Begging for Ideas

Journeys home from work are often occasions to tune back into the silent conversation with one’s inner self, or tune out into sleep and the newspaper’s reordering of our ever complex world. Then there are days when the world performs in front of you and pulls your brain back onto the stage.

Tonight’s show began on the tube from work, with an incident – ever more common these days – where someone had been asking for ‘change’ of the small kind: the 1 pound or 10p that fills a momentary need endlessly repeated.  I might be bored by the lack of innovation in such asks (I want to give to ideas), but I’m also acutely aware that a sector’s encouragement of small change – adverts that ask for pennies to support a life rather than to change it  – is understandably replicated through a social web of diminishing asks, right through to the ‘I just need 10p to buy a ticket home’. At least the latter isn’t the result of a large communications budget, but a more human reflection on the ‘disadvantaged thinking’ that blights our time.

 On this occasion, my attention was grabbed by a gentleman who was prepared to ‘give back’ in a different way: by explaining why, in a welfare state he was paying for that day at work (though that might be seen increasingly as a luxury), he wasn’t prepared to hand out any change, except to suggest that the asker show more manners and respect for others.  It was an unusual exchange. I half hoped we were about to begin a debate on proposals for welfare reform - with visions of future train carriages offering conversational hubs to interact with the evening headlines - but instead the ‘change asker’ bowed out to leave the train with what for me was a poignant apology.  We live in an age when few of our so called leaders are able to say sorry for things that have had a massive impact on many lives, and yet here was someone genuinely sorry for the annoyance he felt he had caused to a couple of homeward bound workers, however worthy or not they were of an apology.  That in itself was worth far more as a 'give' than money can buy. The human factor of care is the greatest source of optimism from which change, and human evolution, will occur. 

I’ve been promising for some time to pick up the notion of ‘real change’ over ‘small change’, so perhaps the above story helps to begin the theme.  At the outset of our writing on Open Talent, back in 2009, I gave it the strap line: ‘A big change for young people, not small change’.  The idea was to help illustrate that just a part of the investment society wastes on deficit interventions could be spent to greater effect by focusing on the real solutions required to change lives and social circumstances. Then, as Open Talent took off, some of the initial early ideas around investment and the meaning of Talent were taken over by others – a polite way of saying dropped or forgotten about. I remember the poet Paul Farley explaining this in terms of how a writer’s first sentence or verse is very often just the engine that launches the rocket, to be expelled into the ocean. Though sometimes I still think the rockets I sweated over looked rather beautiful even as they vanish into history’s shredder.

I was delighted, therefore, to discover during a visit to the wonderful organisation Gwalia in South Wales that someone else had made much better use of the ‘change, not change’ approach, using the stereotype image of a person begging for money to ask for ‘change’ of a different value .  His name is Meek, an Australian pencil artist, who, influenced from his exposure to Banksy in London, went on to produce the 2004 stencil graffito entitled "Begging for Change" in which you can see someone holding up the slogan: "KEEP YOUR COINS. I WANTCHANGE.”  There must be  a radical spirit in Wales at the moment, as I have since noted that the Cymru Homelessness Network use that image on their twitter account too.  

I’m still waiting for the day when someone goes on a tube to ask for social solutions, or holds a bucket out for social networking name cards instead of coins. ‘I just need an idea to help me get home…’ That will be me one day. And when it is, you might like to signpost me to the most advantaged thinking tube line of people to pester... 

All together in the all-together

Last Saturday afternoon I was at the Tate for an exhibition on Kusama, an artist I was lucky enough to enjoy in Japan through her remarkable polka dot pumpkins on the beautiful island of Naoshima.

The Kusama iconography – dots, net holes, eyes, etc - gripped my mind with the power of art as a positive source of disruption to our ‘normal’ way of thinking, way of seeing, way of being.  Kusama’s playful deconstructions show not only how art can de-familiarise perceptions, but how art can give us the permission to accept new ways of living the world.  

