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Living The Dream?! sustainable living & a Great British conversation just begging to be had.

19 Thursday Mar 2015

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Funny how some phrases just fall in to your lap. Funny how some just stick. Living the Dream is just such a phrase – a gift horse that was staring me in the mouth.

In the space of two days I had the polarities of Great British aspiration and disappointment writ simple and large on my storytelling wall. Our Great British M&S-stylie Prosecco & Pistachio lifestyle and its poor PaydayLoan & Pork-scratching cousin came gift-wrapped in one exquisitely simple phrase.

In a West London brasserie bar sat a woman, fashionably turned out, the odd fancy shopping bag at her killer-heeled feet, a glass of bubbles in front of her, txting furiously on her i-phone 6. Her friend appeared suddenly, looking a little bedraggled, but on seeing her shiny friend she brightly chirped,’ living the dream babes…look at you…bubbles and everything…’

And within days of the upbeat version wafting in front of me, its poor cousin appeared in North London, just beyond N1. I see a bloke, obviously far from rolling in it: a bag of DIY stuff in one hand, one child in the buggy, the other mid tantrum, on the phone to his partner/girlfriend/wife/babymamma. She is patently giving him an earful. Cue a friend of his walking past on the other side of the street who shouts ‘ Oi Tommy..Living the Dream then mate!?’. The beer-battered sarcasm of this banter simply inspired a meek self-deprecating shrug in the bedraggled bloke on the mobile. True.

As a phrase Living the Dream does what every great tenet, mantra or philosophy of any authenticity and substance should do – it easily and effortlessly embraces every extremity, turbulence, nuance, depth and not so subtle shade of the thing it seeks to define or describe – in this case the quality of life the person is leading at that very moment the phrase is deployed.

It allows enormous complexity to sit just behind it, knowingly, without ever having to say it. The back-stories of these two people were plain to see without having to set them out.

This was the power of the phrase for me.

To be fair I had been searching for one to wrap up a very UK ‘dream of better’ for a while.

We had searched for a conversation starter around a more sustainable lifestyle – one that started in the real everyday world.

In 2013 we ran 4 pilot workshops in London for the UK Dream project to that end – to find a more populist, scalable conversation to inspire a more enduring model of prosperity: a thriving vibrant life open to all, underwritten with sustainable truths.

We needed a new narrative: a new lexicon of better for people to use in their everyday lives. The old narrative was simply not working. Sustainability people speaking to themselves: impenetrable, arcane, complex, off-putting.

For most people the end of the month comes before the end of the world. They are more concerned with making ends meet than with how they might meet their end in some post-apocalyptic climate-induced catastrophe. The old narratives, rooted as they are in the activist roots of environmentalism simply do not chime with your average Joe and Jane.

So we had a chasm to cross. We needed a simple and very UK-centric or British hook that allowed us to start with simple everyday human-sized truths – What keeps you up at night? What gets you out of bed in the morning? What does good look like from where you’re standing?

In a search for this new narrative, we had already applied the 7 stage Dream-In-A-Box methodology (well, three of them at least) to try and shape what better might look like and scaling the everyday conversation around it.

We got as diverse a group of individuals as possible into a room to play with, pull down, interrogate and explore the traits, dimensions, idioms and aspirations of a prosperous life underwritten by sustainable truths. And we did it by first banishing the language of the circular economy, up-cycling, collaborative consumption (a co-created art installation project by 17th Century British poets surely) stewardship, materiality, EP&L, Net Positive and every other phrase on the trending circuit.

The most interesting and charming conversations were sparked around the old arts of thrift – smart shrewd living skills. A form of street smarts for aspirational living. people who know know…

The idea of Lighter Living. Lightening the burden on oneself (bills, cost, beyond ones means) and on the world in which we endeavour to thrive offered an overarching narrative hook that felt aspirational; breezy; cool.

So UK Dream identified Smarter lighter living represented a good beginning – positive – something one feels before one thinks it.

