David Barrie

Declare Interdependence

From Berlin-based creatives Lars Schmidt , Stefa Roth and their organization Arts-Ecology-Education comes a 'Declaration of Interdependence' - an 'open experiment' - call it a 'manifesto'.

The Declaration sets down a list of shared principals, of hyper-tolerant, anti-indulgent, eco-aware values that the authors suggest will or should frame our lives post-Crisis.

Is this visionary?

Yes.

(but be aware of the poverty and some of the woozy, manic, at times desperate atmosphere of some squats in London in the late 1970s/early 1980s that once shared some similar values.)

If you like the Declaration, spread it. You'll find it here, at culturalrevolutionaries.org, on Facebook and with images at Social Design. Arts-Ecology-Education can also be followed on Twitter - @aeeproject.  

Venture urbanism

Last week, our bridge in Castleford, Yorkshire was awarded the Palme D'Or - so to speak - of the U.K. urban renewal industry, at the annual Regeneration & Renewal awards.

The professional jury led by David Ubaka of Design for London commended the bridge for the quality of its design and the unusual and direct involvement of local people in its development. 

Six years ago, working in close alliance with local government, I led a group who asked people living and working in Castleford to nominate the ten improvements that they would like to see made to the town - and a new way of getting from the town centre to an area known as 'Duck Island' came out No.1.

Local people were instrumental to the choice of architect, design and many other aspects of the £4.5m ($7m) structure.   

With local government acting as convenor, project/technical manager and banker, local people were the client for the work - rather than just end-user consultee.

So yes, the award goes to the project team - Client: City of Wakefield Metropolitan District Council, Designer: McDowell + Benedetti, Structural Engineer: Alan Baxter & Associates, Civil Engineer: Arup Water, Lighting Consultant: Sutton Vane Associates, Timber Consultant: Engineered Wood Products/Michael Berringer and Contractor: Costain Ltd.

And on the funding and support side, immense thanks needs to go to the local authority, English Partnerships (now Homes and Communities Agency), Yorkshire Forward, the Environment Agency, British Waterways, the Heritage Lottery Fund, SITA Trust and the project and cost managers of the broader initiative, MACE Group and Gleeds.  

But in the end, this is just set construction, cinematography and commendation all round for production services.

Because the Best Director slots need to be reserved for the three organizations who were instrumental to making the bridge happen: the Lock Lane Residents Association, Castleford Riverside Community Group and Castleford Town Centre Partnership.

Now before you reach for your hankie to wipe away a tear, can I just leave you with a thought.

Recession has stalled the momentum, value and yield of regeneration, renewal and construction in the U.K. and rest of the world.

With big investment gone from the sector, big projects are history.

Master planning will remain in some shape or form, not least because it evidences the fact that something major is going on or being thought through - but the writing has to be on the wall for that too. 

The flourishing of the Internet Economy suggests an age of direct communications, network relationships and more 'done with' than 'done to'.

The level of business insolvencies in the SME sector and the new relationship between the private and public sectors as a result of Government stimulus suggests a new dialectic of resilience and dependency.

So have we reached a moment of great opportunity?

A moment to develop and deliver small projects that build out in to larger phenomena?

We could follow the lead of Enterprise 2.0 and progress these projects in ways that involve ordinary people deciding who, what and when.

But this is about action, not feasibility, and choreography of initiative, not simply small-scale invention.

What should we call it?

Maybe start with "Venture Urbanism" (and find something sexier a bit later)? 

Selfridges, Bergdorf Goodman and celebrating the social

Selfridge & Co is the U.K.'s pre-eminent high-fashion retailer in the U.K. 

For several years, it has sought to enrich cultural life by creating projects for its point-of-sale and direct marketing, commissioning or presenting work by visual artists, photographers, fashion designers and musicians.

Some of the most powerful, cutting-edge creativity today is linked to designing the social: creating places, experiences, services and technologies that celebrate, involve and empower people.

