Dispatches from the Virtual High Street: a deep dive into interdependence
In our first dispatch from the Virtual High Street we explained our focus upon observing patterns over the coming months to better understand the way creativity, connection and kindness is manifest as we navigate our way through the pandemic.
In this dispatch we want to focus upon just one pattern — our interdependence. This pattern really appeals to us as it aligns with one of our favourite lab principles “Join the dots” where we seek in our work to see the whole, explore the connections and relationships, not just the individual ideas, activities or events.
Why interdependence?
One thing at least has become certain and known in all this pandemic induced uncertainty, and that is the number of unhealthy patterns within our socio- economic and ecological relationships. The ripples of the pandemic are shining a big light on a pattern of toxic interdependence that induces scarcity in many aspects of our lives including our health, our care, our homes, our food supply, the environment we live in, and our work security.
While these unhealthy relationships are dominant in our society, in our economy, and in our interaction with the environment, they are not by any means fixed, inevitable or universal. In our first dispatch from the Virtual High Street we told you about some of the practices that the lovely creatives and makers in our networks are testing out in response to physical distancing and the socio-economic reality of lockdown. These practices are rooted in new healthy relationships with their neighbours and families, with the places and neighbourhoods they live in, and with nature. These practices lean into the building of an understanding of our interdependence advocated by Federici below. In this quote from her book Re-enchanting the World, Silvia Federici stresses the centrality of understanding our interdependence:
“Commons are not things but social relations. This is the reason why some (e.g. Peter Linebaugh) prefer to speak of ‘commoning’ that underscores not the material wealth shared but the sharing in itself and the solidarity bonds produced in the process. (…) Commoning is a practice that appears inefficient to capitalist eyes. It is the willingness to spend much time in the work of cooperation, discussing, negotiating and learning to deal with conflicts and disagreement. Yet only in this way can a community in which people understand their essential interdependence be built.”
As time has passed we have begun to notice three further aspects of our way of organising, working and imagining as a lab team, as a creative collective, and as a network of fellow travellers, that encourages and makes possible healthier patterns of relationships and maybe even hints at a more health generating interdependence.
1. Platform & networked organising — infrastructure that brings things into new relationships
With the shift to physical distancing and lockdown we have been struck by the flexibility and pace of response of the platforms in our networks. These models of organising or governance have quickly adapted to act as virtual/ digital social infrastructure enabling new reciprocal relationships to form in this challenging context. This adaptability and capacity to forge new relationships and the flow of resources, ideas, skills and care is amplified by the networked nature of these platforms and the default to network weaving by the platform animators.
Different infrastructure models of governance make possible differing responses and action in crisis conditions. For example, CoLab Dudley is a platform on the High Street for creative thinking and doing, and as a platform it had much more structural flexibility and networked capacity to move quickly to a Virtual High Street model of convening conversations and creative action. This is coupled with an active nurturing of mindsets rooted in permission to experiment and distributed agency across the people taking part.
In contrast, formalised hierarchical and bureaucratic structures are less able to adapt to this rapidly changing context. Both the Virtual High Street and other platforms in our networks (e.g. Eat, Make, Play; Wolverhampton for Everyone, #connectingforgood at Grapevine) have adapted to occupy social infrastructure in the absence of physical third spaces like cafes, community hubs, libraries, shared public realm and playgrounds. In the case of the Virtual High Street platform this third space role is animated by embedded lab practices of:
- collaborative co-design & experimenting;
- principles focussed learning (a focus on doing things the right way not just doing the right thing); and
- intentional network weaving across our ecosystem (bringing things/ people into relationship).
This has involved help in signposting social entrepreneurs to resources, as well as aiding in forging collaboration on projects by making intentional invitations, introductions and by convening like minded individuals. There has also been a role across our networks for platforms in holding spaces for expressions of solidarity, grief and care, and in so doing making visible our collective identity and shared experiences. These platforms are also proactive in connecting work and signposting to creative action / experiences elsewhere and so bringing our network clusters into closer and deeper relationship. These connections allow people to share, amplify, celebrate each other’s work. Equally, the range of drop-in sessions on the Virtual High Street also lend themselves to impromptu, last minute and serendipitous network weaving — just as any valued physical social infrastructure should.
