Simon Nielsen 5/24/22 Simon Nielsen 5/24/22

We Gave Up Planning The Old Way

“This project has ended up looking nothing like a written plan would’ve looked. That stodgy plan would’ve tied our hands and not allowed for changes midstream. It would’ve died by committee.“ Deb Brown, small town advocate and community activator, tells the story of a community project taking off before planning could bring it down.

By Deb Brown and SaveYour.Town

My small town hosted an international photojournalist, Brendan Hoffman, in residency at the local paper.

A town of 8,000 people managed to take a 6 week free class on Using Photography to Tell Your Stories, view an exhibition of War In Ukraine, and personally visit with the photographer and share ideas for stories in the community.

The Old Way

I bet you believe we had a ton of meetings, had to fund raise to bring this man in from the Ukraine and host him for two months, and spend lots of money on exhibition space and marketing as well. It would be the same ten people who would write the plan, and there would be no room for change in the plan.

If we’d written a formal plan, that is exactly what would’ve happened. We would’ve had to reach out to the city officials to get permission to bring him to town. The meetings would’ve taken a year to figure how to fund raise, where to put him, what location could the exhibit be at, how would we help pay him to be in residency at the paper, and how to get the exhibit shipped here from another country. We would’ve needed committees: marketing, advertising, housing, fundraising, location and more.

That would’ve been the old way to plan for this kind of a big deal. By the time everything had been handled, many folks would’ve dropped out and been frustrated. Too much red tape.

The Idea Friendly Way

However, that’s not how we did it. We used the Idea Friendly Method.

Brendan Hoffman and I had stayed in touch via email since 2013. He visited once in 2015 and we had organized a photo walk that time. He told me he wanted to come back, and he’d like to have a residency at the paper.

I pulled my crowd together. The editor at the newspaper, the president of the adult education workshops group, and me. We knew this would be a great opportunity for our town. How could we make it happen? Grants, donations, marketing. The ideas began to flow.

We needed Brendan to help us Build Connections. He had applied for two grants that he received, and he shared another one we could apply to. He also wanted to teach a 6 week course on using photography to tell your story. These conversations happened mostly online via email, Facebook messenger and texting. He lives in Ukraine and he can’t just stop over! It was a bit chaotic, but we figured it out.

Then we took small steps. We didn’t need to get permission from the city. Often you think you do, but just as often you really don’t. The Freeman Journal newspaper wrote the Facebook Journalism Grant request and they got it! We added an Embedded Community Experience to the project to do more outreach to minorities and youth. Legacy Learning Boone River Valley (adult education) created the photography workshop. They spread the word and over 30 people showed up for that.

Once Brendan was here, our crowd thought it would be nice to add an exhibition of his work. There was grant money, and several of us chipped in to get his work shipped here. A friend of ours had an empty storefront he let us use for one week. All we had to do was ask him. We’re a small town! Asking often works.

The exhibition was well attended by locals, and out of towners. The week before the exhibition was scheduled to open, we decided we should have an Opening Reception. Volunteers were called and cookies were made! A local church gave us chairs to use. Hy-Vee donated wine. Mornin’ Glory donated coffee. It was a nice addition to the first night of the exhibit. In fact it was a lot of fun and people learned about Ukraine and war with Russia in a manner better than any lecture.

The last week, we decided to do a closing reception too! Again, folks had ideas, and just donated their time, gifts and products. All of us used local ways to get the word out, and social media and the newspaper. Because the first reception was talked about, the ending reception was great too.

This project has ended up looking nothing like a written plan would’ve looked. That stodgy plan would’ve tied our hands and not allowed for changes midstream. It would’ve died by committee.

The biggest takeaway is we did write a plan. AFTER the event was over.

We shared the steps we all took, we were able to talk about what worked well and what didn’t work at all. It was no longer a wish that we could do this. It was a fact we completed it. This is a plan that others can look at, learn from and try something on their own knowing that it will involve more people taking small meaningful steps. It will be chaotic, and that’s ok. And it’s more fun to create good things on the fly!

Simon Nielsen 4/20/22 Simon Nielsen 4/20/22

Profound Play - Why Play, Not Hard Work, Is The Key To Creating A Better World

“This essay attempts to debunk a common myth: creating a better world requires hard work. It argues that the most effective way to change our world is through play. Not just any kind of play – profound play. As you are about to discover, the great tragedy in our culture is that we have lost sight of the enormous, creative, transformative power of play. We have trivialized it as something we outgrow as we transition from childhood into adulthood.” David Engwicht, CEO of Creative Communities International.

By David Engwicht, CEO of Creative Communities International

The evolutionary drive to play

Brian La Doone watched in horror as a very hungry polar bear lumbered towards Hudson, his sled dog chained to a post. It was November and the polar bear had not eaten for months. Hudson was an instant dinner served on a platter.

But Hudson did not panic or try to escape. Instead he behaved as if he wanted to play by bowing and wagging his tail. The bear responded to the invite, and the pair had a playful romp in the snow. After fifteen minutes the bear lumbered off.

The next day the bear returned about the same time for another frolic with his new friend. On the third day, Brian La Doone’s workmates gathered to watch the play-date. The play dates continued for a week, by which time the ice had thickened enough for the bear to go hunting for a seal.

Stuart Brown, in his book Play (Scribe 2010), asks the question, why was play more important to this bear than a meal?

Scientists have become intrigued about play in the animal kingdom, and the role it plays in the evolutionary process. Adult ravens have been seen sliding down a snowy slope on their backs, hopping up, flying to the top, then sliding down again. Bison have been observed running onto a frozen lake, and skating along on all fours while trumpeting wildly. Octopuses play. It even appears that ants play. If play is just ‘for fun’ and serves no useful purpose why is it so widespread in nature? If it is a non-productive activity (a waste of energy), why has it not been eliminated by the evolutionary process that only rewards characteristics that give an organism a competitive advantage? Surely animals that are playing are an easier target for a predator than those giving serious attention to their environment? Wouldn’t polar bears that eat sled dogs have a better chance of survival than those that choose to play with them?

To find an answer to this question, Dr. Stuart Brown spent some time with Bob Fagen, an expert in animal play. For fifteen years Bob Fagen had been studying the behaviour of grizzly bears in Alaska. Dr. Brown found himself thirty feet up an old cypress tree with Fagen watching grizzly bears at play. Fagen explained that what he had documented after years of observation was that ‘the bears that played the most were the ones that survived best’. He explained why, ‘In a world continuously presenting unique challenges and ambiguity, play prepares these bears for an evolving planet.’ In other words, play is not just for fun. It builds resilience and increases the chances of survivability. So evolution rewards the animals that play the hardest.

In fact, play does more than merely improve the chances of surviving. It builds bigger brains. Scientists now understand that when we play, we create new networks in our brain. Rats in a play-rich environment grow bigger brains than rats deprived of opportunities to play. Play makes us smarter. Dr. Brown says that when kittens stage mock battles with each other they ‘are learning what Daniel Goleman calls emotional intelligence – the ability to perceive others’ emotional state and to adopt an appropriate response’. Play stimulates the development of the brain’s frontal cortex, the part of our brain responsible for cognition – which entails sorting relevant information from irrelevant information, monitoring our thoughts and feelings and planning for the future.

Play allows us to experiment with the future, to test out potential scenarios in a non-threatening, non-critical environment. Which is why in nature the strongest players are the strongest survivors. In his book, Deep Survival (W. W. Norton & Company, 2017), Laurence Gonzales, looks at why some people survive while others perish in a life and death situation. One of his surprising findings is that the adults who have forgotten how to play are the first to perish.

They have lost the flexibility to play with potential scenarios and solutions in their head. Their thinking has become rigid, and they die.

At the most fundamental level, without play we have no capacity to imagine and plan for a future that is different to today. It is literally how the child we once were built the adult that we are now. In play we created thousands of potential futures, then stepped into those that most appealed to us. Play, not hard work, is how our whole civilization was built. Without the ability to create potential futures in our brain, there would be nothing to build. Changing our destiny, or the destiny of our culture, requires that we relearn how to play again. Hard work will simply not do it.

The great demise of play

It is a biological fact that the brain of a child is different to the brain of an adult. In fact the human brain is still building itself up till our late teens. This period of ‘biological immaturity’ is universal. But the underlying story we tell about this period changes dramatically from one era to another, from one culture to another, and even between different classes in society.

However, the scientific and industrial revolutions dramatically changed the underlying story we tell about the meaning of childhood, because they altered the underlying story we tell about the meaning of adulthood. For thousands of years people had defined their identity by their relationships - the tribe to which they belonged, their family of origin, and the location where they lived. The first question you would ask a person in order to establish their identity was, ‘What tribe do you belong to?’ But the scientific and industrial revolution changed this. We began viewing the universe, including ourselves, in machine terms. People began to define their identity in terms of what they produced as a productive ‘machine’ in society. The first question to establish a person’s identity became, ‘What work do you do?’ Or decoded, ‘As a productive machine, what products roll off the end of your production line?’

This change in conception of identity for adults had significant impacts on how adults viewed the identity of children. When identity was tied to a person’s relationship to place and people, children were able to share this adult sense of identity. Children were ‘little adults growing into big adults’ sharing the same tribe and the same connection to locality as the big adults. But when adult identity became tied to what the adult produced as a productive machine, children were unable to share this new adult identity (well certainly not after child labour laws banned children from the workforce). A new way of conceiving of childhood needed to be found. There are many writers who argue that there was no concept of childhood prior to the scientific and industrial revolutions. Whether this is correct or not is immaterial. What is important is that after the industrial revolution, the concept of childhood carried within it the notion that this is a period which is very distinct and of an entirely different nature to adulthood. Childhood was now conceived as an apprenticeship for adulthood. To be grown up meant to shed our childhood as one sheds clothes that are outgrown. This journey to adulthood is a linear journey. Children work their way through grades at school, learning the skills needed to be a productive ‘machine’. Along the way adults tell the children to ‘grow up’ and ‘stop playing around’. And the adults ask the children over and over, ‘What do you want to do when you grow up (become a productive ‘machine’)?’

This viewing of our identity through the machine-model prism not only changed the way we view childhood, it created an artificial distinction between work and play. The high value we place on work – based in the good old Protestant work ethic – means that we view the real work in our society as being done by adults. Yet children are perhaps doing the most serious and creative work of anyone. They are in the process of inventing and creating a sophisticated, mature, rational adult – and they are doing this important work through dream, play and fantasy. The distinction between work and play is therefore totally arbitrary. In fact, (as I will explain later) what is play for one person is work for another and what is work for one person is play for another.