Think of microfinance, alternative local currencies like BerkShares, the recommender technologies of internet and mobile applications like Dopplr and Brightkite, the user-generation of video content sites like You Tube and Chictopia and the culture of sharing, not selling that drives online networking.

Then we live in an age when the President of the United States was once a community worker, rather than an oil baron; when celebrities like Jamie Oliver are admired for their social work, not just skill in the kitchen; when culture is created by a crowd swarming over a widget or a nation voting on X-Factor, not a loner locked in a room in West Hampstead or Manhattan or a late-might worker in the Academy of Fine Arts. 

Are there ways in which Palaces of Miu Miu like Selfridges, Bergdorf Goodman or Barneys - emporia that help set the tone and beat of consumer life - might celebrate or reflect these new social values? 

Take a look around and high fashion seems to be taking on some of the geist.

There's the direct populism of the likes of Star Wars-influenced, straight-to-Target designs of Kate and Laura Mulleavy at Rodarte.

There's the cult of the amateur teen fashion bloggers, their access to Fashion Weeks and the invitation of ordinary shoppers to meet stars like Christian Louboutin.

There are the High Priests of the industry like the Creative Director of Yves Saint Laurent and his new YSL Manifesto that appear to be not just positioning themselves but also seeing themselves as having a role in a more open - and open source - economy.

Take Stefano Pilati of YSL's comment in last week's London Financial Times:

If they take my manifesto, go to a vintage store somewhere and are inspired to make their own outfit, I think that's great. Then we've helped them dream a new idea of themselves. Isn't that the point?

And then there are stray eccentricities such as luxury goods maker Louis Vuitton commissioning artist Jeremy Deller to create a mobile vegetable garden for the opening of a new branch in the Westfield shopping mall in London.

You get the feeling that earlier debates on the role of luxury in an age of austerity - like the brilliant talk at the Hammer Museum back in February on Conscientious Consumption led by Sally Singer of Vogue - might be filtering through in to a new paradigm.   

Let's not run away with ourselves since fashion and ethics remains a mix of oil and water when high street shops are filled with a confused mash of real and faux fur and cash-tills ring with sweatshop wages. 

But how might these places - places that win vast attention and have an important influence - express the achievement and hope of a more social nation and inspire shoppers and Bobo-babes to express and enjoy a new, socially-minded form of luxe?

Fashion is...

, originally uploaded by mis_gabbana.

:)

Things are getting worse. Please send chocolate.

There are lots of posts here on the theme of food.

There are recipes for cooking dog in Vietnam. Thoughts on why culture has turned celebrity chefs in to society's new investigative reporters. There's been the trauma of the loss of Barbar the Elephant. And food with provenance becoming as luxurious as a felt rug from Kyrgyzstan.

So what's the big deal?

Well, for a long time, I've thought of food as not just a thing that we, er, have to eat to survive but also a bit like art, or at least Nicolas Bourriaud's idea of art as the temporary terminal of a network of interconnected elements.

Quoi?

Well think about food for more than a nano-second and you're instantly thrown in to what it's made of, where it comes from, who has it, who doesn't, its expense, cheapness, how sexy is (friend of Jay Kay) Jamie Oliver, how sincere is Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and why does the following expression always seem so true:

Now I think that I might have the answer. And its nestling in the biog of Canadian geographer Dr Betsy J.Donald, author of the book Food Fears:

Food is a prism through which to explore many dimensions of sustainability -- from local economic development to better ecological practice to social stability and opportunity.

*is slightly in love*(?)

Images of grumpy man and meringue courtesy of Tubbyphunk. Chocoloate image unknown. 

Vulnerable Celebrities: Love em, Hate em, Knife em

Susan Boyle, the star of the U.K. edition of Britain's Got Talent is recovering from the ordeal of her appearance on the show.

The BBC has a flock of pop-psychologists interpreting her fate and TV executives have sought to pre-empt regulation by calling for more rigorous "psych testing" of participants in reality programmes.

