Where is the harmony and dissonance around the world?
The story of our time
The world as we know it is changing.
The world as we know it is changing. Most of the people we are speaking to have a newfound sense of interconnectedness - reliant on each other and vulnerable to each other in equal measure. This new way of understanding the world has led to an increase in the language of systems and collective power: “One thing affects the other, and the other affects the next...” wrote Mitch Albom in ‘Five People You Meet in Heaven’; a stunning novel about a quiet maintenance man on a fairground who is shown a vision about how his small actions impacted (even saved) the lives of others for generations to come.
Impact for generations to come.
People are reorganising at global and local levels, and often at the intersection between the two. This is causing a great deal of disruption, of course, to everything we used to take for granted. “Think local, act glocal,” rings the latest protest slogan. Finding new - and strengthening existing - ways to cooperate isn’t intuitive or easy to do, even if this has been at the heart of social innovation for the past decade. Still, somehow we have found in the midst of many different kinds of disruption in many different places around the world, an incredible resilience and capacity we didn’t even know we had for agility, adaptability and action.
Agility, adaptability and action.
Some days are harder than others to swallow the paradoxes, holding the plain-as-day positive and negative qualities in every fragile, beautiful moment. We heard stories from several sources of corruption, racism and fatigue. People are burning out, people are grieving and scared, the boundaries between home and work life are blurring (“we need to learn to integrate, not balance,” sighed one of our dine-around participants). We need to maintain a sense of urgency - a force that has kicked so much out and so much else into gear - and somehow also find time to pause, reflect and act with presence of mind, with foresight and a new humility as we sense the magnitude of our very own blindspots. Who have we left behind? Where are we perpetuating differences? Whose perspective? Whose power?
Whose perspective? Whose power?
We ask of the pandemic, “is this an event or an era?” Many people are opposed to the idea of returning to normal: “nothing good to go back to,” some said. But as we face the climate crisis we also wonder, “how much time do we have left?” We are living in times of “chronic uncertainty,” as a friend of SIX reminded us, but one thing is for sure: “what got us into this mess is not what is going to get us out of it” - so sung the chorus of history. We must focus on the ‘how’ now.
We must focus on the ‘how’ now.
Especially because we are by now intimately acquainted with the why. The challenges are many, and they are big. Most of our days are submerged in digital space. We have become dependent on tech like we never before knew, and with that quiet appreciation is also an exasperation, a growing sense of the neglect of responsibility from all those we were assumed to trust. How can we cultivate digital wellbeing? If we - the technologically privileged - are fast becoming digital citizens, who will write the new social contract?
The new social contract.
People are finding hope in small, informal, everyday actions, the familiarity and reliability of local groups - messy, noisy and human though they are. As the saying goes, “change moves at the speed of trust” and building relationships, being active members of our communities, playing our part as informed, engaged citizens, is where most people feel meaningful change is possible.
Meaningful change is possible.
The general feeling is that there is no better time than now for cultivating new economic models (around sustainability, social wellbeing, circularity) and new structures, policies, practices and norms around how we organise and govern, how we live together, learn together and care for each other. But this all requires an entirely new way of thinking and behaving, a new form of awareness, and a new story. As one friend from the Skownan First Nation told us, with all of the bravery and brilliance of indigenous lineage, “our theory of change is this: documenting our ways of knowing-being-feeling-doing....”
Knowing-being-feeling-doing.
The role of art therefore becomes the unsung hero - the translating force, the medium for pushing social critique. “Art can connect the intimate and systemic in a really unique way,” summarised a grantee from one of our interviews. Yes but, “what is your metric of success? What are the numbers behind this?” a local artist asked us once the first movement was done. It was a funny question. A blast from the past. After dozens of global conversations, over 90+ hours of dialogue that we and others hosted, after reading and synthesising and abstracting and understanding 60+ pages of notes, not to mention the legacy of a decade behind us, “How do you measure global social change in numbers?” we asked back. “How do you measure the difference between just surviving or truly thriving?”
Just surviving or truly thriving.
The artist suddenly remembered his own aching questions - squashed down over time by funders and frameworks, “Art is transformative. We try to be very rational with facts and figures, yet if our task is to go mainstream, we should deliver transformative experiences. But can you measure this - the value of art? And if you can, should you? And if you should… will more of us step into the role of the artist, will you be prepared to make and to measure what matters?”