Because our culture values ‘serious work’ over play and sees serious work as belonging to adulthood, we have totally undervalued ‘serious play’ and therefore downgraded the importance of childhood.

If a society values the work of adults over the play of children, and sees these as separate worlds, then this will manifest itself in the way space is arranged in our towns and cities. Segregated and specialized areas will be created for children’s play. Play and the activity of children will not be integrated into adult space and therefore child’s play will not intersect with the serious activities of the adult world. Traditionally, the space where children’s play and the adult world intersected was the street. But in our culture the street has become the exclusive province of ‘productive adults’ in machines that improve the adult’s efficiency. Instead of the street being the premier play space for children, we have created segregated and specialised play grounds. This segregation of the child’s world from the adult world in our urban form is no accident. It is a reflection of our deep-seated stories about childhood, and the trivialising of play.

What is work and what is play?

What is work for one person can be play for another. For a child, washing up may be a game while for an adult it is work. So whether an activity is play or work is determined by our mental attitude, not by the nature of the activity. At any moment each of us has the power to transform play into work… or work into play. Even the most serious work, like making a better world, can be turned into play. As we shall see, ultimately play is the only way to make a better world.

Play is transformed into work when we take a game, or our role in that game, too seriously. Work is play stripped of its playfulness. Play can also become work if we are forced into playing a game we do not want to play. (Technically this is slavery, not work.) But as we shall explore shortly, even slavery can be transformed into a game. Many a slave feigned acceptance of their humiliations, playing a role so the master could live under the illusion that it was he that was in charge. A favorite proverb of the Jamaican slaves was, ‘Play fool, to catch wise’.

It is the contention of this short book that creating a better world, in fact all of life, is meant to be a playful game. Activities only become work (or in many cases slavery) when we strip them of their playful element. A common element of both work and slavery is a feeling of entrapment and loss of freedom. In play you can be whatever you want to be, but in work or slavery you are locked into a single role and you feel forced to play out this role.

Most social activism is a revolt against ‘the system’ that demands the game be played according to certain rules – rules that we find unjust or unfair. Ironically, these social activists take on a stereo-typical role as people ‘working for change’. They often become just as trapped in their particular role of ‘social activist’ as those playing roles in the ‘establishment game’. These social activists allow themselves to become enslaved to the rules of the working-for-change game. They lose sight of the fact that the very essence of freedom is the ability to transcend the rules of the game simply by starting to play a different game. The entire universe would be enslaved to blind determinism if it were not for play.

Real change happens automatically when we change the rules of the game, our role in that game, or simply invent a new game.

Now many people will have great difficulty with this notion that all of life is really a game. But being a ‘rational adult’ is just a role we have invented, and that we inhabit from time to time (or for some, a majority of the time). It is a game that is governed by a different set of rules than when we play other roles, such as jester, or wise old elder, or lover, or playful child. Even though our role as ‘rational adult’ seems more serious than some of our other roles, at its core it is still just a role in a game.

Whether you are wrestling with difficulties in a relationship, or a problem in the workplace, or a thorny social issue, if it has become ‘hard work’, the most transformative thing you can do is change your relationship to the situation by ceasing to see it as ‘work’ and viewing it as a ‘game’.

We are now going to look at six types of play: ritual play, role play, recreational play, letting-off-steam play, freedom play, and escapist play. These categories overlap, blur and merge and are not an exhaustive list. But what we are going to look at is how each of these types of play can be tapped into by the adult who wants to develop their skills in ‘profound play’ – the ability to combine play with wisdom.

Ritual play

One of the earliest types of play that we humans engage in is ritual play, for example the game of peek-a-boo where the adults pretends to hide behind their hands then reveal their face and says ‘boo’. Part of the nature of this game is repetition. It won’t work if you only do it once. The game is an early form of ritual play.

Why does the child laugh the longer this game goes on? In the first few months of life, this child endured a recurring painful experience: the mother they depended on for their very life would periodically disappear. This terror would subside when their mother returned, only to be rekindled when the mother left yet again. But through the game of peek-a-boo the child learns a very valuable lesson: my mother is always there, even when I can’t see her. This brings a certain comfort to the child to know that the person they depend on for life will always return. The ‘disappearing’ and ‘returning’ is ritualized into a game, and through the game the child learns to control their fears. When the parent puts their face behind their hands, tension rises in the child, for this part of the ritual reminds them of the fear the feel each time the parent disappears in reality. The pulling away of the hands brings the parent back, and releases the tension. This release of tension is reinforced by the parent pretending to give the child a fright by going ‘boo’. This ritual raising and releasing of tension is pleasurable and results in laughter. Part of the pleasure is also the paradox in this game: in play, the parent is not there; in reality, they are. The other paradox is that the parent pretends to frighten the child even though the child knows full well what happens next.

The entire rise of human culture is built on ritual. Even before we humans had a language to express our emotions and fears, we had rituals. Rituals to celebrate the changing of seasons, rituals to deal with life and death. Haunted by our dreams and the seeming chaos of the world around us, we were driven to create meaning as a way of allaying our fears. Like the game of peek-a-boo, these rituals gave meaning to the universe and provided a sense of comfort. The meaning-making inherent in rituals eventually gave rise to religion, the arts, civilization, and the sciences.

One of the endearing features of children is their ability to invent rituals, then let go of them once they have outlived their purpose. There is a time we stop playing peek-a-boo and move onto some other form of ritualized play. When I talk of ‘rituals’ I am not just talking about religious or spiritual rituals. Almost all of life is ritualized play. Meeting your family for lunch every Sunday is a form of ritual play. So is watching the footy every Saturday night, or buying the latest tech gadget. These rituals, and the rules related to these rituals, form the ‘culture’ of a civilization, community, workplace or household. Often these culturally-specific rituals have evolved over a long time, and those who want to get ahead ‘play by the rules’ inherent in the ritual.

However, much of the ritual in our culture has outgrown its usefulness. Yet as a culture and society we find it much more difficult to give up rituals that have outgrown their usefulness than we did as children. One reason ‘rational’ adults find it much harder to let go of their rituals is because the adult builds a rational reason for why they play the game. (As an adult it is compulsory to have a reason for your rituals.) The adult legitimizes their rituals with intellectual constructs which continue supporting the ritual long after it has served its useful purpose. Kids are therefore much more ‘rational’ about their rituals than adults. Or to put it another way, adult ritual is marked by a high degree of irrationality.

In the past, social change agents have thought that the only way you get a society to change its outdated ritual games is to first dismantle the intellectual constructs that support the ritual.

What these change agents failed to recognize is that the rituals are first and foremost an act of ‘meaning making’. Rituals are invented to give meaning to a chaotic universe, to anchor the soul. The attachment to the ritual game (such as owning a gun in the USA) is not intellectual but emotional. It is therefore virtually impossible to convince people to change their rituals by attacking the intellectual constructs used to justify the ritual. If we do not offer them a more meaningful ritual to replace the old, we are simply cutting them loose on a dark and turbulent sea.

Deep social change can only take place if change agents understand the role of ritual in imparting a sense of meaning. The job of the social-change agent is to give people the confidence to let go of their outdated rituals and to invent more meaningful rituals. This is not an intellectual process. The child lets go of their outdated rituals because they have an implicit belief in their creative abilities to invent new games and rituals.

Profound play understands that one way to produce significant social and cultural change is to introduce new rituals that paradoxically both anchor the soul yet at the same time set it free on a new voyage of discovery. Profound play does not overtly attack the rationality of current rituals nor the intellectual constructs that supports them. It simply offers the child in all of us a ‘new toy’. (Being ‘rational’ adults, we will always find a post hoc rationalization as to why we decided to play the new game!)

Role play

When most people think of role play they think of a theatre technique often used in small group work and therapy. However, this is a formalized version of role-play. Role-play is common across much of the animal kingdom. Baby cubs stage mock battles, honing their hunting skills for when they become independent and need these skills in the ‘real’ world. For children, playing shop, fire chief or baker is a way of trying on potential future roles like play clothes and seeing which ones fit best. Through role-play, children invent the rational adult they are yet to become.

There is no reason why tapping the creative power of role-play should stop when we reach adulthood. Through role-play we can experiment with roles we would like to play in the tomorrow we are creating together. In fact, role-play is the only way we have of visiting the future.

Role play has incredible creative power, and is a major tool in what I call profound play. Role play delivers at least four major benefits.

Benefit 1: Return of Innocence

When we play a role, we forget for a moment who we are and we are ‘born anew’ as someone different. This is the state of innocence which is fundamental to the creative abilities of children. Their mind is not cluttered with ready-made answers. They don’t need to learn how to ‘think outside the box’.

There is no ‘box’ to think outside – not yet anyway.

In 1987 I attended a public meeting to discuss plans to ‘upgrade’ a major road through my neighbourhood in Brisbane, Australia. I left the meeting a committee member of Citizens Against Route Twenty (CART). A week later I found myself media spokesperson, with no previous experience in community activism; no formal education; totally ignorant about traffic and urban planning; and utterly politically naive.

Full of incredible optimism, I started my new job with a six-hour door-knock along the proposed route. Every door I knocked on I got the same message: ‘Once they (the Bjelke Peterson Government) have decided to do something, there is nothing you are going to do to change it.’ I was stunned by this sense of resignation and powerlessness. Even our committee didn’t believe we could win. ‘We will give them a good fight,’ I was told, ‘but we can’t win.’ I was probably the only one in our entire community naive enough to believe we could win.

The reason for this pessimism was that the Bjelke Peterson Government had been in power for over 20 years and ruled via a giant gerrymander. They could do what they liked in the big cities because they only relied on the country vote to stay in power.

I had no idea what to do. Out of sheer desperation I suggested to the committee that we spend a half-day pretending we had won. I suggested we make up stories about how we won. That day we invented a whole lot of stories. One seemed more pregnant with possibilities than the others, so we decided to build our campaign strategy on this story.

Three years later we won, and it happened largely according to the plot framework of the story that we had created three years earlier when we played ‘lets pretend’.

Prior to playing ‘lets pretend’, our minds were shackled by the perceived wisdom that our community was powerless to change any decision made by the Bjelke Peterson government. By pretending we were victors, and seriously playing the role, we cleared the dominant story from the slate of our minds.

Part of ‘profound play’ is a robust intellectual understanding of issues. Paradoxically, it is impossible to gain this robust intellectual understanding without first ‘forgetting’ everything you know and returning to a state of innocence. For example, my second book revolutionized thinking on transport by asking the kinds of questions a kid would ask: ‘But why do we build cities?’ ‘But why do we have a transport system?’ It is only by asking these child-like questions that we can step outside the bounds of current knowledge. By putting ourselves in our child persona, or by putting ourselves in other people’s shoes, we are able to recapture this sense of innocence, but innocence that is informed by reason and wisdom.