But we still had the tricky D word. Left to its own devices, Dream is a very divisive word, regardless of how you underwrite it; especially in Britain. On the up side everyone likes a dreamy something – we are happy to have the dream job, the dream holiday. But these are specific uses of the word that define a clear and tangible set of benefits and experiences.

Use the D word on a more rarified cultural and nationalistic level and the long shadow of John Stuart Mill enters the room at the faintest whisper of the word.

Dreams. A tyranny of pasteurized living. The death of individuality. An opiate under whose suffocating crop invention withers and spirit is anaesthetised. Dreams: the heartland of the indolent and fearful. The sharp corners and friction of individuality are what keep us alive. Not buttered populist platitudes for us to get fat on.

For the UK audience, Dream just invites the cynic and the heckler to rip it up; test its edges, even when you try and put it in a box.

Hence my search for the phrase that delivered the idea of a dream of better as part of life in the here-and-now; as measured in clear and tangible terms – a phrase that could happily ladder up or down; for better or worse; good or bad; funny or sad.

Cue Living The Dream?!

As soon as we place the ‘Living the Dream?!’ question at the top of our conversational ladder everything shifts – and becomes more human.

It allows us to engage with really simple scenarios to begin with – what keeps you up at night? the ‘mares big and small of every day life – What gets you out of bed in the morning? the dreamy stuff that makes life worth living.

This simple two pillar approach can be used to inspire conversations around identity, fashion, lifestyle, living, food & drink, education, energy, finances, technology, travel & transport, leisure & entertainment, white goods, furniture – anything. Easy conversational doors into complex nuanced stories.

It also means that we can reframe conversations that interweave multiple dimensions (usually only looked at or explored as single threads) and explore them as we find them – as slightly more chaotic jumbled buckets of conversation.

For example:

Love & Shopping

The old intrinsic nature of love and how we demonstrated it – through nurture, provision, protection, empowerment, support and belonging – has been hijacked by brands trying to inveigle their way into a lead position on our purse. We are more likely to make an active demonstration of love through a commercial transaction than we are through a personal one. The extrinsic demonstrable nature of the neu-love we now practice is making us live beyond our means.

So we find ourselves living in a culture that celebrates Saturday shopping in Westfield as an act of bonding and love. Families share in the pursuit of living the dream; even if it just loading love on a credit card for later. Every demonstration of love seems to come with a bar code: DISCUSS.

Faith & Banter

Faith has become more than just the repose of religion – faith and leaps of it are required in every corner: humanists take the leap of faith in humanity and its ability to prevail. Philosophers cross the chasm of the ontological between universals and particulars. Artists relentlessly leap from humanities to science to metaphysics to the primal with an absolute faith in the eventual ascension of something sublime. Even in brittle science, in the absence of an M Theory waiting to be revealed, they undertake a leap of faith of their own every day between the two quantum truths without a bridge to join them.

But in the UK, if you get too serious, watch your language, lighten up and Get over yourself. This is the nation of ‘taking the piss’, heckling, ribbing and anarchic banter. How does something so serious play out in a culture where to be serious is to be dangerous. DISCUSS.

Castles & Cat’s Cradle

Every man is an island and every Englishman’s home is his castle. Well, ‘ish’. Given the level of Great British personal debt, mortgage rates, the ascendence of the pay day loans, just to keep the ‘castle’ from falling down, the old securities of a fixed and stable life are fast disappearing. And as the castle walls shrink or crumble, splendid isolation gives way to dynamic connection and collaboration. We are stitching ourselves back together again in myriad different ways, finding new ties that bind. If 2008 smashed the family china and pulled down the gazebo and the politicians are fracking society who’s got the UHU?

In the gaps and cracks they leave behind new opportunities and alliances form. Run down regions and communities are regenerated. people find new purpose. Can a new more enlighted aspiration for a more enduring life rise with the cultural phoenix? DISCUSS

Wellness in an highly emerged society.