This is all very interesting but misses the point, either by design, accident or willful ignorance.

The point is that the media features people like Susan Boyle because they are vulnerable. They're cast because they are extreme and unstable, because in their vulnerability and madness rests talent - and a compelling one at that.

Problem is that once the likes of Susan Boyle, Britney Spears, Kerry Kantona or Paul Gascoigne start to crack, their fate fast becomes, in the words of journalist Jenny McCartney  

a prolonged pageant of self-destruction that draws the crowds, like a potential suicide teetering on a balcony.

One way in which the media promotes and embellishes the narrative is by editorializing - giving an opinion that masquerades as objectivity.

But there's another, more posh, deceptive way via eyewitness-style, wannabe 'literary journalism', something that television - and especially British television - loves: voyeuristic journalism cast as high class art, rather than - in the words of Tom Wolfe

a motel you checked into overnight on the road to the final triumph of the novel.

In a recent edition of the London Sunday Times, "international interviewer" Daphne Barak reported on her experience of filming Amy Winehouse for an up-and-coming documentary. The article was republished in Grazia.

The four days Barak spent with Winehouse is cut-down in to a story of Dress Swap, illicit drinking and intimate scenes of Amy playing with children.

Winehouse plays with several young girls and, according to Barak,

it's obvious that Amy feels much more at home with these girls than she does with the grown-ups...She is childlike in her need for affection, constantly coming up to hug us.

Being told off by her father, Amy is said to look like a child who has just been sent to the naughty corner.

After Barak lends Winehouse a dress to go on stage, Amy switches into a little girl who needs approval. She is melting, hugging me over and over again and saying "You're so sweet. You're so nice..."

And the day after a performance, the femme fatale of last night is once again a little girl. She hugs me again and again. I notice at one point that she is sucking her thumb.

Now I am not guiltless in this space.

Over a decade ago, I made a mannered film with English TV presenter and writer Paula Yates that investigated the circumstances of the death of her lover, Michael Hutchence.

But the genius, ground-breaking work of the likes of Joan Didion or Norman Mailer in the 60s, 70s and 80s does seem today to have given way to a deluge of authored aperçus on human nature by journalists and filmmakers.

The prevailing influence of therapy in culture and of vulnerability as a defining feature of 'personhood' seems to allow more and more observers to become analysts.

And a will to typecast a human now turns fast in to the hot pursuit of jeopardy.

So it's a nice idea to introduce more rigorous "psych testing" of TV contestants.

And it's comforting to acknowledge that fame induces undue stress. 

But psychodrama is entertainment.

And poor souls like Susan Boyle are its medium.

YCN, 72 Rivington Street, London

On the telephone the other day, I ended up staring at this: 72 Rivington Street, the new HQ of design agency Young Creatives Network.

In the window is a display of piled books by Anna Lomax and Lauren Davies of Jiggery Pokery:

 
What's great about the location is that a genius(ish) has decided to turn the downstairs of the building in to a public space and offer a lending library. 

A few years ago, I worked with a group of community activists in the town of Castleford, England and turned this empty furniture store:

in to a white-walled, wannabe Saatchi gallery:

The refurbishment was supported by several public agencies, including Arts Council England, English Partnerships (now the Homes and Communities Agency), Wakefield Council and social welfare charity the Coalfields Regeneration Trust.

The space has since been enjoyed by thousands of people and hosted art exhibitions of work by artists like Cuban Carlos Garaicoa and local abstract painter Blue Wilson:  

The U.K. Government recently launched a programme to revitalize vacant retail units on recession-hit High Streets and turn them over to community uses. 

This is great. The space in Castleford cost just £25,000 (USD$40,000) to refurbish, has now been extended to a property next door and has a permanent member of staff.

But the important thing raised by YCN is that private, as well as public places and spaces can be turned towards hosting and delivering different kinds of public experience.