Benefit 2: Experiencing of multiple-worlds simultaneously

The most productive regions in nature, from an evolutionary perspective, is ‘marginal t territory’ – the space where eco-systems meet and overlap, for example, tidal mud flats which are neither land or sea, but both. It is here that new life-forms evolve.

I was once asked to chair a meeting in Calgary, Canada, in which a group of residents were in conflict with their city council. So I asked the residents to play the role of city engineer and for the city engineer to play the role of residents. Before starting this role play, I asked the residents to train the city engineer on how to be good residents and I asked the city engineer to train the residents on how to be a good city engineer (Council bureaucrat). We then launched into the role play and the city engineer (now playing the role of resident) got in the face of the residents (now playing the role of city engineer) wagged his finger and yelled, ‘I first approached the city 14 years ago about this problem, and what have you done? Nothing! A big fat nothing…” The whole room erupted in laughter. Within two hours we had an agreed solution to a problem that had festered for fourteen years.

The reason we found a solution so quickly is rather simple. Every resident in Calgary has the potential to become a bureaucrat working for a Council. In a sense they already have a bureaucrat living in their head. And every Council bureaucrat is already a resident. The problem between the residents and bureaucrats had arisen because both had taken their adopted role too seriously. But through the role-play I got them to play two roles simultaneously – in ‘real life’ they may be a resident, but in the role play they were a bureaucrat. This meant that they were experiencing two worlds simultaneously and where these two worlds met was marginal territory, rich in possibilities. The collision of two worlds in a person’s brain always causes a new synthesis – a creative way to handle the tension between the competing worlds. While the world’s are kept separate, there is no chance for this new synthesis.

I often wonder if international peace negotiators take their work too seriously. What would happen in the Israel/Palestine conflict if all those at the table had to role play their ‘enemy’? What about the conflict between Councilors in local government. Imagine this. Prior to a Council meeting beginning, all the little wooden plaques, that sit in front of each Councilor and bear their names, are put in a sack. At the start of the meeting each Councilor has a lucky dip. They place the name they draw out in front of them. Then for the rest of the meeting they must argue from that person’s perspective (including adopting their mannerisms). Imagine how much more productive this would be than each arguing from their entrenched position.

The only way to experience multiple worlds like this is through role play, whether enacted in physical space or in our imagination. Profound play allows multiple worlds to co-exist and overlap, even if this results in conflict.

Benefit 3: Self reflection

Playing roles is not just a method of getting inside other people’s skins. It is a method of getting inside your own skin (or more correctly ‘skins’). Some years ago I went to a counselor deeply perplexed about why, under certain circumstances, I acted ‘out of character’. It was if I could watch myself changing from being warm and charming to acting like a cold rock. The counselor took two empty chairs and told me to imagine that in one sat Charming Charlie (the nice guy) and in the other sat Stonewall (the not so nice guy that seemed to like sabotaging the nice guy). I had to sit on the chairs in turn and conduct a conversation between these two characters. It was only a game. But through this role play I was able to get inside the skin of these two characters who lived inside my head and find out what made each of them tick. I was able to negotiate a ‘peace deal’ that allowed them to coexist in my head without them constantly sabotaging each other.

In a similar way, the culture of any society is driven by deep ‘subterranean psycho dramas’. Just as individuals have a cast of hundreds in their heads, many with contradictory needs and desires, so society has a cast of hundreds in their collective psyche. You cannot understand something like the gun culture in the USA (or any other seemingly irrational behaviour by a whole group of people) without understanding this hidden drama. Often the only way of understanding this is to get inside the skin of the cast members. Until you do, you are dealing only with the surface issues. Through profound play, we can bring these characters out of the murky underworld and get them to play in broad daylight. Through play we can explore new ways for them to relate to each other.

Through profound play, we can bring these characters out of the murky underworld and get them to play in broad daylight.

Benefit 4: Ability to reinvent ourselves

Children can reinvent themselves a hundred times in a single day. One moment they are a stuntman flying a biplane, the next a doctor, the next a cowgirl riding a bucking bull, the next a kangaroo. Yet there comes a point where we feel compelled as emerging adults to choose a very well defined ‘role’. (We are allowed more than one role, but we must project a consistent, singular role to each of the social grouping that we are a part of.) We begin to live under the illusion that these ‘roles’ are ‘the real us’. Worse still, we begin to judge others by the external roles they have chosen. But we are not our roles. We are still the infinitely creative child we once were, now playing a protracted role invented by that child.

Given half a chance, that child would still like to experiment with some new roles.

Recreational play

Recreational play is what most people think of when I talk of adults playing. The concept of recreational play is built on a notion of a clear divide between ‘work’ and ‘play’. Work wears you out, and recreational play ‘recharges the batteries’. Only those who have worked really hard deserve recreational play. Recreational play is where you ‘enjoy the fruits of your labor’.

However, also embedded in this concept of recreational play is the notion that there is an underlying purpose for being refreshed and re-created. It is so you can get back to the serious business of life with renewed vigor. Play is really a maintenance break for the work machine.

This view of play is deeply ingrained in much of Western culture as a result of the Protestant Work Ethic (or Puritan Work Ethic). Luther and the other reformers (particularly Calvin) argued that hard work and frugality were the fruits of godliness – how God judged whether you were a white sheep or a black sheep. Max Weber argued in 1904 that this doctrine laid the foundations for the entire capitalist system. People’s sense of self-worth is tied up in the work they do, and how hard they work.

The split between work and play – and the privileging of work over play – results in a trivializing of play. We have been indoctrinated with the belief that creating a better world is ‘work’ and play is something we are allowed to do when we have earned a rest. ‘Work’, by its very nature, is rational and structured. Yet as we saw when looking at ritual play, the things we must change to create a better world are not rational or based in intellectual constructs. You cannot change something like gun culture in the USA through hard work.

Profound play views work as ‘creative play’. It rejects the notion, implicit in recreational play, that play and work should be separate identities. However, profound play keeps a balance.

Creative play does wear the player out, which means we do need to ‘recreate’ so we can regain our strength to go back to playing hard.

Adventure play

Our first experiences of adventure play were as babies – exploring our bodies and discovering our toes. Then we tried walking. We then graduated to bigger adventures when we walked home from school for the first time. Our childhood play adventures probably included trying to fly by jumping off the roof. Failing at the attempt and ending up in hospital with a broken ankle increased the size of the adventure. We couldn’t wait to tell our friends about the nurses in starched uniforms or the mushy food we were forced to eat. Later in life we climbed mountains, flew in biplanes, fought in wars, or drove fast cars.

There are four elements that distinguish adventure play from other forms of play: experimentation, risk, surprise and outcomes that etch themselves into our memory. An adventure is not an adventure unless it contains some experimentation and risk. Risk is dancing with danger and even death. It is a way of confronting our deepest fears and our eventual mortality and feeling mastery over them. It is paradoxical that those who play with death in their adventures probably take life more seriously that those who think life is too serious for play.

Adventure play can therefore be deadly serious. Ironically, this ‘dancing with death’ in play fills the player with a greater passion for life. It clarifies their vision. What seemed so necessary and essential in the serious work-a-day world suddenly appears as a trivial game. Confronting death and danger in the game moves the player from minor league to playing in the biggest game of all, the game of life.

In adventure play we are not necessarily looking for a successful outcome. The child who tries to fly by jumping off the roof and ends up in hospital is not disappointed because they failed to fly. In fact the pain and suffering they endure becomes an essential part of what constitutes the adventure. The outcome of the attempt to fly is a total surprise, and the nature of the surprise is what becomes etched into their memory as an adventure. In adulthood, this failed experiment will become a story which will be told at dinner parties and passed on to children and grandchildren. It will become a source of enjoyment and pleasure.

Serious world-changers are risk-takers who flirt with ‘failure’.

Profound play sees all of life as an adventure in which one must dance with death. Robert Neale suggests that it is possible for our entire life to become a ‘mature adventure which encompasses our entire existence’. This is the essence of profound play. It is a life-stance which defies ‘reality’. It is totally spontaneous in the way it responds to what unfolds during the journey. Failure or success are not the issue. Playing the game with flair and pizzazz is what matters. And by dancing with death there is an elevated feeling of walking with the divine.

Letting-off-steam play

This is closely related, but not the same as recreational play. In many cultures, festivals and carnivals were used as a way of giving expression to the ‘underbelly’ of the culture. For example, the Venice Carnival ran for over 2 months each year and was a city institution from the 13th century right through to the end of the 18th century. By wearing masks, participants were able to step outside social conventions and express different parts of themselves. At this time homosexuality was punishable by death. Yet during the festival a man wearing a Gnaga mask (a female face) was free to engage in flirting and sexual relations with men because he was only ‘playacting’. Kings, queens and important people from all over the world came to Venice to become anonymous and play out a range of repressed roles, from prostitute to fool.

In modern, Western culture this playing out of repressed roles has been largely limited to us passively and vicariously living out the roles through theatre, film and literature. Letting-off-steam play is essential to the overall well being of both individuals and a society, because it gives expression to those characters living in our head which we have suppressed.

In our culture we have a greater tendency to lock up parts of ourselves than in some other cultures. People who hold contradictory desires are considered to be mentally unwell. They are counseled to make up their mind about what they really want. However, the reality is that all of us have a whole lot of different ‘people’ living in our head, and many of these have conflicting needs and desires, and this is perfectly normal. Some days our introvert is in control and we don’t want to talk to anyone, while other days our extravert is in control and we want to talk to everyone. If we accept the notion that we must have a ‘single, unified identity’ then we are forced to lock-up the parts of ourselves that hold contradictory desires. Now something interesting happens when we do this. The part of ourselves that we lock up becomes increasingly frustrated and angry. It is inevitable that they will eventually erupt – often in an unhealthy way. This can lead to a Jackal and Hyde situation where we flip-flop between unhealthy extremes.

Choosing particular roles to play in ‘real life’ automatically means that other legitimate parts of ourselves can become neglected. In letting-off-steam play, we give expression to these suppressed parts of ourselves. By giving these parts of ourselves and our culture a space in which to express themselves, we stop them from festering in the basement and becoming destructive rogue elements. By making them our friends we draw their sting. And in celebrating them we suddenly find that we have freed ourselves of their negative power.

Profound play uses letting-off-steam play to make friends with the dark underbelly of culture and in making friends, draw the sting of these hidden elements. It also recognizes that our hidden demons come bearing wonderful gifts. In play, all demons are less scary than they are in ‘real’ life.

