Some alternatives to Dudley’s Business As Usual and Blah Blah Blah
On Friday Greta Thunberg spoke at the #FridaysForFuture protest, describing COP26 as a “two week long celebration of business as usual and blah, blah, blah.”
In the run up to COP26 I have been feeling anger and frustration about exactly that; it would just be blah, blah, blah. As the Global Day of Action for Climate Justice arrived I found myself swept up in grief for the loss of life and species on this planet, for the degradation of soil and pollution of water and the air. I am totally fed up of blah, blah, blah. At international, national, regional and local levels of ‘leadership’.
When I look around at the ways investment is being used in Dudley borough, and the ways plans and strategies are being developed, I feel pretty disenchanted. Who is using their position and privilege to lead action towards alternative futures? Futures in which attitudes shift from exploitation to respect. From extractive practices to regenerative practices. From competition to cooperation. Creating conditions now for the emergence of new and creative human responses to the interconnected crises we face. The story of business as usual seems to have a strong grip on thinking and behaviours. (Some words above from Joanna Macy’s Three Stories of our Time, see more in this lab note on Why Dudley High Street need Time Rebels.)
AND, at the same time I feel hope. What Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone call Active Hope.
Creating a discontinuity with the current way of being and doing
In Design, When Everybody Designs Ezio Manzini discusses doing things in a (radically) different way, and the importance of social innovation for “solutions that break the traditional economic models and propose new ones, operating on the basis of a multiplicity of actors’s motivations and exceptions…
what these innovations do is recombine existing resources and capabilities to create new functions and new meanings. In doing so, they introduce ways of thinking and problem-solving strategies that represent discontinuities with what is locally mainstream, i.e. with the ways of thinking and doing that are considered ‘normal’”
CoLab Dudley is a discontinuity with the current ways of being and doing in Dudley. So much so that people find it difficult to get their head around what CoLab Dudley is; we don’t offer services, we don’t offer charity, we’re not a club or society. People are unaccustomed to participatory and creative platforms and social labs, relatively new forms of social infrastructure.
The experiments and projects which CoLab Dudley supports are in turn discontinuities with the current ways of being and doing in Dudley.
I feel hope because CoLab Dudley’s collective of Time Rebels is growing; we are finding ways to bring more people with different kinds of passions, talents, experiences and ways of working with systems together. This is slow work. It is counter to the ‘quick wins’, short timescales and shallow work of organisations, funders and institutions around us. We focus on: critical connections instead of critical mass… shifting from “mile wide inch deep” movements, to “inch wide, mile deep” movements that schism the existing paradigm ~adrienne maree brown, Emergent Strategy, 2017.
I feel hope because Time Rebels we’ve been convening in Dudley over the last four seasons are actively working with local people and leading on incredibly varied kinds of projects and experiments. Including and by no means limited to:
Dave’s thoughtful work through Dudley People’s Archive which takes a democratic approach to story gathering; each photograph and memory is treated equally. Many are featured in a stunning exhibition on Dudley High Street which opened last week, with the exhibition itself being an invitation for people to contribute more photos and memories to the archive and the exhibition. Lab team member Jo Orchard-Webb has drawn attention to the democratic nature of the curation and free access which makes this project a valuable contribution to the democratisation of cultural production and consumption in the town. Most traditional memory institutions are exclusive, curated by outside ‘experts’ and can be prohibitively expensive. In addition this work intentionally frames heritage as a critically relevant agent of change.
Dionne’s network weaving leading to an emerging Black Creatives Network.
Imagine if Dudley had a collaborative network where local creatives of African and Caribbean decent are welcome. A safe space where relationships amongst Black creatives are strengthened and the emergence of new projects, ideas and ventures are enabled, unleashing deeper layers of artistic excellence within our local black community. ~ Afro Histories Dudley invitation
This cultural animation was sparked in part by a discovery of the erasure of Black histories in the borough’s archives.
Our collaboration with Masters students from BCU’s School of Architecture and Design collaborating through an Extinction Rebellion Architecture module. This month saw the first of 3 invitations extended by these Time Rebels to connect, create, learn and share on Dudley High Street. One activity drew attention to the 173 deaths per year in the borough due to air pollution. This is an unusual conversation on Dudley High Street!
Holly’s collaborative development of Street Detectorism. This approach feels very different to usual ways of collecting and analysing data in Dudley. It seeks to create opportunities for people to build generous and trusting relationships. Street detectorism enthusiasts are being invited to connect through using our tools and activities whenever they like, sharing their findings in the lab or online, and coming together to humanise each other’s data.
Street detectorism will help us look for the historical context, and move away from ahistorical work by layering this with deep time e.g. geology, the industrial revolution, the British empire. We will bring these layers and range of data together in relationship with the rest of the ecosystem to help us reveal patterns and insights that inform our journey to a kinder, more creative and connected High Street. These insights will help to inform regenerative future experiments rooted in historical and future contexts, and help us to avoid short term or ahistorical quick solutions.
I feel hope because I still believe that in Dudley brough there is an abundance of creativity, imagination, resources, knowledge and skills. And that there is no shortage of people who want to share, make and collaborate.
It was this belief that led me to catalyse CoLab Dudley. In a paper for consideration in February 2014 I wrote:
CoLab [Dudley] harnesses a desire to share and collaborate among people who care and want to use their imagination and creativity to help organisations and communities to adapt to new challenges.
Re-imagining economic possibilities
This belief is fuelling the creation of another alternative to Dudley’s Business as Usual. In addition to the collaborative learning and doing journey we’ll be supporting around 50 Time Rebels in Dudley on over the coming seasons, I’ve been offered the most amazing opportunity to host a Peer-to-Peer Learning Journey in Dudley borough around re-imagining economic possibilities.
I will be one of 12 hosts supported by Civic Square and Enrol Yourself to bring together up to 12 local people between February and July 2022. As a group we will delve deep into re-imagining economic possibility and interrogating, experimenting, downscaling and crafting with the ideas of Doughnut Economics within a scale and context that we can touch and feel in our daily lives.
Learning together as peers allows for more horizontal structures, with everyone bringing skills, wisdom, knowledges, histories, ideas and more into the round. Everyone has something to learn, and something to contribute. We want to nurture relationships and exchange between mutual participants rather than limiting teacher and pupil dynamics, as well as recognising the plurality of ways in which we all learn, and what it means to learn together. ~ Civic Square
I’m on the lookout for people who live, work or play in Dudley borough who are curious about this learning journey. Please get in touch with me if that sounds like you, or someone you know. I’m lorna@dudleycvs.org.uk on email, or 07501 7222255.
And if you simply wish to connect to some alternatives to Dudley’s Business and Usual and blah blah blah, check out doingindudley.net to find out what our Time Rebels are experimenting with and inviting everyone to be part of.
Active Hope is not wishful thinking.
Active Hope is not waiting to be rescued
by the Lone Ranger or by some saviour.
Active Hope is waking up to the beauty of life
on whose behalf we can act.
We belong to this world.
The web of life is calling us forth at this time.
We’ve come a long way and are here to play our part.
With Active Hope we realize that there are adventures in store,
strengths to discover, and comrades to link arms with.
Active Hope is readiness to engage.
Active Hope is readiness to discover the strengths
in ourselves and in others:
a readiness to discover the reasons for hope
and the occasions for love.
A readiness to discover the size and strength of our hearts,
our quickness of mind, our steadiness of purpose,
our own authority, our love for life,
the liveliness of our curiosity,
the unexpected deep well of patience and diligence,
the keenness of our senses, and our capacity to lead.
None of these can be discovered in an armchair or without risk.
~ Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone, Active Hope, 2012