Some empty stores in the U.K. are now being turned over to community services, like policing and children's learning - and I'm helping a chef  turn an old carpet shop in to a co-operative, grocery store.   

But the idea of turning what could be any old foyer or exhibition space in to a public lending library is a brilliant one.

Main street recession, mutualism and pop-up anything and everything suggests these kind of practical, public-facing, can-do projects are about to have their moment.

Question is, who's brave enough to go the whole way, commit to a supposedly "post-selfish" age and say, turn a disused branch of Woolworths in to a shop, use the income to buy the upstairs and turn the entire building in to a Christiana-style Danish commune?

It's been done countless times before.

Tempted? Visit Wanna Start a Commune?

Images courtesy of Guy Archard and YCN.  

I empower you to...

This is a picture of acting teacher Robert Galinsky.

Galinsky runs what's called The World's First Reality TV School.

In his classes in New York, Galinsky trains people to win auditions and get on to reality TV shows.

In a recent edition of the London Financial Times, Galinsky gives some amazingly useful tips on how to get on in life, not just telly:

if you are constantly interacting with other people, making conversation and doing something interesting, then the camera will keep coming back to you

He says wisely of his students:

What I'm doing is preparing them for the butcher's shop they are about to walk into.

And he's got a very specific clientele:

We get people having a mid-life crisis, people in abusive relationships or newly divorced, people just out of prison looking to make a new start, aspiring models, actors, housewives, even people who are caring for sick parents, looking for a release.

What does Galinsky do?

Here's the clincher: I'm empowering people.

This is an advertisement for the drinks company Innocent.

Two weeks ago, the (supposedly) anti-corporate company announced that Coca-Cola are buying a £30m ($43m) stake.

The investment will help Innocent find distribution networks overseas and overcome a dive in financial earnings.

Last week, a report in the London Sunday Times quoted a senior executive from Coca-Cola responding to worries of an imbalance of power between the two companies:

Quincey said that be believes in "empowerment" and that he is betting on Innocent's founders to drive the future.

Here's an image of Robert Venturi from a book that reproduces a seminal trip the architect made to Las Vegas with Denise Scott Brown in 1968.

Yes, it's a sexy image of super-60s American styling.

Yes, it ticks every box of the romantic creative searching for truth.

But I've another question: is this an emblematic image of the last "empowered" person alive?

For in an age when everyone and everything seems to "empower" everyone and everything else, I assume that at the end of a rainbow - or at the end of a track in the Nevada Desert - there's an all-powerful super-God, an ultimate winner empowered to wonder at and take on the world.

There's a dull as ditch water BBC Radio 4 or NPR show to be had on this subject.

But maybe there's a simpler solution.

Can I exploit all of your latent power to make a decision?

Your innate ability to move on?

And can I empower you, me and the planet through this blog to do one thing....

...and drop the word "empowerment"?

Because if the word applies to people finding ways and means to maximizing their celebrity or is a way to rationalize a commercial partnership or business strategy, it may just have lost its meaning, something more righteous and real than a number 27 bus. 

Galinsky image courtesy of Evan Abramson. Innocent advertisment designed by Jon Wade. Venturi image from Las Vegas Studio: Images from the Archive of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown. Edited by Hilar Stadler & Martino Stierli. (Chicago University Press, 2009).

Participatory culture, Twitter and a loading gun

 

I once spent a lot of time with a senior officer in the British army who served in the Falklands War. In the heat of The Battle for Goose Green, with his commander dying of wounds, a bullet came the way of this second-in-command. In his pocket was a book by the 20th century desert mystic Carlo Carretto. He claimed it "took the bullet" - and saved his life.

Now I don't want to be over-dramatic but last week three very annoying people were collected together in the London Sunday Times to have a go at the micro-blogging site Twitter.

Psychologists Oliver James, Dr David Lewis and writer Alain de Botton said that Twitter-ers are folks suffering from a lack of identity, narcissism and the service functions, according to Alain as

a way of making sure you are permanently connected to somebody and somebody is permanently connected to you, proving that you are alive. 