In exploring the Living The Dream conversation, we also realised that culturally, socially and systemically, the UK is so emerged it’s submerged. Simple and very meaningful topics so easily and directly dealt with in other cultures are in ours hidden inside a complex and codified landscape. Triggering conversations around these topics is a minefield: an assault course of social gaffes, trip wires, trap doors, raspberries and silences. So achieving just the right lightness of touch and integrity is critical.

The conversation around wellness and wellbeing is just such a conversation. It is not in the direct line of conversational fire. We speak indirectly of these things, usually as part of a different conversational thread. We are more likely to fall upon the topic of well-being through jokes about Stenna stairlifts, incontinence pants, supersize mother in laws, smoking in bed and Austin Power’s teeth than we are directly with a straight face.

Wellness is a supermarket trend supported by chemist brands – it is NOT a stitched in part of the great british psyche just yet. But we are getting there in our own sweet time.

This is very different to the China Dream where its emerging economy status means that health & well-being are absolutely central to the idea of what better looks like. A conversation that begins and ends with the need for something drastic to happen around air, water, food integrity and diet and their role in building a more resilient and dynamic society.

All in all, Living The Dream?! (for now at least) creates a simple conversational foundation for a bigger conversation around what good looks like and how we might get there individually, communally and collectively. Apply simple rules of smarter, lighter living at the heart of it and perhaps we might move the dial from over indexing on what keeps us up at night and start peaking again on what gets us out of bed in the morning!

All we need now is the right partners to scale the right conversation and start asking the right questions of the right people.

So any platform or brand looking for a purpose in the UK – looking for a conversation to fuel, inspire, support and celebrate – come on down. We have the beginnings of something good.

FOOTNOTES

LivingTheDream is planning to undertake 10 workshops across the UK in 2015 – simply to start asking the right questions of the right people; of what better might look like for them – in their language, in their words and from where they are standing. The curated outcomes will then be shared with the constituencies of action – local communities, councils, faith leaders, collectives, interested parties, brands, institutions and organisations – to adopt, reflect and act upon to start making better a reality.

Living The Dream & the art of smarter, lighter living is an organically developing theme rooted in the original Dream in A Box UK Dream project workshops and part of a wider DreamInABox initiative which includes the founding China Dream movement run in China through NGO JUCCCE and spearheaded by the inimitable Peggy Liu; inspiration and co-founder of all things DiaB.

The Luxury of Conscience & how the end of the month comes before the end of the world

16 Tuesday Dec 2014

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ivory_tower_defenders  There are two phrases that I use often:

The Luxury of Conscience.

The End of the Month comes before the End of the world.

They are my way of arriving at the same point: just from two wholly different ends of the social, strategic and storytelling spectrum.

The point I am usually making? That the narrative that will transform desire, reframe sustainability and re-imagine prosperity is potentially being shaped and moulded by the wrong people.

So what constitutes ‘wrong’ you might ask. And I would venture ‘those who might struggle to empathise with their audience – the 85%+ –  through a lack of real everyday insight and socio-cultural understanding into their lives, needs and desires: that of the ‘lived it been there’ kind.

The Luxury of Conscience is a phrase that I sometimes use when describing such a person – someone who has ability to sit back and engage in the bigger conversations around climate, environment and more sustainable lifestyles, their minds uncluttered by making ends meet, either spiritually or financially.

The ability to exercise and expend their energies and passions on designing a higher order human existence predicated on sustainability is indeed luxurious – proof that they exist in the upper tiers of Maslow’s Hierarchy.

They have the luxury of a ‘comfortable security’ – financial, educational, social and cultural – to see beyond the scrabble for immediate provision; for themselves and their families – of the tyranny of bills, eking out the money until the end of the month comes, trying to avoid the pay day loan light bulb in a head clouded by debt.

It is for this reason that those with the Luxury Of Conscience should never be the people who shape the final vernaculars and narrative for a populist movement towards a more sustainable life.

It is indeed a luxury to live in what seems (to the average bank worker or electrician at least) a rather pompous dislocated 6th Form debating society world, extrapolating concepts and frameworks of improved human existence more akin in discourse to the letters of Hitchens’ and the treatise of Popper and Stuart Mill than the average pub banter.