Wondering round the gallery rooms, watching the audience interacting with the art, all reminded me of an idea I had to curate an exhibition challenging the disadvantaged images in the language of the media and charities.   Being a fan of puns, the concept was called Art Vantage Thinking – taking a different perspective to constructions of advantaged and ‘disadvantaged’ young people in society.  If the Kuasama rooms allow people to challenge the way they view and experience reality, why don’t we find artists and art that can do the same as part of our campaign to end disadvantaged thinking? Just imagine what the Centrepoint ad might convey silkscreened to distortion.  What young people could do with the power to cut up, graffiti and reimagine the way they are presented by others. What any artist might produce to create that show-stopping moment when people are able to stop and think again about what charity should actually mean as a positive investment in solutions.

I’ve often bored people over the last 15 years or so with my interest in the significance of prehistoric cave art – arguably the first galleries in history, with a special purpose to mark transition, stimulate memory and create community as a means of survival in the tough environment marked by the ice age.  All achieved through the power of art to challenge perception and thinking. Maybe our own ice age is one conducted in the mind – the eternal icing over of our capacity to understand humanity without resorting to the stereotypical and superficial.  We need a modern gallery experience to stimulate the mental behaviour of a more intelligent community.  Advantaged thinking art-vantage thinking that gives us the space and permission to overcome the ‘disadvantaged thinking’ ways we shape our reality.  All together in the all-together, as Kusama might have put it.

On the way out from the Tate, I listened to a snippet from a Damien Hurst documentary, explaining the power and significance of art as a ‘positive’ means to engage with topics, such as death, that we sometimes find difficult to face up to.  Whatever I think about Hurst’s art, his perspective is right: art is a positive life force.  It’s important, I believe, that we recognise art’s advantage, and begin to harness the power of art in our communications just as much as we endlessly bang on about social media. 

Who is up for the Art-vantage thinking challenge? To create and curate a space that stimulates positive, solution-based thinking about where and how we position the image of young people and charity in our world?  To turn the focus of art as a positive life force on smashing through the negative barriers that limit our world?  As always, I’m open for talent.  Let me know if you are...

Open the gates

You may have noticed, I have been on a temporary leave from advantaged thinking over the last month.  I thought about putting a sign up, to say it was closed until further notice. I remember seeing my first sign like that when I was about 6, standing outside a park with my mum, confused by the council sign that had fenced off the green space where I wanted to feed the birds.  In the wonder of childhood innocence, I asked ‘Do you think they will open it when they see that we have noticed that it is closed?’  Nothing my mum could say in answer made any sense. I had noticed, surely that was enough. Why couldn’t they be open?

Not that activity on this blog is the only sign of winning or losing the fight – and I make no apologies to say it is a fight  – to overcome the disadvantaged thinking cell lodged in our social brain.  The domino of advantaged thinking has long since spiralled out into the world to pattern change.  I expect one day someone will explain to me what it all means.

A couple of weeks ago saw the Foyer Federation’s Dickensian policy event, exploring how to turn current ‘Hard Times’ into ‘Great Expectations’ with and for young people. It was a great day, with brilliant presentations from the young people and staff at Bridge Foyer in Chester and Crewe. My small contribution was a few minutes outlining the dangers of being ‘addicted’ to deficits in our current way of work. I began this by a rather fortuitous connection between Dickens and Hamlet, one of the key subtexts within the Great Expectations novel. Like Hamlet, we face a fundamental choice of being – ‘to be or not to be’. We can either face up to our role to confront and reform the status quo, or accept our place to perpetuate its injustices. For an organisation like the Foyer Federation, this is a ‘no choice’ choice. We were established to ‘be’ – it is our role as a charity to fight for a better deal for young people by challenging the status quo.  We don’t take prisoners. But like Hamlet, we’ve learnt that to ‘be’ takes time.  To confront the world we wish to transform requires a fleet-of-foot mind.  Transformation will not come about by simply ‘revealing’ disadvantaged thinking like at the end of a Scooby Do cartoon, or logically proving the case for its advantaged thinking antithesis in a court room drama.  So what is the solution?