Freedom play

This kind of play is epitomized by the Black American slaves in the cotton fields singing to ease the burden of their oppression. But this kind of play was more than just ‘pain relief’. It was an expression of inner freedom. They were saying, ‘You can chain my body but not my mind’. All meaningful play contains a deep paradox. The deeper the paradox, the greater the creative potential of that play. In freedom play we see this principle at work. In the real world they were slaves. In their play they were free. This bought to their play something deeply spiritual and creative. In fact their play was a reflection of ‘divine play’; the act of turning chaos into meaning, death into life, garbage into gold. This divine transformation could only happen in play.

In place making I often say to clients or communities, ‘your greatest deficit is potentially your greatest asset’. The worse something is, the more I rejoice, because it has the greatest potential for transformation. An example of this was the Maiki Hill toilets in Paihia. They were so bad some tourist had scrawled on the wall, “Worst toilets I have seen in NZ”. The community could only imagine bulldozing them and starting again. But for just $15,000 we transformed them into a tourist attraction. This approach to ‘deficits’ comes from an inner stance in my mind, rooted in freedom play. It is why I count my lack of education and the beatings I endured as a child as my greatest assets.

This kind of freedom play can liberate us from anything that oppresses us. If our past oppresses us, we can transform our past from something that oppresses us into something that enriches us. If our fear of death and non-being oppresses us, we can transform it something that gives our life color, vibrancy and depth. Profound play is the Jester in the universe who laughs in the face of death because she knows something death does not know. In an ironic twist she will conjure from the darkness something of substance. The joke is on death itself. Death cannot be reasoned with. So the Jester does not try. She simply plays, and laughs. And by laughing in the face of oppression she becomes master of the oppression. Freedom play enlists the ‘enemy’ as the agent of change.

Escapist play

When I talk about play most people think I am talking about either recreational play or what we may call ‘escapist play’ – play that is used to escape responsibilities or as a way of putting-off dealing with some issue or situation. Escapist play can sometimes have a self-destructive element, particularly when it is used as a pain analgesic – a means of escaping one’s internal demons. This kind of escapist play sometimes involves the use of drugs to further dull the pain.

However, not all escapist play is bad. We adults have a tendency to take ourselves, and the roles we play, far too seriously. When seriousness becomes our master, escapist play can restore the balance, and help us realize that even if the game we are playing has serious consequences, at the end of the day, it is still a game.

For the profound player, escapist play can be a time when the mind becomes a blank slate, much like when we go to sleep, and the dreaming part of our brain wanders where it wills. In these moments we may stumble on new cracks in reality which turn out to be doorways into worlds not yet dreamed of. Escapist play can suggest new games that can be taken back into the profound play state. Escapist play can unwittingly unmask inner demons we don’t even know exist.

There is also a great temptation for those involved in profound play (‘serious play’) to start taking themselves as seriously as those involved in ‘serious work’. In all of life there is a temptation to fundamentalism. For some people, ‘profound play’ will become the new religion, replete with new rituals that must be kept unadulterated. To the shallow profound player, escapist play will be condemned as a form of sacrilege. To the deep, profound player, it will be a sacrament. The issue here is balance.

When change become ‘Child’s Play’

The thing about children’s play is that for the most part it does not have a predetermined objective. We said that the miracle of life is that the child we once were invented the rational adult we now are. But when kid’s play shopkeeper or fireman they are not saying to each other: ‘Lets play shopkeepers so I can see if that is what I want to be when I grow up’. In fact the exact opposite is true. In play the child is usually captivated by the eternal now. Past and future are no consideration. This allows their play to unfold in a totally spontaneous fashion.

The play is not constrained by past failures or dictated by fears of the future. And yet out of this seemingly directionless activity they create whole new worlds.

This raises an interesting question: ‘Should play ever have an objective?’ There are some that argue that play that has an objective ceases to be play and becomes work. I disagree. All play has an objective, even if this is simply to have fun or embark on an adventure. However, the objective remains fluid and not static as it is in ‘work’. It responds instantly to the game itself, and can morph into directions that were not dreamed of.

Profound play can also have an objective, such as improving a relationship, or addressing a social issue. However, the objective remains eternally fluid. This requires an incredible faith in our own creative abilities. It is to look the universe in the eye and say: ‘Throw at me what you will, and I will weave it into my story. Throw at me disaster and I will not only weave it into my story, but I will use it to make the story even richer.’ What we adults call work is often an attempt to second-guess the future and to build defences against all possibilities. But this ‘rational’ approach to the future is highly ‘irrational’. We can no more second-guess the future than King Canute could hold back the tide. It is far more rational to reclaim the blind faith we had as children that we could ‘make up the game as we go’. As kids we did not sit in a corner, paralyzed by fear, because we didn’t know if we were capable of playing. We had an implicit trust that as events unfolded, we would be able to fold them into the game as it emerged.

However, reclaiming this child-like quality to play is not a case of just role-playing yourself as a child. It must not be viewed as some mental trick we use when we need to be more creative. ‘Oh, I need to be creative so I’ll slip down into the basement and drag my kid out.’ The child in our head must be integrated seamlessly into the very essence of our adult persona. You and the child must become one. That is profound play.

Some years ago, while I was travelling in Europe, I watched an old lady sitting on the side of her street shelling peas while her grandchild rode a trike in the street. Every now and then the child would come over and shell a few peas. I watched the child playing, and wondered what kind of adult they were in the process of creating through their play. I looked at the old lady. I imagined that being in the presence of the child helped her recall her own childhood, and the road she had travelled. By remembering, she was distilling wisdom from her life’s journey – wisdom she could pass to the child who was just starting their journey. The street is where these two worlds met and merged.

Profound play is where wisdom and play are allowed to share the same neural pathways in our mind. It is the child we once were in the presence of the wise elder we are becoming. This can be a partnership of immense and profound creative power.

Simon Nielsen 12/7/21 Simon Nielsen 12/7/21

Why Storytelling Matters

"My mother had taught me something important. There is no person who is not interesting – if you think that someone is not interesting, then that is your fault not theirs – every single person has a story." Lawyer and podcaster Steven Mee shares a personal and moving reflection on the power of stories and storytelling.

By Steven Moe

Kia ora Koutou, Ko Steven Moe toku ingoa.

Stories can be like seeds planted that grow into new ideas.

Think about this – two hundred years ago how many of our ancestors could read and write? Instead, they told stories – Why? Because stories connect deeper with our souls.

If I say that SDG 6 is about clean water and sanitation that has far less impact than saying: “This is 6 year old Maria, she draws water from a well every day which is infected with diseases for her family to drink”. Stories matter.

This picture tells a story. It’s of a young boy named Steven Moe – I had just moved to New Zealand in 1984. My story is of someone with an accent that at times places him outside of the culture he has grown up in, but whose heart is filled with a Turangawaewe of Aotearoa.

We were living in rural Papakaio, just North of Oamaru. On the left of our house was a water race and then a graveyard, on the right was a paddock of frightened sheep scared of the Magpies swooping above them.

There are other stories in this photo – my Father Norman, my Mother Marion, my sister Natalie.

And can you see another story? It’s the more ancient one. A story of rocks strewn like a geological lolly scramble on the beach at Moeraki.

This picture shows us the strands of stories that wove together to form a tapestry of my family’s life.

We can only follow one of these stories on.

The boy we saw in the last photo is now 23 – I am with my Mother and had just graduated from Canterbury University.

My Mother had taught me something important. There is no person who is not interesting – if you think that someone is not interesting, then that is your fault not theirs – every single person has a story.

Stepping out on my own for me involved working as a lawyer for Russell McVeagh, a law firm in Wellington then moving to London, Tokyo and Sydney for more than a decade working for a firm with 4,000 lawyers in 55 offices.

But there was a theme. That theme was helping already wealthy people earn a bit more.

We all see the World through a lens which is shaped by our experiences.

I started to realise that maybe I had on the wrong set of glasses.

We used to talk about it, working late at night, heating up another microwave dinner, looking out at the lights strewn like stars below the heights of the high rise office. We called them golden handcuffs – sure, they are handcuffs… but look, they are gold. It’s hard to break free.

But my story shows that it is possible. I realised that maybe I could take all my experiences to date and reinterpret them, reimagine them for a new context, one which was about purpose and being a lawyer – yes the words “lawyer” and “purpose” don’t have to be mutually exclusive terms.

It was time to write my story.

It was time to come home.

When I got back to New Zealand in 2016 I started meeting amazing people here in Otautahi, Christchurch. People who had stories.

I shifted gears and became an impact driven lawyer as a catalyst for positive change. This involves supporting purpose driven organisations that range from NFPs to Social Enterprises to start-ups and for profit business. I like to call it the Impact Sector.

This is a photo of an Impact Lunch where up to 40 people gather to share food and tell each other stories about their journeys.

Why? Because our stories matter.

So let’s recap where we are up to.

Our stories matter.
There is no person who is uninteresting.
Each one of us can be a catalyst for change.

So I wondered if I could help get more good stories out there. I met amazing people no one knew about. The media is obsessed with short word limits and negative spin.

It was Robert Louis Stevenson who said: “Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds that you plant.” So what would this mean for me – what could I do? I started a podcast.

Seeds podcast was birthed at the time of the Social Enterprise World Forum in September 2017 and since then I’ve put out one story a week, now with 267 episodes in total.

The idea is simple – seeds look like they are dead – if you give them the right conditions of soil, water and light then they will grow.

The stories on the podcast are like seeds because when you hear them, something new just might grow in your own thinking.

If you look up “seeds” in podcasting apps like Spotify or Apple Podcasts then this is the image you will find. It is intentional that the image is of a dandelion – how often do we think of it as a weed, but what is it that we make our wishes on when we blow and scatter their seeds. Maybe it is all about perception.

Where some see a weed – others see a wish. What do you see?

Having interviewed hundreds of people this slide would be full of too many faces to see them if I put them all on here. This is a selection as the range is enormous, from a child on what it is like to be 6, to a 92 year old nun who worked in palliative care for 70 years, to discussion on the SDGs. From tech entrepreneurs and investors, to a co-founder of the Edmund Hillary Fellowship, the founder of Bead & Proceed, Erica Austin who is helping on this conference, Tongan and Samoan immigrants, someone who was shot in the terror attacks, Matt Morris who shared about organising this conference, people who care about the ocean, travelling to space, who love mathematics, spirituality, Te Ao Maori. Each of them have a story to share.

We also talk about the failures – or as Michael Mayell put it when he spoke about his two ‘failures’ before Cookie Time succeeded, they are the compost for the success that is to come.

By hearing stories we feel brave enough to try something on our own.

