (50 dinners)
- Your turn to cook and wash up less than once a month (10 dinners)
I modelled the supper club around a membership pricing structure which could cover costs, including; rent of the high street unit; raw ingredients and groceries; wages for a part-time organiser to keep the club going.
- Concession pricing £500 membership (£10 per dinner)
- Standard pricing £750 membership (£15 per dinner)
- ❤ your community pricing £1000 membership (£20 per dinner)
There could be additional possible revenue streams for the kitchen including weekend bookings and venue hire, an alcoholic drinks vending machine and co-working during weekdays.
A club like this could bring together quite different people from the community. Support lasting relationships to develop. Make use of a high street unit. And, showcase the high street as a place for communal experience and activity rather than consumption.
Outcome no. 2: Underdog Dollars
I also went slightly off brief with an idea for a currency— akin to local currencies like the Bristol Pound — which could be used only in participating, independent shops. ‘Underdog Dollars’ would draw on the British love of the underdog to champion spending that supports small businesses.
Stores and organisations nationwide could sign up (as long as they meet the Underdog criteria). People could then pay via an app and card, like a Monzo card. They could move funds from their current account there, and could gift Underdog Dollars to friends and family. There could be financial incentives for organisations and users. The app could also visualise for the user how their consumer choices are creating a positive impact, not only for high streets, but for Underdogs of all kinds.
Reflection: This brief got me thinking about what it would be like to live in a village or small town where there is just one high street or centre, and how different it would feel to life in London. I thought about how much more important it would feel to know your local community if you lived in a small place, but how you wouldn’t be able to choose your community in the way that you might in a big city.
Brief no. 3: Beast
How could you use illustration to depict ‘Beastversity’, a finishing school for ‘beasts’ where they teach subjects such as elocution, self-presentation and etiquette?
Background: This brief was given to me by my partner Johnnie. The idea of Beastversity is a long story which I won’t go into… Johnnie specified that this illustration should be done with watercolour paints. This felt like a good challenge as it has been roughly a decade since I did any painting.
Process: I did a bunch of sketches first. Then a sketch using watercolours. Each time adding a little more detail. And then in the spirit of not overthinking things I bought some proper paper, sketched an outline and made a start. I didn’t manage to finish the final version within the week, but I made a start and decided that the finished item (if I like it enough!) will be a birthday present for Johnnie, so that gives me a February deadline to stick to.
Reflection: This was the brief that got me really questioning myself (e.g. ‘is this really the best use of your time?’). But actually, I probably enjoyed this one the most. I held a paintbrush for the first time in a decade. Which felt good. Working on something purely visual is great because you can listen to music, books or podcasts while doing it. I get some kind of inherent reward when I work on visual stuff. It’s like my eyes and hands bypass the need for the brain to get involved. I’m not sure why that’s such a good thing. But it is.
Brief no. 4: Script
How could you continue to develop the script you wrote and performed with the last Learning Marathon group; the conversation between 8 voices in your head?
Background: For my last Learning Marathon my learning question was ‘how can I design my business so it stops designed me?’ Even the order of the words in the question reflected the tension I was feeling: the business coming before me in my own life. The question became all about how to have more time for myself, and the resulting tug of war between my different ‘selves’, who wanted different things. I began to capture this tension as a scripted conversation, as if those different perspectives (or characters) were sat together, in the round, having a conversation. I performed this at our Showcase event, and ever since I’ve wanted to take this idea further.
Process: I took the beginning of a new decade as a starting point for continuing the script. I wanted to return to the characters themselves and see if they still felt right. And I wanted to listen back to some audio recordings of conversations I’ve been taking over the past year. I find these real conversations are great inspiration for scripted dialogue.
I didn’t put any pressure on myself, I constructed no overarching narrative and made no plan, I just sat down several times over the course of the week, started where I felt energy, and let the script go where the characters wanted. I did some writing in the forest sanctuary where I also took some of the dialogue from a book of Buddhist ‘offerings’ that was in there.
Outcome: I wrote 5 short scenes that have begun to hang together as a narrative. I don’t have a plan for how to develop this further yet but I’ll be looking for opportunities to present themselves.
Reflections: I really enjoyed sticking unlikely bits and pieces together; Buddhist quotes, fragments of real conversations and experiences. I felt in awe of how many ideas bubble up when you allow yourself the freedom to pick something up, put it down, come back to it — with no deadline. This is so effective, for me at least. If you get stuck, you stop. When you come back, you either know the answer, or you start somewhere else. There’s very little force involved—and unsurprisingly this seems to be conducive to creative work.
Brief no. 5: Blog
How could you document what you did as part of your residency so you can share it?
This is it!
Reflecting on the residency
I enjoyed ignoring the voices that whispered things like ‘you’re wasting your time’, ‘think of all the things you could be doing that would be more strategic’ and ‘what will you have achieved by the end of this?’.
What I had by the end of the week was; new ideas; childlike joy and excitement; renewed energy — and a bright green imagination health bar.
I learnt that I love to work on several things at once and find that each feeds the other. I thought about how it’s very low-carbon to play with ideas in this way. I was rooted in one place for a week and only left Hawkwood once to go and buy some paper. I was reminded that we don’t actually need an entertainment industry to be entertained. I left looking forward to starting work again. And I left feeling a bit more like myself, whatever that means.
I was reminded that I like making things. I liked making things when I was 5 years old and I like making things now. I can use big words and jargon to describe the kind of work I do, but at heart it’s really simple. I like making things that are playful and useful.
I left feeling that space for tangential imagination is going to be more important than ever before, but harder and harder to justify. So, if I rely on external justification to give me permission, then I will end up waiting forever. So, I will be striving to look within for permission. Much less bureaucracy that way ;)
“Confined to the dark, narrow cage of our own making, which we take for the whole universe, very few of us can even begin to imagine another dimension of reality.” — Sogyal Rinpoche