Just before the end of March, I had a fascinating conversation with someone who told me a story about a housing association. They had worked with him to choose between their existing model of supporting people, entirely deficit based and limited in its impact, and a new more exciting advantaged-thinking approach that would achieve thriving outcomes. After long deliberation, understanding all the facts, they chose to stick with the current system.  They chose ‘not to be’.

It was if, we pondered, the organisation had behaved like an addict. We know we shouldn’t, but ‘we can’t stop the deficit’.  (And if anyone is reading this looking for an idea to jazz up a Village People hit, that was it.)

Addicted to disadvantage.

It felt like a revelation. We are so used to thinking and working in disadvantages, nothing is going to just open us up to change things on the strength of a convincing argument.  It’s actually experiential-based policy that brings about lasting personal and social change.

Working with Open talent over the last 3, I’ve come across 4 main types of ‘addicted’ behaviours.

1)      ‘We’re already doing it’ – Those who are in such self-denial that they are unable to ‘come clean’ and face up to the prevailing deficit-based assessment, support, outcome and HR models that require reshaping. Typically, they will claim to already be ‘opening talent’, and will just ask for the funds to continue what they already do.

2)      ‘You’re thinking what we’re thinking’ – Those who have turned self-denial into a sophisticated form of disadvantaged double-speak, who will use all the positive rhetoric of aspiration but will preface that with a belief that ‘Britain is Broken’ and young people are best described under the usual disadvantaging stereotypes. Typically, their ‘new’ solution will actually just replicate existing models that don’t work. This lack of authenticity is often seen in politicians, policy makers, and some of the more forward thinking charities who have adopted the language of positive ‘being’ but have not confronted the responsibility ‘to be’ a true advantaged thinker.

3)      ‘Give it to me, just let me do it’ – Those who want a quick fix solution and believe that change is just a project that you do and deliver rather than a set of behaviours and beliefs that you live. Open talent and advantaged thinking are not 1 page bullet points you put into a policy and move on with.  You have to become the change you believe in.

4)      ‘Disadvantaged thinking works for me’ – Those often living in communication and fundraising departments, and organisations who have lost their soul, for whom disadvantaged thinking is a way of creating co-dependent relationships. They perpetuate disadvantage through the images and language of impoverished stereotypes that solicit funds and public support to keep the whole sham going on and on.  It’s a virtuous circle without any virtue in it.   They cheapen charity to the shake of a tin.

Over the year ahead, The Foyer Federation is working with those who want to break out from such addictions through a process of experiential learning together, to create a community of practice to shape and lead a more advantaged thinking world. Where ever you are in the spectrum of to be or not to be, I urge you to join us in the movement for justice and change.

Everyday, we can live this choice: to leave something behind, to let go of a disadvantaged approach, and to grow something ahead, to build an advantaged jigsaw piece in our larger world.

Young people often remind me of the park I saw when I was 6. Places full of talent, with the gates artificially closed. Well, we are taking notice to open them.

The little things in life

Today I was at Swindon Foyer to run an Inspire session with some foyers in the south west region.

I have fond memories of Swindon for a number of reasons. It was the first Foyer I visited on my own when I joined the Federation over 10 years ago. I attended a regional meeting, which kicked off with an hour onslaught against the Federation’s then early proposals to work with the LSC. I remember walking out to lunch slightly dazed by the language, only to be quickly reassured by the genuine warmth and friendliness of everyone over sandwiches. ‘We needed to let off some steam,’ someone remarked. It was a valuable lesson.

Swindon was also one of the first pilots of our Working Assets programme to really embed the approach into their practice, producing some excellent work that has sustained in the Foyer’s ethos. It was lovely to hear one of their staff compare Open Talent with Working Assets – after all, the asset-based approach was an early seed in our own onslaught against ‘disadvantaged thinking’. We’ve learnt to turn up the volume more and  dance with greater freedom.

The highlight of the Inspire day was when two members of staff, completing an exercise in the sunshine, were joined unexpectedly by a group of young people. They quickly pitched in and were soon bouncing off their ideas to develop the Foyer’s talents, the staff cleverly facilitating the exchange around the young people taking responsibility for the actions and not just the suggestions. 