Let’s focus in on three of these stories to show the diversity of them.

On the top right you can see Garry Moore, the former mayor of Christchurch. He shared a personal story of how he felt unworthy of the generosity of a couple when he was younger. They took him aside and said they had enough now so they could share with him – but would he do the same one day for others.

On the bottom right you can see Robett Hollis an amazing entrepreneur who was a professional snowboarder grew up here in Aranui. We talked about the influence on his perspective of Te Ao Maori and ways of being and the wisdom of Kaitiakitanga or Stewardship in business.

On the left is an unreleased episode with Sophie-Claire Violette and we had an amazing discussion about being an anthropologist who comes from Mauritius and we talked about the power of words, language and community

I’ve stopped calling these episodes “interviews” as they are really conversations. Through them we dive deeply into the past and what has formed people. My opening question is not, “what do you do”. Instead it is “what was life like for you when you were 5 years old” and we go from there.

So each one is telling a life story.

Some current stats on the project are set out here – you can find the show in podcasting apps or at the website there at the top where there are a bunch of videos, articles and more.

If you email me and tell me the topic you are interested in I commit to writing back with my top curated recommendations for you.

These are not short 5 minute or 20 minute episodes as I am committed to long form podcasting.

Showing the power of technology, as an example there were 318 listens yesterday – amazing as I cannot talk to that many people in a day!

This is a project that is word of mouth as I have no marketing budget so if you like it, please help it by telling others or sharing this presentation when it is released.

I started with a slide of family and I come back to another – this is Sigrid Odegaard my great grandmother who died 15 years before I was born. I think about her life and her story and it reminds me of how quickly time goes by.

And the photo on the left is me and my daughter Shanna when she a new born.

These photos remind me of the generations that come and go. Each of you is alive here and in this moment. How will you make a difference? How will you catalyse change and impact? How will you amplify the stories of others that you know?

Stories matter. They matter because we like stories. We identify with stories. We learn from stories. We should tell as many as we can, as often as possible.

Let’s go out knowing that our stories of people matter. Let’s tell them authentically. Let’s listen. Let’s stay curious.

Thank you for hearing my Korero about this project of Seeds Podcast and Why Stories Matter.

Here’s a video of Steven Moe’s presentation

Simon Nielsen 12/6/21 Simon Nielsen 12/6/21

European Creative Rooftop Network: A collective European effort to maximise creative use of rooftops

How can we utilise the space above our heads?

By Urban Gorillas

In densely populated areas in Europe, thousands of square kilometres of potential (public) space lie under-utilised and unrecognised as a great urban resource. This realisation joins organisations from nine different cities in a collective effort to unlock the potential of the European ‘roofscape’ (i.e. the combined area of flat rooftops in cities). The European Creative Rooftop Network (ECRN) – supported by the Creative Europe program of the European Commision until 2024 – seeks ways in which rooftops can incubate creative solutions for the social, economic and environmental challenges faced by Europe in the near-future. Urban Gorillas from Nicosia is proud to be one of the founding partners.

The Urban Gorillas is an interdisciplinary team of urban enthusiasts who aim to activate community spaces, inviting the local and international community to reimagine Cyprus' capital from the rooftop level and create alternative spaces for social interaction and creative expression on top of the buildings as well as in them. The interconnectivity of the ECRN ensures the benefit of international inspiration for Nicosia’s development and enables the sharing of the Urban Gorillas’ local knowledge with European counterparts.

On December 1st 2021, the partner organisations met in Antwerpen on top of the MAS-building, a publicly accessible rooftop. The nine partner cities differ in culture, climate and city planning but seek the similarities within the European roofscape and exchange their knowledge of this shared heritage. Next to Nicosia, the ECRN partners are (alphabetically): Amsterdam, Antwerpen, Barcelona, Belfast, Chemnitz, Faro, Göteborg and Rotterdam.

Discover more

Simon Nielsen 11/30/21 Simon Nielsen 11/30/21

What Is Your Cathedral?

“In the day to day repetition of placing one brick on another it can be really hard to see what is being built and maintain the vision. Yet that is what will sustain you in the long run. If you can see a bigger picture then that will give purpose.” Lawyer and podcaster Steven Moe asks us what we’re building.

By Steven Moe

You are walking along a deserted path in a place you’ve never visited before. The sun is beating down and it’s a hot day. In the distance you see three people about 50 metres apart from each other all doing the same task.

You get to the first one and ask what are you doing. He looks back at you unhappily and says, “I’m putting these bricks on top of each other”. You get to the second person and ask them the same question and they shrug their shoulders – “I’m building a wall.” You walk up to the third person and ask them what they are doing. She smiles and stretches out her arms and points upwards, and says, “I’m building a cathedral”.

This is Steven Moe. Welcome to Seeds Podcast.

The beauty of having your own podcast is that you can mix up the style of the show from time to time and I wanted to do that to share something I’ve been thinking about recently.

It comes from that podcast the other day with Israel Cooper on episode 112. You see, he spoke about buildings and the work that they do with ‘home’, and how important it was to get the foundation right.

It got me thinking about foundations, buildings and most importantly, why you build things. All of this thinking was reinforced by something my friend Antz Rohan said the other day at an Impact Dinner. Each of us are spending time in our life to create something, to build something. Particularly those of you who are listening to this now – I know you are all involved in creating or building something of value. But how often do we lose focus on that – lose sight of what it is we are contributing to.

I’m reminded of a visit I had to Barcelona many years ago. The Sagrada Familia is the most visited site in Spain and will be nearing completion in 2026 on the anniversary of the death of the main designer, Gaudi. That’s right, it is going to be completed 100 years after his death. You see, the key point is that building cathedrals can be an intergenerational activity that involves a true understanding of stewardship and working for the benefit of those who will follow us. Few of those who worked on Cathedrals, particularly in the Middle Ages, would have expected to see them actually completed. So being part of building something like that requires you to embrace a bigger picture that is far beyond yourself.

Did you know that the first meetings about the Barcelona cathedral were held in 1866? The first ground was broken in 1888? The first bell tower was completed in 1925. Over the time since then there have been many artisans, sculptors, builders, masons – all kinds of people have been involved. It simply could not be created alone. Since the start it has literally been generations of workers – several lifetimes – of people working to see a vision unfold.

When I looked into the story I told at the start – and there are a lot of permutations that exist out on the internet, I found that it was made famous by Peter Drucker in 1954 book called “The Practice of Management” (excerpt here). Drucker himself I think exhibits this idea of having a greater vision beyond stacking bricks. You see, he was born in 1909 and left Germany prior to WWII. He was 45 when that book was released and it advocated such far sighted things as allowing risk taking at lower levels in organisation, talked about the importance of making strategic decisions and developing teams that manage their own performance by reference to overall objectives. He has been described as the founder of modern management and even if you haven’t heard of him it is likely that he wrote articles or books that influenced people you have heard of. He came up with the phrase “knowledge worker” back in 1959. In the end he wrote 39 books that were published over a 70 year career as he died in 2005 at the age of 95. The point I’m making here is that it seems likely that he knew that his life was about building cathedrals.

So let’s finish by coming back to that story and I just want to ask two questions and leave you to reflect on them.

You see each of the people are building the same thing – but their attitude is completely different.

So the first question is which of the builders are you in how you approach your life?

In the day to day repetition of placing one brick on another it can be really hard to see what is being built and maintain the vision. Yet that is what will sustain you in the long run. If you can see a bigger picture then that will give purpose.

The second question is really simple.

What is your Cathedral?

Simon Nielsen 11/30/21 Simon Nielsen 11/30/21

Creativity & Vulnerability: Give It All … Give It Now

“We need to embrace vulnerability as the path to open up our creativity and through doing so truly put out new things into the world. Sure, there may be critics of what we produce. Sure, whatever it is may fail. But we need to be down in the arena. Be ready to show up before you are even ready to be on the stage. Grab the mic and fail wholeheartedly – always knowing you gave it your very best shot.” Lawyer and podcaster Steven Moe asks us to dare.

By Steven Moe

More than 100 years ago the following was said: “It is not the critic who counts; not someone who points out how the strong one stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the one who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends themselves in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if they fail, at least fails while daring greatly, so that their place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

This is Steven Moe, welcome to Seeds Podcast.

That quote still resonates with a lot of people even though it is from 100 years ago. There are some great words – it’s a reminder to get down in the arena and strive valiantly, to “at least fail while daring greatly”. It’s a reminder to just get on with things, create, let things flow, show up before you are even ready to show up. Theodore Roosevelt had become the youngest President of the United States at age 42. The quote comes from a long speech delivered in 1910 by him in France after he had finished as President.

The thing I draw from the quote has to do with vulnerability. To actually be out in the world and creating something of value may mean that there is criticism of it. That hurts. From experience, you may spend a lot of time and effort to create something and then things don’t go the way you expect – either a negative reaction or, in some ways worse, silence. If you are coming up with something new, if you are being creative and making art, then that is inevitably going to happen.

But this is the key – true creativity will only be authentic and really resonate with people if it is birthed from a place of vulnerability. There are amazing technical painters who are able to literally recreate the paintings of the old masters so that you or I looking at them would not be able to tell the difference. But it is the infusion of vulnerability into creativity which results in the creation of something new which is what elevates the painter to become an artist. If we’ve seen it before then it’s not much better than a photocopier. There isn’t much vulnerability involved in saying “here’s something just like that over there”.

It’s only with the creativity that something is elevated into art. But that is where the vulnerability is needed because when you create something new it might be that no one will like it. You need to push boundaries to go beyond what others have done and create something as yet unknown.

Vincent Van Gogh in his lifetime was never commercially successful – he only sold one painting while he is alive. He objectively was a failure at the time. But he is also one of the most famous and influential painters in all of Western art. He started painting at age 27 and died at age 37 – in that short period he painted around 1,100 paintings and 900 sketches – that’s around 4 a week. His starry night is one of the most reproduced pieces of art ever. What he said about the work he did on his art was: “In spite of everything I shall rise again and take up my pencil and draw and draw.” Perseverance is key. Continue with creating art and don’t wait for the perfect moment.

Brene Brown has written extensively on this subject of vulnerability and I encourage you to look up her work – on a recent road trip I listened to her talking and she has said: “Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change”. In other places she asks the question – are we willing to show up and be seen, to be authentic and stand by what we have produced? It is difficult to create something new – but it is the struggle to do so that will result in something beautiful.

The pointy end of what I am saying here are really some simple questions: What are you holding back from doing while you wait for perfection? If you are working on something then is it being created from a place that is infused with vulnerability that comes from the fear of showing people what it is that you’ve made? That creative writing you’ve done. That art. That podcast. That song. That speech. That unconference. That memo at work. That spreadsheet.