There needs to be a real understanding in there somewhere of the everyday insights, idioms, influences and irrationalities that really connect with everyday people. It is exactly these subtleties that might tip the balance on whether that new narrative flies or fails. And they seem to be desperately lacking here.

Much as the Old Etonian politician who kisses the cheek of the docker’s baby has absolutely no idea what living their life entails (and should therefore be barred from influencing or creating policy that affects their lives in any substantive way), so it goes for the CEOs, the NGOs and the Activist Academics who populate the world of Sustainability. They are amazing. But they are dislocated from the truths of people’s everyday lives to such extremity, that they should be dissuaded from taking to the soap-box or typing the manifesto on behalf of those people they have such little real understanding of.

The people living in the mode of making ends meet are those most likely to be buying products and maintaining lifestyles that offend every statute in the sustainability rule-book – and doing it at scale.

They rarely do this maliciously. The concept and detailed understanding of whether a 3-blade razor or food product threatens the ecosystem of the planet, a precious resource or a community is the furthest thing from their mind – and therefore not something they are wilfully disregarding.

Saying that, equally, they do react badly when someone steps up into their eye-line with a message that seems to expect everything of them with little immediate benefit.

Breaking the line of sight between them and the end of the month with a fairly long-termist do-less/reduce/recycle/reuse message does not go down well.

Many people – the majority bloc of the 85%+ who are currently disengaged in this conversation – are living in a bi-polar world: a world whose greater potential for immediate gratification is bluntly counterpointed by an equally great potential for immediate disappointment or failure.

And we have to respect this – and shape and present narratives and solutions that are meaningful and positive in light of the world they live in: that enlighten them and enable them to make a considered and fully informed decision for themselves and the lifestyle they the choose to adopt.

We must also remember that the idea of a diminished or diminishing lifestyle fundamentally goes against the evolutionary gene pool imperative of acquire, appropriate and accrue that most of us are compelled by. It is hard to dismiss and de-list that which you have yet to have the pleasure and experience of.

It is far less onerous task to flick off or set aside the tyranny of the gene pool imperative when you come from the elite tier – as someone that already enjoys the benefits of being at the top of the socio-cultural ladder of humanity.

Having been liberated from the striving and surviving mode, you are free to discard that which others are still struggling to acquire.

You are free to discard the clutter of beliefs, attitudes, behaviours and material things that you or those generations before you have spent so much time collecting and curating.

The populist agenda and narrative can never solely mapped by people in rare places and cocooned in a bubble of otherness, set apart from the everyday lives of everyday people. They might try and inspire it, prod it, provoke it or record it: most certainly provide the substantial sustainability truths that underwrite it – but the Great British Story Book of Enduring Human Prosperity is being written in the pub, not the library.

Laws of similarity are what work in our highly tribal stratified social world.

There are many anecdotal instances where people from marginalised and degraded tribes, cultures and communities rued and resented the day that (predominantly) white middle class liberals started having anything to do with any form of their social development or increasing well being – devoid as they are of any of the cultural background or deeper understandings of what makes these people who they are.

So one might ask the question: what in any god’s name are we thinking when we task a bunch of PHD+ super rational and highly intellectual predominantly upper middle class people to construct an emotional and compelling argument or story to inspire and convince the 85% + people out there from a C2DE background of anything: the Laws of Dissimilarity seem heavily at work here.

It is no surprise that the majority of NGO activists are seen by the average working class kid as a bunch of bleeding heart liberals without the faintest idea of what living and surviving in the real world actually might entail. Unfair? Possibly. But in the real material terms of security, environment and financial status; quite correct.

So I think we need to do a little bit of filing, framing and a whole lot of question asking – and they need to be the right questions of the right people.

To look at what the right kind of questions might mean we should perhaps look at the context and culture of the different tribes involved in this dash for the answer.

We already know that some 7-15% of people (depending on which and whose sliding scale of insight data we use) have adopted and embraced to a greater degree the idea of changing their lifestyle to some substantial degree to do their part for a more harmonious positive human existence. So focusing a new narrative on them would, to be fair, be a waste of our energy.