This is what makes good Foyers great: the ability to work informally with young people, engaging them in the moment, with a structure in the ongoing development/ support plan to reflect on the learning. It reminded me of being a teenager in the summer holidays, getting involved with my mum in the kitchen or garden, discussing random observations that all built up my understanding of myself and the world. The little things we take for granted in our family lives, the experiences we learn from, often get forgotten about in other institutions.   Such daily opportunities and experiences to ‘do’ things are vital for Foyers to keep on engaging and enabling young people.

It’s a strange world, when we have to fight for the right to work with young people in such ways, counter to the endless systems and structures that work against what, in our hearts, we know best. This is the truth of advantaged thinking: it's all common sense, we've just lost our way to see more clearly and fight for what we believe in.

A stake in ourselves

Tonight, I read about Cameron’s latest attempts to explain last year’s riots: ‘a mass outbreak of lawlessness … rather than there being any profound social unrest’. 

Just as so-called 'Broken Britain' must be a mass outbreak of brokenness, not requiring any real social justice.  

I can imagine Cameron coming off the phone during his holiday last year to tell his wife that, while they would have to suffer the inconvenience of heading back to London early, there was nothing to panic about; ‘just a mass outbreak of lawlessness, dear, but no profound social unrest’.

The Tory doth protest too much.  The Government has a big stake in making sure the riots are seen through the lens of traditional lawlessness, where the focus of responsibility must always be on the perpetrator and not the society which might have helped shaped behaviour and circumstances. It’s easier for us to be exonerated, so we can continue to blame the stereotypes that define our limited social discourse.   Just as it is easier for us to be believe in good and evil, so we don’t have to deal  with the complexities of what makes us human.

In recent months, the stake in society catchphrase has been used by the Foyer Federation to talk about the importance of giving young people ‘something to lose’ as part of their deal to invest in a positive transition into adulthood.  I believe all this, it's a useful conversation, but today I started thinking about something else: the stakes we as a society have in things which are not so noble to keep hold of. The stake we have in a prison system that locks up people with higher rates of mental health challenges and lower rates of literacy; the stake we have in an employability system which does not reward according to the social value of what we do; the stake some charities have in actually changing nothing.

Think about the concept of disadvantaged thinking. There are teams of skilled marketing staff and fundraisers who are paid to keep on disadvantaged thinking, because they have a stake in a system which rewards them with the donations they need to pay their salary and keep the engine rooms in the charity cruise ship going. Such organisations often have too much at stake to wish to reform. They will use whatever set of tools are available to prove the impact of what they do, so we can all keep on helping people to cope with disadvantage and blame those who can't cope.  The status quo - it's not just a rock band of questionable talent, but a challenge to us all.

Sometimes a stake in too much society, in too much of the system, is a stake in the ground. We get locked into mortgages, jobs, beliefs, thoughts, which prevent us from evolving and questioning the injustices that define our world.

At worse, we sometimes pluck a few individuals from the so called ‘underclass’ to offer them a stake in our better world, so they can become more like us – so they can have the same stake in turning a blind eye. And we even turn this into entertainment, through reality TV shows and singing competitions.

I say all this, because I wonder if there is a different type of stake we need to focus on. 

Someone reminded me today that many successful entrepreneurs do not have much of a stake in things when they innovate, which enables them to think and do differently. I’m not suggesting, in the case of the young people the Foyer Federation work with, that having limited wealth, opportunity, and social networks is a good thing. No. But we may be underestimating the assets young people do have through their experiences, and the potential they and we have to use those experiences to create social good. 

It’s not just all about a stake in society.  We also need to create a stake in ourselves. We need to find and use the advantages we possess. I think those advantages might be far more reaching in impact – far more profound an unrest in a positive way - than society has learnt to value, or allowed us to realise.

The Dissophrenics

I attended a ‘Funding the Future’ conference this week at Westminster Hall.  It’s not often I get the chance to sit in one place for a whole day and listen to over 10 speakers talking about funding in the current climate.  As the day progressed, it started to dawn on me just how deep disadvantaged thinking goes.   Speaker after speaker offered optimistic, positive, strengths-based, innovative ‘we must do things different’ visions of the world, whilst often completely undermining those aspirations by starting from an entirely deficit-based stereotype of the issues. 