We need to embrace vulnerability as the path to open up our creativity and through doing so truly put out new things into the world. Sure, there may be critics of what we produce. Sure, whatever it is may fail. But we need to be down in the arena. Be ready to show up before you are even ready to be on the stage. Grab the mic and fail wholeheartedly – always knowing you gave it your very best shot. Don’t hang onto the creativity and bottle it up or wait to use it at some unknown point in the future. One of my favourite writers is the Pulitzer prize winning Annie Dillard and her advice for authors resonates here:

“One of the things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water.”

So what are you holding back? I remember a very long time ago in 2003 I started writing something and a friend encouraged me to continue doing so – he reasoned, if I put the effort into writing it, someone else would likely enjoy it too. Even if it is a small audience that doesn’t result in monetary success. Seth Godin talks about the smallest viable audience for the creative things we make. It’s certainly my approach with this podcast – some of you are listening to it right now, and that is enough. Get away from the measure of success being likes and numbers. Judge it by the authenticity of creation and the willingness to be vulnerable. Let the creativity flow from who you are and give it the chance to see the light of day.

But here is the rub. I’ve never shown that piece of writing to anyone. I’ve sat on it – afraid of the vulnerability that would come with sharing it. That it is not good enough. So maybe this reflection is an encouragement to myself to be bold. To let go of the pride of having to be successful, or have written a perfect story. Perfection is a myth that we willingly let lock the door to the creative ideas that are waiting inside us.

With this podcast, with these reflections – they are about being vulnerable – about putting myself out there. At first I thought they were just interviews but now I realise this is art too because there is both vulnerability and creativity involved in their creation. Perfection – no. Creativity and something new – hopefully yes.

So the reflection here is an encouragement to you, and also to myself. How will you embrace your vulnerability and create something new – create something that sure, might be criticised? Allow creativity free reign to come out. Embrace the fear as a friend and – anyway, like the quote said, forget the critic who is not in the fight. It’s in being vulnerable that we will actually have achieved something creative and unique and worth sharing. If there is no vulnerability involved then it is probably not worth doing at all.

Later on in the speech that I read from at the start Theodore Roosevelt noted that those who try – and perhaps fail – stand apart for “they have nobly ventured, and have put forth all their heart and strength”. So don’t just sit back and be a critic. Whatever this means in your context, get out there. Find your way of being creative. Do it wholeheartedly. But do it from a place where you are vulnerable.

The reason this is important? Because you are the only one who can create something truly unique. And that creativity that only you can bring has value for our world. Create. Get involved and get down in the arena – together, let’s start daring greatly.

Simon Nielsen 11/28/21 Simon Nielsen 11/28/21

Young Voices

“Young people go to school to prepare themselves for the future. We teach them about the past and the present but nothing about the future. Why is this?” International NGO, Teach The Future, invites young people to shape a vision and a manifesto for their community. In some Dutch towns and cities, this manifesto becomes an official document being implemented in actual development plans. Erica Bol tells a story of inter-generational planning.

“Young people go to school to prepare themselves for the future. We teach them about the past and the present but nothing about the future. Why is this?”

International NGO, Teach The Future, invites young people to shape a vision and a manifesto for their community. In some Dutch towns and cities, this manifesto becomes an official document being implemented in actual development plans. Erica Bol tells a story of inter-generational planning.

By Erica Bol & Teach The Future

Children are the future. It is therefore important to involve them in the future plans of your town or village. With the Young Voices Manifesto children give their vision of the future.

We inspire them, with the help of some lessons and a co-creation workshop, to think about the future, which empowers them to take part of creating and shaping the future they feel is sustainable.

The Manifesto is an important piece for local politics, societal organisations and companies. “The mayor can’t make the future by himself. We need to do it together.” Pop, 12 years old. It explains what young people feel is important for the future and includes 10 advices that can help in shaping that future.

“The future is cool and exciting. Let's not think in things that can't be done, but let go of the present and step into the future. Are you joining? A journey full of surprises and experiments.' (Young Voices, Breda, Netherlands, 2018)

In some Dutch cities this Young Voices Manifesto is an official document, the mayor and alderman are being hold responsible for addressing these advices. “We need to understand what young people think in order to answer to their needs.” Marianne de Bie, City of Breda (Netherlands)

This is a project of Teach the Future, a global non-profit movement that promotes ‘futures literacy’ as a life skill for students and educators. Their credo is Prepare students for tomorrow, teach the future today!

Young people go to school to prepare themselves for the future. We teach them about the past and the present but nothing about the future. Why is this? The main reason that most schools do not make the future part of their curriculum is the challenge to teach something that is not there yet. But just because you cannot provide students with a descriptive depiction of what the future holds, does not mean that we cannot help young people develop the skills needed to optimally prepare them for the future. By being prepared, one can give direction to one’s own future and that of the world around oneself.

Being prepared for the future is now more important than ever. The world is changing at a faster pace than it ever did, which makes it hard to keep up. The speed of change and the lack of control can create anxiety or stress. As a result, individuals shy away from the future. Although the future is inevitable, they do not like to think about it and take a passive approach. We highlight that you can prepare individuals for the future by teaching them future skills; there is no need to be afraid of the fast-changing world once one knows how to embrace uncertainty and shape change.

Simon Nielsen 11/23/21 Simon Nielsen 11/23/21

A Case For Bringing Creatives To The Governance Table

“We need to look again at the roads on which we had been travelling and ask if they are the right ones. One aspect of this might be looking at the role of boards to govern businesses. While we rightly talk about addressing imbalances when it comes to age, ethnicity and gender, what might happen if we also focused on divergent thinking that comes from having creatives involved?” Lawyer and podcaster Steven Moe explores the ways that creativity can play a new role in the stewardship of businesses.

By Steven Moe

The Covid-19 crisis has shown us that we need new paradigms of thinking. We have all been impacted by the pandemic which has challenged us to think and act more creatively than ever before. Businesses need blue skies thinkers and creatives might help find new solutions.

We need to look again at the roads on which we had been travelling and ask if they are the right ones. One aspect of this might be looking at the role of boards to govern businesses. While we rightly talk about addressing imbalances when it comes to age, ethnicity and gender, what might happen if we also focused on divergent thinking that comes from having creatives involved?

In our 30-page report, “Tomorrow’s Board Diversity: The role of creatives,” we consider the unique skills that creatives might bring to governance tables. Would boardroom discussions be enhanced and activated if they had the added perspective of film producers, designers, artists, poets and curators? We think so.

But what do we actually mean by the term “creative”? Well, as an adjective it refers to “having the ability or power to create… characterised by originality of thought or inventiveness; tending to stimulate the imagination or invention”. As a noun it is “having or showing an ability to make new things or think of new ideas”. Those sound like valuable attributes to include in any boardroom. We use the word to emphasise that these individuals are characterised by bringing an originality of thought and inventiveness. As social-entrepreneur Jacob Lennheden said: “Creativity can play a vital role in enhancing all aspects of business performance and is in many ways considered the raw material of innovation.”

And for the purpose of the paper, we acknowledge that “creatives” most often have their foundations in the arts. This could be from the visual, performing and literary arts – and are guided and driven by an originality of thought. As the writer Jeff Goins explains: “The truth is that we need more creatives in positions of influence – to colour the world with beauty and life. Creatives craft poetry in a world that is otherwise content with prose. They bring art to areas where there is only architecture. Creatives help us see life in a new light – to perceive a new dimension, a deeper way of encountering what we know. And we need more of those kinds of leaders.”

In preparing this paper we were surprised at how little has been written on this point. There was a lot on other forms of diversity, but not on creatives. We think Aotearoa has the chance to lead the way here. Certainly we know there is a need for greater diversity of thought at board level, and creative arts are both acknowledged and valued. Let’s join the dots and connect up these points.

Already our paper has been well-received, with Kirsten Patterson, chief executive of the New Zealand Institute of Directors saying it “brings to light a topic which is often neglected: the role that creatives can play on boards. In our experience, directors who have a range of diverse and creative talent, capabilities and knowledge bring different perspectives to decision-making, planning and board culture – that will likely enhance an organisation’s performance, as well as better represent the stakeholders.”

In the end we conclude that one of the key elements is not just having creatives at the table: it’s also about developing an environment that invites and welcomes diverse perspectives. So as well as board composition it is also all about board culture. Some of our conclusions argue that boards should begin to review and discuss their composition, rebalancing the accountants, lawyers and business minds with those who can bring a different type of thinking to the table.

We should all seek to raise awareness about diversity of thought and the role creatives can bring, identify pathways for creatives to join boards and provide training when they do. If this can be done it will help our businesses to be more ready to face the challenges that are coming up as the true impact of Covid-19 starts to play out.

Published in Spinoff on June 22, 2020.

Simon Nielsen 11/15/21 Simon Nielsen 11/15/21

What Makes a Place Lively And Secure?

A place appears to be lively and secure due to human presence. If we see people around us projecting good energy and vibes, finding comfort in a place, we, too, reflect that energy and find comfort. That’s basic human nature. But the point to ponder is what brings people out in place? What attracts them to a place? Azbah Ansari and Peacemakers Pakistani answer an essential question.

By Peacemakers Pakistani

*Photo: LumenSoft Technologies/Unsplash*

A place appears to be lively and secure due to human presence. If we see people around us projecting good energy and vibes, finding comfort in a place, we, too, reflect that energy and find comfort. That’s basic human nature. But the point to ponder is what brings people out in place? What attracts them to a place? Peacemakers Pakistani answer this essential question.

William H. Whyte already gave an answer:

“What attracts people most, it would appear, is other people."

But the first question that might arise regarding people in a place, would be, what are they doing in the place? Undoubtedly, people presence makes a place lively but a meaningful presence and activity makes it secure and worthy of being in. So, what do we expect from a place where people are present and doing their activities freely? Ever wondered that? What activities and people generally come to your mind about any place in your mind?

If people are free to do what they want to do, we can see different people in a place, beyond gender roles and racism. We can see them as beings – a human more than just an appearance but a being, fulfilling a purpose and living a life. It might be different from your trials and aspirations but when all people with differences comes together that’s how a picture gets completed. Whole is always greater than the sum of its parts. But to get to the whole, we need to pay attention to the parts and bring them whole together in a rightful manner.

I am going to share a list of people doing/offering different activities as per their needs (fulfilled we assume, as we picture an ideal place) and abilities. So, let’s see how many different people and activities we can come up with regarding any public place and how these small parts can complete a whole picture and make it vibrant and lively. Feel free to share and add any type to this list. For the picture, allow your imagination to run wild and feel the human presence around you. Imagine yourself in any place you want and keep on adding these people if their activities suit the place in your mind.