Them aside, the top percentiles fall in to 3 categories – there are the corporates and high net worth individuals and of course Brands

Corporates – we have all seen them; the enlightened ones – setting some form of agenda – especially those delivering the props of prosperity up into the god light of the all seeing consumer eye – the multinational FMCG, retail, Food & Beverage, tech and fashion brands. They are hamstrung to some degree by their investor relations but as Unilever has already proven, these relationship can be tested and reshaped – and their consumer perceptions changed – but they need the right narrative.

High net worth individuals – this group are either shaping mass consumption trends through shaping their own business (Kerring leaps to mind) or they are in a position to trade massive blocks of shares in such a way as to heavily influence the people running the companies on which their gaze might fall. They have a filter for seeking exceptional financial performance screwed into their psyche – but they can be the most vocal on the positive impact on Long term profitability and growth from more sustainable and inspired operations.

And we are clear about how the brands that stitch themselves into the fabric of people’s everyday lives can start to shade and shape what they do to deliver a more enduring aspiration without passing on the cost. M&S is exceptional in its ability to respect its place in the fabric of the great British way of life by repaying the society in which it thrives with a smarter lighter and kinder business offering stand out solutions without making the customer foot the bill for Plan A sensibilities in product premiums.

If we look at these super players in the luxury of conscience stratosphere – we can separate them out as demanding a particular shade of micro or ‘shadow’ narrative – linked to the whole yet very particularly tuned to the closed room conversations that fuel their world. The narrative and the ask for the top end is very specific.

If we separate them out (along with the 7-15% who are already playing nice) it enables us to get a clearer view of what I like to call the ‘End Of The Monthers’ – those whom engage their conscience on a strictly Planet Me basis – my family my tribe my community my world.

How do we bring ‘End of The Monthers’ onside?  They do not have the luxury of just turning everything in their life on its head. So how do we facilitate and enable them

Partially that should come in the form of some simple playful tools that help them  and partially in a mode of educating them in such a way as to add value to their lives.

The inspiration for one tool idea came from a UK Dream Workshop. It was a piece of language that came out of one of the workshops around the lighter brighter approach to cleaning up ones slightly dustier lifestyle and consumption habits.

Someone told the story of a Window Cleaner who explained that he had to give something away to get it all back – and to convert a street, he used to do one person’s windows randomly for free. The reason: because until you’ve had your eye’s opened to the before and after you can easily just not bother. So one bit of tasty squeegee work And they became his Word of Mouth campaign.

So we thought that perhaps to inspire a smarter lighter brighter life in a way that was helpful and easy, we could create an app or site experience where people could populate the info on things in their life – finance/insurance – food shopping – car purchase – travel etc, and then ask the site to ‘squeegee that’ – at which point the site would use an aggregated information programme to review the information put in and see whether by post code region profile etc the costs of their lifestyle could be reduced – and their consumption ‘cleaned up’. We could call it, prosaically, #Squeegeemylife.

And perhaps the next wave of apprenticeships that we develop in the UK should include internships at major brands and businesses for young people from underprivileged backgrounds – those without the Luxury of Conscience – expressly to allow them the luxury of learning the benefits of shaping and securing a lighter life: individually, communally, regionally and eventually nationally. And in such a way as to ensure that when they take their ‘stories’ back into the pub, they resonate and have meaning and integrity.

If we don’t engage the man and woman in the pub meaningfully and authentically we are wilfully passing over the clay for the new model of our more resilient and enduring prosperity to the likes of Mr Farage.

Blimey.

 

 

Thrift shops, The Man Drawer & the lighter guide to sustainability storytelling.

06 Monday Jan 2014

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ImageEven in the terribly outré, groovy, fame seeking world of fashion, we’re still surprisingly short of getting it right in regards to lighter sustainability storytelling on a populist scale.