It reminds me of the wonderful line from Consolidated’s excellent ‘Business of Punishment’ album– ‘They must remain sick, so we can continue to treat them.’ 

Britain must be broken, the disadvantaged must be in vulnerable, criminal and at risk stereotypes, money must be impossible to find, so we can continue to avoid doing those things differently that we really need to – such as reforming the prison system, changing the contracting environment, replacing the support models that don’t work, reforming Job Centre Minus, overturning the waste in lives now that will turn into the toxic debts of tomorrow, etc etc.

With one or two notable exceptions, what was being witnessed on stage was the birth of the ‘diss-ophrenics’ – a schizophrenia in Government, in organisations and individuals, by which we talk about making a difference and investing in solutions, at the same time as keeping the status quo of disadvantaged thinking and problems in place.  It’s a bit like the new liberal man of the 90’s – laughing at the same sexist jokes, but under the veneer of  a so-called sophisticated postmodern irony.

‘Let’s do things differently, but let’s not think differently about what we want to do things differently about and for.’

‘Let’s face up to the fact that our economy is in deficit, by focusing on the deficit approaches that our economy can increasingly ill afford.’

‘Let’s create more sophisticated outcomes metrics and investment systems to evidence our own delusions and limitations that suggest any of this really works.’

Come the election, we'll be told that choco ration is going up. 

The point is this: unless we stop beginning every thought with ‘deficit, problem and disadvantage’, then every solution we come up with in response is inevitably constrained by our field of perspective on and within the problem and the disadvantage.  We need to stand outside of our own minds, see the world around us through fresh eyes, with humanity, opportunity, and care, and ask: what future do we want to fund?

You’ll be happy to know that there is a cure for diss-ophrenia.  Treatment is on offer for officials, fundraisers, funders, and others, who need urgent help to advantage their thinking.  Call the Foyer Federation now - ask to invest in the future.

Getting the message right

This is what the Chartered Institute of Housing press release (below) made of my speech from Thursday. I try to take after the Andy Warhol approach to these things – measure the size of the article rather than get too hung up on the words. Though I thought it was ok.

Walking back to the station afterwards, I was thinking how we ought to talk more with the brands in the streets, where advantaged thinking is used to sell less significant things far more effectively than we manage to promote the importance of investing in young people. This came back to haunt me at the weekend, passing through a shopping mall in East London.  A poster caught the corner of my eye because I could see it had a famous youth charity's logo in it.  Something about young people, at risk, the future, etc. The images didn’t make me stop walking.  I felt disappointed, let down. If it was selling fruit and veg, I wouldn’t have made a note to shop there. 

Where is the Saatchi and Saatchi for young people?  They famously said 'Labour isn’t working' back in 79. Well, now it’s Charity that isn't working. Maybe we should employ some of the 1 in 5 we are  meant to be representing so we can get the message right….

CiH press release – 8/3/12

Colin Falconer, director of innovation at the Foyer Federation, today told housing professionals they need to change the way they portray young people in society.

 Speaking at our South East Conference, Colin told delegates housing providers have a crucial role to play in developing the advantages young people need to make a successful transition into adulthood.

 He said: “Resources in the sector are sometimes too focused on supporting needs, deficits and problems, rather than investing in young people's goals, assets and potential.

“The sector is sometimes more comfortable at identifying and protecting against risks than it is in spotting and nurturing ability.”

He cited the case of young people who did not get involved in last August’s riots because they felt they had a stake in the community in which they lived.

Adding: “It is particularly important we invest in young people and their talents now because high youth unemployment and wider economic challenges mean that we cannot afford to maintain the status quo.

“Our approach has to change from the 'disadvantaged thinking' of the past to adopt the 'advantaged thinking' that enables other sectors and individuals to thrive.

 “Such a breakthrough would ensure that all the places, people and opportunities that can be offered through housing associations are harnessed on developing young people's talents through more enterprising environments.”

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