Conversations — False Parameters

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A fragment of a contact sheet for C.Ackerman’s Les Années 80, 1983. © Foundation Chantal Ackerman, image courtesy BOZAR Centre For Fine Arts Brussels

Working alongside others, we prod, explore and deconsecrate the sacred cows of creating social change with the hope of stirring the imagination and helping us to think afresh about complex and entangled challenges.

In the name of Public Good - a line of questioning about what exactly is the/a public good, who gets to say they are working on it, for whom, where does legitimacy come from, and what is good vs not good? Extending the series - In the Name of Public Good - bringing in Psychedelics, Artificial Intelligence and the Law

The Inaugural Thinkers in Residence - Exaptation, Dysphoria, the Strange and the Familiar

Love Notes - conversations to help us on this journey

Thinkers in Residence

I was a sponge

Diane Drubay

Founder We Are Museums, Founder Blueshift

In the name of public good

What's the embedded ethics there? Is it social liberalism? Is it harsh neoliberalism? Is it some kind of weird mixture of the two?
Read on Substack

Anna Grant

Demos Helsinki

In the name of public good

There is an unbelievable confusion, conceptual confusion about the Common Good, common goods, public good, public goods and the general will...
Read on Substack

Antonio Casado

University of the Basque Country

In the name of public good

There's something more in the lore and the relationships in between people. That is important...
Read on Substack

Michelle Baldwin

Community Foundations of Canada and Faculty Governance Leadership Ethics, Huron University College

In the name of public good

Organisational structure is interesting to me. Why would we model it after the corporate world? (...) Form drives behaviour. we need to support relational infrastrusture

Tracey Robertson

Ontario Trillium Foundation

Thinkers in Residence

Between words and across words and underneath words

Dave King

Founder and CEO of Exaptive

Thinkers in Residence

A landscape I didn't quite understand

Annesophie Norn

Museums for United Nations (UN Live)

Thinkers in Residence

A little further into the water

Nick Meehan

VVSSL, Institute for Sound and Music

Thinkers in Residence

Everything was strange

Lisa Robinson

BBC Media Action

Thinkers in Residence

If you can't be dysporic, there's no way you can be fully engaged in the process

Terri Gilbert

Scientific Educator

Thinkers in Residence

The more you put into, the more you got out of it

Kalle Hellzén

180 Amsterdam / Artist & Designer

Thinkers in Residence

The conversation is not over...being with people you don't know but who you feel quite quickly related to, without too many barriers but with enough differences to challenge each other, was a very satysfying process. It can feel lonely in a world where only a few people are working on very complex, interrelated proplems and in this group we were meeting with peers.

Olivier Bréchard

Learning Planet Institute

In the name of public good

In my mind and when I hear public good, it's one of those dystopian terms. I don't think it's necessarily cynical, but I do think it's dangerous. my personal mission or goal is to help people stay human in the hypertech world and that's important and so is critical thinking, abstract thinking - pure imagination. Do we have spaces where people are invited and inspired and where they desire to wander, to be in awe, literally to wonder, to be “wonder-full”?

Bria Clemmons

Global Sports Attorney

In the name of public good

I believe that public means that we need to feel it, that it's also ours, and that we have a say in it. I find for our well being and for dealing with the public good, we have to have rich relationships. And then the other one that we need to take into account is the limit of the environment and our planet. By going out away from our computers and getting to know our context, connecting to others, we are producing more public good.(...) To see the value of those activities. It would seem like losing time. So I feel like we need to really make a big shift in our societies.

Ione Ardaiz Osacar

Arantzazulab

In the name of public good

Bringing in the right psychological space is going to be key going forward, to making sure that that we've all really got this space for psychological safety, belonging and motivation and, you know, there are so many messed up people, and we're just so lonely and so confused, including young people, we've got to somehow bring back that sense of community for and say: ‘See: this is your landscape, this is your belonging, this is where you get your local food from’. A lot of it comes back to land - and land ownership, land management. There's so little creativity and thinking about how could we lock land into the public good, rather than leave it to the whims of the market. It comes back to the collective and understanding that we're going to have to think beyond our private realm. I go out into the public realm and therefore I give something that is for others’ good, suspending the thinking about just ourselves and go out and actually give.

Sara Prosser

Bioregional Weaving Ireland

Love and Policy. Letters.

Of course, when we extend beyond ourselves, we are confronted with chaos. It is important to recognise that chaos is just what it is. We just have to find our own way to our won effective presence as part of it, so that entry into chaos is a choice and an opportunity to make a difference. Never underestimate the power of the presence of your full aliveness and how you can be the agent of cultural richness.

Judy Ling Wong CBE

Black Environment Network