2. What we value and how we value it — work grounded in our interdependence
In this moment of enforced pause and in the witnessing of the consequences of a toxic interdependence there has been a thread running throughout our networks — what is it we truly value as a society and how do we value it? For example, as a team we loved this reflection on the function of an artist shared by Kerry from The Red Hand Files. These acts of reflection at both an individual and collective cultural level is drawing attention to the need for recognition, valuing and catalyzing of a different approach to work. This work is useful, regenerative, pleasurable and creative, not useless, commodified, extractive, precarious toil. Put simply, work that matters will help build our collective social, ecological and cultural resilience (e.g. this might be stewarding nature, growing local food, caring for family and community, sharing knowledge, open design, or creating shared cultural assets and experiences).
This approach to work — one that sees our interdependence with each other, nature, as well as past and future generations — has bubbled to the surface in a range of our shared learning spaces over the last few weeks of lockdown. It has been a thread running through lunchtime Virtual High Street conversations about the life and work of William Morris generously led by Lynda; it is prominent in our recent learning about care wealth in commoning, sacred civics, usership in art, and Doughnut Economics, all again generously and freely shared by regenerative system design knowledge leaders; and it is manifest in the socially engaged practice and wisdom of the creatives and makers in our collective, once again freely shared via the the Virtual High Street platform.
As a team we recognise “what we value and how we value it” has important implications for the organising principles and design and health of our future High Streets. It builds upon our “beauty is a human right” learning from High Street experiments during DoFest Dudley 2019. And is manifest now in the thoughtful act of archiving emerging in the Dudley People’s Archive & in the visual representation and celebration of The Doers & the Curious of Dudley. Both of these speak to the transformative power of creativity/ creative labour in our lives and the need for platforms to lift up and share the creative work we value.
During this period artists in our collective have spoken explicitly about their socially engaged practice, rooted in meaningful collaboration, reciprocity and representation. There is also a pattern of mutual support within the collective in the collaborative design of new works, and in help harnessing platforms to respond to the precarity of the creative sector labour model (in itself a legacy of failing to value work that matters). Thinking in this way about work that nurtures our shared /collective resilience and makes clear our interdependence we recognise will involve harnessing past and present wisdom & skills as well creating future imaginaries grounded in a determination to be good ancestors.
3. Rituals re-imagined — the nurturing of new cultural symbols and acts that weave new connections between us
The pandemic has brought with it widespread grief made so much worse by the loss of the cultural rituals that we use as a society to emotionally navigate loss, birth, unions, acts of faith and everyday life. These rituals help shape our identities, our relationships and our sense of purpose. Acknowledging this loss of traditional rituals we have noticed the collective nurturing and re-imagining new rituals that signal a culture of care, connection, collaboration and creativity. For example Bloom Wellbeing CIC (a CoLab Dudley Creative Partner) are using the potent symbol of rainbows in daily creative acts of solidarity and wellbeing. Rituals help us perform and signal our intent so as a lab team — inspired by the letting go list practice of fellow travellers — we are dreaming up a letting go list performance for the High Street. The most commonplace new ritual during this period has been the practice of really noticing and documenting our experiences and environment. This is a new rhythm for many of slowing down to notice beauty, nature, and acts of kindness. Journals, craft, and even social media like instagram are being used as tools as part of this ritual of noticing. Symbols and language involved in the re-imagining of rituals is key. This has been manifest in the challenging of the use of war rhetoric in the pandemic coverage, witnessed in the simple unifying symbol of rainbows, and in the becalming instinct to share images of everyday natural beauty from our once a day exercise allocation. These rituals help weave us together in new ways rooted in care for each other, the places we call home, and the natural world.
Activity on the Virtual High Street over the last 3 weeks that has informed this pattern
- 3 x CoLab Collective Coffee sessions (3–5 participants per session, 6 individuals in total).
- 3 x Lab Team learning and reflection sessions (7 lab team members).
- 2 x lunchtime Creative Conversations (one with 11 participants, another with 27 participants).
- 2 x Fellow Travellers discussions on Zoom, the first in a new series of discussions and conevening of our Fellow Travellers developed to build on our lab note from 16 March (6 participants total).
- A Regenerative Design session (5 participants).
- A Solace in Nature session (3 participants).
(We’ve also taken part in online sessions and events organised by our Fellow Travellers and people who inspire us including Civic Square, Street Space CIC, Kate Raworth and Emergence Magazine.)