Two things come to mind: "No shit, Sherlock" and "Dear Waterstones the Booksellers, please close your branch in Hampstead High Street and give these chaps something else to worry about."

However, there is a bigger point.

As the U.K. Government starts to exact a price for bailing out the Royal Bank of Scotland and the United States Government deals with a request for $21bn of additional financial support for the motor industry, the role and relationship of the state to not just the banking sector but all aspects of daily life is changing.

In England, disquiet in the ranks of the Labour Party and the Conservative Party push on localism suggests that debate over the purpose of the state has begun.

In the process of re-aligning the deck chairs, a new form of 'command and control' industrial economics and public management is taking shape.

Combined with the rent-a-quote where-am-I-in-the-bestsellers-list clever-dickery of James, Lewis and de Botton, there's a danger that the networked devolution of power that's been celebrated over the last few years and caught the attention of public managers across the world gets rubbed out.

So it may be worth just to remember what's gone on over the last decade to embed the idea that aggregation of human expression, purpose and intent is a valuable foundation for social, economic and political progress:

The rise of partnership working, public-private partnerships and local asset-backed vehicles in urban renewal has established an ethos of collaborative working.

Privatization and outsourcing of public services, the rise of ‘joined-up’ government, consumer choice and technological innovation has shifted hierarchical organisation of government to more networked forms of public management.

The rise of ‘place’ as an organizing principle of local government and city planning now acknowledges that the built environment is more than just the organisation of the interests of land-owners and users but a web of experiences and physical, social, cultural and financial relationships.

Government emphasis on citizen participation, the Third Sector, democratic governance and inclusive economics has set on record the role of the community in the provision of public services.

Social and cultural entrepreneurs have become an increasingly important part of urban development, alongside landowners, speculators, planners and architects; bringing to economic development a new cast of characters who have an acute, populist mindset and combine skills in entrepreneurship, thought leadership, stakeholder management and project delivery.

The rise of Web 2.0 and online entertainment platforms have revealed a consumer appetite for informal, purposeful and semi-visible public networks.

The increasing use of co-design as a method for originating and developing ideas – from creating a new park to the development of open source software – has revealed an understanding of the opportunity and value of sharing emotional, as well as intellectual property.

Popular participation in voting for performers on television by telephone and text messaging has revealed that people like to engage with and not just consume products and services.

And popular take-up of Crazy Frog and online ‘widgets’ mark an appetite for viral advertising and the power of marketing by word of mouth. 

Now I am not going to write this list down and tuck it in to my shirt to absorb forthcoming bullets.

But if you - like me - are committed to advancing participatory culture and helping government and the private sector enter an age of social sustainability and interactivity, it might be worth you drawing up your own list and keeping it to hand.

Or keep a close watch on what's going on - and decide whether to bin all of this as history.

Mickey Mouse pictures courtesy of Rey Misterio.

The Return of Gustav Klimt

Is there something Belle Epoque going on?

Here's a portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer (1907) by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt:

And here's a photograph by Camilla Akrans of Mariacarla Boscono in the latest edition of Vogue Nippon:

 

Here's Klimt's Fulfillment (1909):

And here's an image from a recent edition of Vogue Italia featuring Siri Tollerod:

 
Now I know there's been a Neisha Crosland decorative wallpaper thing going on for some time. The stagey formality of photographers Mert & Marcus is influential. And fashion likes grand gestures (doh).

But there are other things around, like Prada's Spring -Summer 09 ad campaign:

And Lanvin's campaign for the same season: 

Isn't there something Byzantine in all of this?

Something with no movement, no intimacy and flat rhythmics?

In Klimt's day, exoticism gave way to the First World War.

Hopefully in our era it's just a flier for a car boot sale at Harvey Nichols.

Camilla Akrans image via Alexandra's favoriter. Siri Tollerod via Childhood Flames. Ad images via Frillr.