Where we’re headed with Glimpse.
This blog is an experiment. We hope it will turn into a kind of journal for Glimpse and a resource for our members (we’re a creative collective which helps people imagine positive futures). We’ll try to update it regularly, with different people taking turns to share their perspective.
So why blogging? Well, I believe that the current model of social media is dangerous and broken, but rather than complaining about it I’m going back to blogging in the hope that (like podcasting) it will have a resurgence. For now we’re putting these on Medium, but we’ll post all of these blogs on our own site very soon.
So let’s start the updates!
Non Profit
We just registered Glimpse as a non-profit company in the UK. This means we can pay salaries, but the main objective of the company is to achieve our community objectives:
i) To enable creative professionals to use their skills in the service of positive social and environmental outcomes.
ii) To help young people from disadvantaged backgrounds gain the skills and confidence needed to thrive in the creative sector.
iii) To promote and encourage behaviours and attitudes which lead to human flourishing.
We’ll go into these in more detail later, but the key is that all of our work needs to fit one of these objectives. If you’re confused about human flourishing you can hear more about it here.
Members’ evening
On Wednesday this week we held a members event in London for a few Glimpse members. We talked about how Glimpse could grow into a true membership organisation, and be the best possible place to come and share ideas with like minded people. We only had space for about 15 people but wanted to include many more.
Here’s what we learned:
- We all want community. Just being in the same room with people who share a common mindset is a great feeling. Zac and I worried about a lack of structure, but lots of ideas just bubbled up when people are together at Glimpse events. We need to do more.
- We’re ready to help others. The idea of helping young people from disadvantaged backgrounds made the room come alive. Sacha suggested a mentor programme for Glimpse, where each existing member is paired with a new starter. There’s so much to explore here and we are determined to make this happen.
- We need a core team. While the volunteer aspect is the heart of Glimpse, there needs to be a core of people keeping the ship afloat, sending emails and funnelling the ideas. At the moment this is James and Zac, but we will need to bring on more people quite soon. We also want to run a paid internship programme very soon — to train and equip young people from a diverse range of backgrounds.
- Mo money, mo problems. Linked to the above, the core team needs to find a sustainable revenue source. This could come from clients, grant applications or membership fees. We want to remain affordable to even the smallest charities, plus we’d like to run our own projects independently (like CATS). The financial model is probably the trickiest part at the moment, so we’d love your help to solve it.
- We’re unsure about credit. On the one hand we want to set ideas free, and move away from the rigid ownership of IP that sucks the life from creative work. But on the other we want to be fair and make sure people are able to claim credit where it’s due. We’re going to experiment with different ways of approaching this. Alex had an idea about putting Glimpse ideas on a blockchain and turning them into Cat Tokens, which few understood but all found intriguing.
- We want Glimpse to grow. There was a huge amount of enthusiasm for what Glimpse represents — an organisation which uses creativity to inspire hope and reach beyond traditional divides. I suggested that Glimpse feels like an organisation designed for the future: where volunteering is far more common, we have universal basic income, and people share rather than own ideas. But at the moment we’re stuck in the liminal space, trying to inhabit the new within the shackles of the old.
- The next Glimpse will focus on technology. Or rather, the joy of giving your full attention to other human beings, rather than your smartphone. We’re going to announce a three part series on this in the near future including a speaker evening, hack event and engine room session. This will probably happen between May and July. If you’re interested, tell us in the comments.
That’s all for now. Please add a thought in the comments below — I’d love to see a conversation happening on here and I’ll do my best to answer any questions or thoughts you have. Thanks for reading and being part of Glimpse.
James
PS: If you’re not a member of the collective yet but would like to join, you can sign up here.