A vendor with a convenient space selling his goods, having some seating space to entertain customers as well if he is a food vendor. A busker playing music and entertaining others in a space where there are people who will pay for it. A local artist making & selling sculpture or artwork. A market goer or customer making his way to exchange or buy goods. A commuter or food van parked in a secure place during the day, performing duties to provide others with services.

An office worker who came to eat outside with fresh air away from the computer screen. Maintenance workers relaxing & stretching to get started with work again, also they have some space to store equipments in the meantime. A book reader sitting in a quite secluded space totally absorbed by his book. A runner or walker out in space with fresh air and doing exercise for healthy life. A local resident enjoying a quiet space in which to appreciate nature as he has no garden. An old man sitting under a tree watching kids play. Few couples (of all ages) sitting at different spots talking about things that matter to them, unaware of people around them. Few of them are just walking as well, one of them has a baby stroller and they are walking in the place in front of you.

A human being simply connecting with nature & its creations. A tourist or 1st generation migrant exploring, learning more about the culture of city & collecting memento from the visit, subjects & objects to photograph, activities to participate in and much more, doing it all freely without bothering or feeling any eyes on him/her. A differently able person having a convenient access zones towards public spaces, toilets & amenities. An emergency aid provider rapidly accessing to patient in a space to give first aid without barriers.

Have you pictured it all, or most of it? How did it feel? Do you want to go there, where people are? Indeed, people go where people are. People generally go out for needs and entertainment, activities like shopping, work, play, leisure time, something new, rest and to distress. That’s a basic human need as well. Therefore, the foremost objective for any public space project should be to provide activities & entertainment for all kinds of users considering their needs & demands. Only that will make a place livelier and secure, even though it is not the only way to do it, but it is the first step to start from. Equity and Inclusion strategy as we call it in placemaking.

And as you enjoyed it all, just for a moment think about it from the ‘eyes of the child’. Oh the wonderful eye that registers everything in his mind and stores everything in his pure heart. What great messages would he be learning if he was in such environment? How happy and secure he must be feeling! How much liveliness his presence and sense of being would be adding to the place! What else can be a true indicator of a liveable city if not that of the presence of happy children in streets and public spaces? Think about that too, because it is important.

Simon Nielsen 10/23/21 Simon Nielsen 10/23/21

The Magic Of Meeting

“When I studied acting we used to help our pals who had monologues; the help consisted in listening, really listening to the monologue, and believe me it helped! One of my best teachers surprised me by saying: “Very good work, Gianluca! It’s not easy to just listen but you did it perfectly!” Surprising, no? But also very true.” Italian filmmaker, Gianluca Migliarotti, dissects the magic of meeting. Meetings are crucial to both his personal and private life, and with a daily dose of meetings comes the calibration of a valuable gift: listening.

“When I studied acting we used to help our pals who had monologues; the help consisted in listening, really listening to the monologue, and believe me it helped! One of my best teachers surprised me by saying: “Very good work, Gianluca! It’s not easy to just listen but you did it perfectly!” Surprising, no? But also very true.” Italian filmmaker, Gianluca Migliarotti, dissects the magic of meeting. Meetings are crucial to both his personal and professional life, and with a daily dose of meetings comes the calibration of a valuable gift: the art of listening.

By Gianluca Migliarotti, filmmaker

Like the title of a music album by the poet Vinicius De Moraes and his colleague Ungaretti, performed by Toquino.

A meeting is made of three fundamental steps: the introduction, the exchange, and the goodbye.

It’s similar to life’s structure, and all the three parts have the same importance and complexity.

Meeting people has always had a great importance in my life.

Human beings have had my full attention ever since I was a teenager. I’ve always found something interesting in everybody: just sitting in a crossroads of a big city where you have the chance to see a large amount of different faces, you might start to appreciate the uniqueness of anyone, ugly and beautiful, regular and peculiar, masterpieces of nature each in their own unique way.

This observation, and some experience, pull me into the curiosity of meeting people and get to know a little more about them, their life, their point of views.

Sometimes you learn something new, hopefully almost always; sometimes your views are confirmed or maybe you find out that everyone shares similar struggles, fears, and difficulties, which helps you finding your own position.

A few times you realize that your expectations of a person were higher than the reality, a little dissatisfying, but always useful; discovering that underneath a façade of strength, originality, or special features, rests a common person - that can help building your confidence; people can give you parameters to understand yourself.

I’m so curious about people that I’ve focused my work as a filmmaker on documentaries about their lives. The conversation (I don’t like to call it interview, I’m no journalist) is the main thing, and it has to be conducted in complete, relaxed freedom. To achieve this, you need trust from the person, and the only way, I find, is to let the person talk freely. I never try to push the conversation towards the topic I had in mind. I can actually completely abandon it for a while until it comes back. You need to really listen and ask questions to build a personal relation, even if a temporary one.

Everbody likes to be listened to and understood, everybody likes to share experiences and memories.

Even the most normal experience can sound very important and special if projected in an honest and passionate way.

One of the best compliments I have received in my life (professionally) has been: “When I sat down here I had never thought that I would tell you all this… I don’t know what happened.”

What happened was that we met. We connected.

This is what human beings look for since childhood: to be understood, to be heard in their daily life struggle, to be cared for, to be recognized. We need this, we need to feel that we are not alone. We are social animals, and we need to be together. We don’t need judgements, but understanding.

When I studied acting we used to help our pals who had monologues; the help consisted in listening, really listening to the monologue, and believe me it helped! One of my best teachers surprised me by saying: “Very good work, Gianluca! It’s not easy to just listen but you did it perfectly!” Surprising, no? But also very true.

I’ve spent a few years in New York as a student, and I remember the casual conversations in the subway, just sharing a few words about whatever topic with a stranger. Some people have this talent, to open up for a very brief conversation and close it naturally without putting the two in any awkward situation of fake confidence; I’ve always admired this capacity of opening with people, reaching a good level of confidence just to communicate strongly enough, to then been able to close it politely leaving a feeling of having actually met someone.

To be able to share something significant on different levels, not always dramatic or important, but a sign, a touch, for that limited amount of time, enough to create a shared experience.

Listening, you can’t fake it.

Curiosity, you can’t learn it, but you can train it.

Will to share your thoughts, feeling and experiences as to receive them in an honest way.

Those are the ingredients for the magic of meeting.

Simon Nielsen 6/21/21 Simon Nielsen 6/21/21

A Reflection On The Importance Of Failing Without Fearing: An Interview With Lenny White

We met drummer Lenny White for a conversation on fear, trust, and inspiration. A recurring question was: How do we find the courage to imagine the new?

We met drummer Lenny White for a conversation on fear, trust, and inspiration. A recurring question was: How do we find the courage to imagine the new?

By The Empty Square

Are we good enough at failing?

We live in an era with an urgent need for rethinking how to live. True creativity and innovation are crucial, but for them to flourish we need to overcome the fear of failing and the fear of not being accepted.

For the past 50 years, drummer and teacher, Lenny White, has been breaking new musical ground. He is one of the founding fathers of jazz fusion and has played with luminaries such as Miles Davis, Chick Corea, and Freddie Hubbard.

We met White for a conversation on fear, trust, and inspiration. A recurring question was: How do we find the courage to imagine the new?

Simon Nielsen 6/17/21 Simon Nielsen 6/17/21

Notes At Night (4)

“Any sweet dreams out there?”. “Or can’t you sleep?”. In the middle of the night, the old woman is back, her loud voice clear in the quiet darkness. “You know what the problem is?”, she calls out. “We have lost our culture”.

“Any sweet dreams out there?”. “Or can’t you sleep?”. In the middle of the night, the old woman is back, her loud voice clear in the quiet darkness. “You know what the problem is?” she calls out. “We have lost our culture”.

By The Empty Square

“Any sweet dreams out there? Or can’t you sleep?”

In the middle of the night, the old woman is back, her loud voice clear in the quiet darkness. Tall, dressed in long garments and a hat with a wide brim, she stands on the plinth of the statue in the middle of the empty square.

“You know what the problem is?”, she calls out.

“We have lost our culture. That collective understanding of who we are, the feeling of meaning and connectedness that used to permeate our society. That ran through everything we did, made, built, and thought.”

“Shut up, you crazy woman”, somebody shouts grumpily, closing the window. In other windows, you can see the contours of people that hesitate to close, awaiting what comes next.

“Even among those in the best positions, there is a sensation of loss, you know. That’s why the elite in the industrialised part of the world keeps talking about culture as a phenomenon that has to be promoted and supported.

But culture is not a sector in society that can be advanced through public investments as a kind of spiritual power supply.

Culture is the energy within the collective soul. It can only come from inside every human being as a belief and a conviction.”

More people open their windows to better listen.

*Photo: Camilla Quintero Franco/Unsplash*

“We turned culture into a spell,” she continues, “hoping to animate the empty space. Like ‘quality of life’, ‘culture’ is something we began to discuss when it became a scarcity.

But just like money can’t buy you quality of life, it’s impossible to create a culture through public funding. Culture grows only when the conditions are right. Sprinkling statues all over town or giving away discount tickets to the theatres doesn’t make a difference.

The Western ‘culture’ of today – and all the cultural institutions and events and politics and people included – is just a prosthesis. But in the use of the word ‘culture’ lies a dream of coherence, an ethical, practical, and metaphysical feeling of unity and community.

If we want to build culture again, you know what the most important thing is? To nurture the right conditions.

What are the right conditions?

What are they?”

The woman jumps from the plinth like a cat, and as she hastily leaves the empty square, some of the nightly listeners make a short applause before going back to bed.

Points taken from Morten Skriver: Blomsternes filosofi (The Philosophy of Flowers) (1995)

Simon Nielsen 6/17/21 Simon Nielsen 6/17/21

The Square At Night (3)

…The square consists of two halves. A permanent half and a temporary one. In your half sleeping, but still upright, state, you imagine a swap of roles. While the market and the ongoing exchanges remain fixed, workers arrive to take down the marble facades, packing away the old town hall, dismantling walls and plinths.

By The Empty Square

The night is long when you have to stand up and carry your newborn baby from midnight till sunrise. The moment you try to lay him down, he will cry and cry and cry.

So, there you are, in the dim living room on the 3rd floor, looking out on the empty square from the window.

It is an excellent opportunity to observe in detail what actually takes place when nobody else is watching. Over time, you get to know the routines; the late-night dog walkers, the last train passing the nearby station at 1.04, a nightly runner, the newspaper deliverer on a noisy scooter.