When we set about the serious task of enlightening people to the benefits of up-cycling, recycling and reusing clothes, therein lies the problem. The ‘serious’ word: the first cousin of worthy, nephew of pious, uncle of heavy, stepfather of boring and the next-door neighbour to ‘I’d rather stick spoons in my eyes’.

We just seem to get wrapped up in the idea that the environmental and social benefits of doing it are enough to make it really really attractive to people and we forget to seduce and engage and inspire.

Recycling clothes with some panache is at least hanging in there Cali style. Andreas choice, at 2 million + Youtube hits uses her Valley girl whatevrrr guide to Britney style t-shirt recycling to tempt a large proportion of like minded girls and boys to check her out.  And the prize for how to recycle a t.shirt into a hoody dress at 316,000+ you tube views goes to GiannyL

But the prize for creative storytelling in regards to promoting thrift and granddad’s clothes must go to Micklemore & Ryan Lewis’ Thrift Shop at almost 479 million Youtube views. Okay, it breaks all the PC rules so perhaps doesn’t quite tick every do-good box. The sandpaper swearing comes with the territory.  There’s collateral damage in there; the B*&@h word always sadly present: a lazy street slang that not only degrades the recipient but also demeans the user. BUT.

Whether we like it or not, the sheer size of audience Micklemore Et Al attract is staggering – and if only 10% of that audience eschewed another piece of Primark tat for an old OXFAM onesie next time they went clubbing, that makes for 4.7 million people NOT buying a $30 T or skirt that will go from body fill to land fill in the inappropriate and possibly sexist wink of an eye.

The sensational intellect that threads up-cycle and recycle innovations in fabric and textile re-engineering and reuse into systemic process and practice strategies for smarter lighter clothing consumption are both laudable and impressive – but when it comes to creating storytelling to generate some infectious feel-good around them we still need to find the common touch more often.

M&S’s Shwopping comes super close, using the exceptional ambassadorial skills and unmitigated charm and integrity of Joanna Lumley. Her ability to communicate the benefits of recycling those old clothes for good with elegance and aspirational panache is wholly infectious.

So perhaps we just need to do a little gap analysis to define or reveal some smarter storytelling formulae to get us closer to what good looks like more often.

But lightening up is a great place to start.

Having just finished a conversation recently on the toxic nature of tech and battery disposal, I was reminded of the stand up comedian Michael Mcintyre’s Man Drawer sketch – a sublime stroke of observational genius.

With eye-watering clarity of purpose, he unearthed one of the most expansive, multi-site and otherwise invisible storage facilities for old tech and used batteries in the western world: Men’s Special drawers. Drawers packed with tat of every shape, hue, nature and function. A veritable treasure trove.

Now most Youtube stuff around tech and mobile disposal never seems to get beyond a few thousand hits.

But I’d venture that if we got Michael Mcintyre to re-task the Man Drawer sketch as the leading drive in ‘a how to smartly recycle tech and safely dispose of batteries’ campaign we may be in danger of even getting Jeremy Clarkson to think twice.

Suddenly, the content ideas that drop out of this topic also become a lot more interesting. I would love to create a real time infographic based upon the Man Drawer.

Imagine if, having run a small pilot sample to identify a standard unit of control for type, quantity and status of ‘stuff’ in the average Man Drawer, we took it city by city – estimating the number of Man Drawer men between 25 and 55  – and running the numbers to identify potential quantity, sources and scales of tech and batteries lying around – their potential recycle reuse and disposal values – their latent capability or functionality, even untapped energy and intel sources (the SIM graveyard and quantity of rechargeable batteries lying uncharged!). I can already see the real time dials spinning.

Back to the point though, ‘funny’ can unlock a rather arcane and not terribly seductive topic with a lightness of touch usually missing from the average piece of communication around what should be a smarter, lighter living strategy.

So, between leopard-skin onesies in da club, a man with a relentless-stride approach to illuminating the text of everyday life, and a more enlightened approach to how we story-tell, I do think we can get there.

We just need to remember perhaps that sometimes its OK for the messenger to get danced around or laughed at: it’s a whole lot better than being shot.