Between 2 and 3, the square is truly empty, although, as you remember to have read somewhere, “true emptiness is not empty but contains all things. The mysterious and pregnant void creates and reflects all possibilities.”

What possibilities does the empty square hold?

At 5, the first market people arrive in small trucks loaded with fruits and vegetables. They pick up their tents and gear that is stored in a garage nearby. They work efficiently, 2 and 3 together, assembling the tents, putting together the tables and shelves, arranging the goods, everything has its place.

It’s as if they are building a whole city in two hours. Shelters, pathways, open spaces, waste separation. The first customers arrive before 7, and the last around 1.30 as the market is being closed down. Creation, action, and exit in less than 10 hours, while the surrounding buildings remain fixed for decades and centuries.

The square consists of two halves. A permanent half and a temporary one.

In your half sleeping, but still upright, state, you imagine a swap of roles. While the market and the ongoing exchange of goods, money, greetings, stories, news, and knowledge remain fixed, workers arrive to take down the marble facades, packing away the old town hall, dismantling walls and plinths, removing the bank, the school, the Com Pagnon Bakery and the apartments, beginning the journey to the next city, where they have to rebuild all of it before the first people arrive tomorrow morning.

Does the empty square contain that possibility?

The baby is crying. He is hungry.

Inspiration to this note from: Italo Calvino: The Invisible Cities (1972) and Jack Kornfield: A Path With Heart (1993)

Simon Nielsen 6/16/21 Simon Nielsen 6/16/21

The Square At Night (2)

Welcome to Com Pagnon Bakery. A shelter for more than just the weather.

Welcome to Com Pagnon Bakery. A shelter for more than just the weather.

By The Empty Square

It’s 2 o’clock in the morning, rain has been pouring down for hours. The square is empty, and you walk alone with your tiny umbrella.

Around the corner, the smell of fresh-baked bread hits your nose as you see the warm light pour out from a couple of windows down the street. A weather-beaten sign hanging above the doorway says “Com Pagnon Bakery - Come on in, we’re open”.

The bakery sits between two residential buildings. A beautiful double frontage store with a big window on either side of the entrance. It looks like a haven of calm and coziness.

Com Pagnon Bakery is open 24-7, catering to all the people who can’t or don’t, for some reason, sleep at night. This is a shelter for more than just the weather.

Open the door and the first thing that catches your eyes is the open fire in the big, central half-dome oven. Golden-brown breads are leaving the heat. New ones are ready to get in.

A deep voice to your right is welcoming you. It belongs to an old, gracious woman sitting on a high chair behind the small counter next to the entrance. She’s responsible for the payments but also for the greetings. Her most valued quality is her gift of listening. Sometimes she’ll give you an advice, but most often she just sits and listen.

To the left of the door, there is an umbrella stand and above it a set of coat hooks, so feel free to unburden yourself of your damp coat.

Choose a table and a place to sit, and while you consider what to order, enjoy the small cup of spicy chai, that is served with compliments from the family that owns the place.

You’ve found an oasis, and you are free to stay for as long as you wish.

Simon Nielsen 6/16/21 Simon Nielsen 6/16/21

The Square At Night (1)

Heard on the square at night.

Heard on the square at night.

By The Empty Square

- Listen – can you hear the music?

- Yeah… But it’s the middle of the night, the square is empty!

- I know…hey… you want to dance with me at the empty square?

- Right now?

- Why not?

- Let’s go!

Simon Nielsen 6/15/21 Simon Nielsen 6/15/21

Sense And The City

Close your eyes. Imagine yourself in a Medieval town or city. Stand still and listen. The noise is infernal.

Close your eyes. Imagine yourself in a Medieval town or city. Stand still and listen. The noise is infernal.

By The Empty Square

Close your eyes.

Imagine yourself in a Medieval town or city.

Stand still and listen. The noise is infernal. Fish! Meat! Honey! Onions! Cheese! Street criers are all over.

“The baths are open, the water is hot!”

“Mr. Jones died yesterday…!”

The news is shouted out, goods are being offered for sale everywhere, noise from workshops, animals, vehicles, and people, all of it blending into a cacophony.

And the smells. Strong smells from animals and humans. Smells from bakeries, tanneries, butchers. Dead meat and blood, smoke and incense, the smell of food being prepared and that of putrefaction. In this kind of place, you will probably be able to find your way around, using only your nose.

Now open your eyes again.

Living in Denmark, a walk in a city or town will not provide any cacophonies whatsoever and hardly any smells. There is noise, of course, but really, the experience is mainly visual.

In Hungry City, Carolyn Steel describes the sensuous loss of a city where small food stores and markets close in favor of big supermarkets. After returning from a trip to India, which attacks the senses of most Westerners, it is not India, but Europe that is the real shock. Steel writes:

“The streets seem positively deserted; the cars and buses impossibly large and shiny; the spaces between buildings huge and empty. Everywhere you look, there seems to be an absence of something: of people, animals, vegetables, smell, noise, ritual, necessity, death. The juxtapositions of human life have been designed out of our cities, leaving us to live in an empty shell”.

Do you live in an empty shell? Should we reintegrate the juxtapositions of human life?

*Again, we warmly recommend Carolyn Steel: Hungry City (Chatto & Windus, Random House, 2008). Quote p. 117

Simon Nielsen 6/15/21 Simon Nielsen 6/15/21

Building And Telling

What if we started building without drawings? What if the construction of big projects was built on the imagination and storytelling of the building owner and the interpretation and capacity of the craftsmen?

By The Empty Square

Quite an abstract thought today.

But that’s how it used to be even in the case of major public projects. The rebuilding of Piazza del Popolo in Rome by the end of the 15th century was based, not on precise drawings, but on the conversations between craftsmen, engineers, and pope Sixtus the 5th.

The pope described the buildings and the space as he imagined them; that was all, the builders had to work on. The oral instructions gave them freedom and flexibility, enabling a certain kind of relational understanding that today’s hands-off design doesn’t.

In The Craftsman, Richard Sennett claims that the separation of hand and head came along with the modern idea that buildings can be completely planned ahead. Today, 3D manipulations and simulations determine the design process, leading to buildings that in many cases lack the tactile, relational, and incomplete elements that add to the flexibility and uniqueness of a place.

Can we somehow reintegrate the wisdom of the hand and the quality of the imperfect into our buildings? Can we let building, telling, and dwelling come together again?

See Richard Sennett: The Craftsman (orig. 1997)

Simon Nielsen 6/15/21 Simon Nielsen 6/15/21

Home - A Territory Full Of Purpose, Connection, And Meaning

For hunter-gatherers – our ancestors as well as those that still exist – home was and is more than a place to live. It is a territory whose every feature is “familiar and alive and full of purpose, connection and meaning.”

By The Empty Square

To the hunter-gatherers, the landscape, flora, and fauna are deeply intertwined with their past and with the stories and myths that define them. When children are taught how to live and survive, they are not only being informed. According to British social anthropologist, Tim Ingold, there is a ‘show-and-tell’ form of teaching that instils a particular kind of knowledge and attention that provides not only information but also awareness.

Can we introduce an education of awareness in our school system? One that combines learning, doing, living, and understanding? That gives our children a sense of ancestry and belonging and being literally in touch with the world?

Among hunter-gatherers, the children are placed in specific situations and instructed to feel and sense and watch out for this and that. Through the fine-tuning of perceptual skills, meanings immanent in the environment “are not so much constructed as discovered”.

Imagine an everyday life where we don’t have to look for and construct meaning all the time but are able to discover it right there in front of us. Imagine homes, schools, communities, and cities full of purpose, connection and meaning.

What do we have to change to get there?

* Quote from Carolyn Steel’s marvelous book Sitopia (Chattus & Windus, London, 2020), p.91

Simon Nielsen 6/11/21 Simon Nielsen 6/11/21

Be Realistic, Demand The Impossible

That was one of the students’ slogans, borrowed from Che Guevara and shared through graffiti and posters, during the riots in Paris, May 1968. Now it pops up again. Not the riots but the passion for the impossible.

By The Empty Square

Be realistic, demand the impossible was one of the students’ slogans, borrowed from Che Guevara and shared through graffiti and posters, during the riots in Paris, May 1968.*

Now it pops up again. Not the riots, but the passion for the impossible.

In Mexico City, Laboratorio para la Ciudad (Laboratory for the City) was established in 2013 on request by the newly elected mayor. “The idea of the impossible is where we start. We will imagine the impossible school. The impossible economy. The impossible family. The impossible treaty. The impossible planet. Our collective work is to make all of this impossible possible.”

The aim of the laboratory is to invent new models of participation and governance, finding out how to democratize imagination and possibility. Though the lab is, according to its leader, “definitely seen as the weird department” by the rest of the administration, its work has an impact and is respected.

What if your city had a Department of Imagination?

Isn’t it time to repeat the slogan, maybe with a twist: Be realistic, do the impossible - ?

*The content of this note is taken from Rob Hopkins’ book From What Is to What If – Unleashing the Power of Imagination to Create the Future We Want (London: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2019), p.156ff

Simon Nielsen 6/11/21 Simon Nielsen 6/11/21

Imagination Is The Most Important Resource

Until 10.000 years ago planet Earth was home to nine different human species. Only one remains, us, homo sapiens. The reason appears to be our nuanced language and ability to talk about fictive stuff that we never saw, nor touched.

By The Empty Square

Until 10.000 years ago, planet Earth was home to nine different human species. Only one remains, us, homo sapiens. The reason appears to be our nuanced language and ability to talk about fictive stuff that we never saw, nor touched.*

The ability to imagine things and cooperate with countless strangers who imagine and believe in the same myths seem to be what made us rulers of this world.

If that is true, what we have to do, in order to save the planet and ourselves, is to imagine a better world and create a new myth.

The question is: Can we still do that?

Or is our main problem that we have lost our imagination?

Homo sapiens babies are born creative. When we are 3-5 years old, 98 % of us can think in divergent ways. When we are 13-15 years, 10 % can. And when we are 25, only 2 % master this fundamental skill.

The numbers indicate that we are systematically drumming the divergent thinking out of our children.** Refueling our imaginative capacities seems to be step one.

An essential exercise therefore is to imagine that things can actually be different than they are – and then make them different.

If you need inspiration, we (again) warmly recommend Rob Hopkins book: From What Is to What If – Unleashing the Power of Imagination to Create the Future We Want (London: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2019)

*According to Yuval Noah Harari: Sapiens. A Brief History of Humankind (2014 (orig.2011))

**According to a study referred to by Sir Ken Robinson, an internationally recognized leader in the development of creativity and education. See: Doug Stephens: Reengineering Retail – the Future of Selling in a Post-Digital World (2017)