Plenty of brainfood at Picnic Festival 2011
I was delighted to represent the South West at Picnic Festival 2011 in Amsterdam earlier this month, as part of the European Creative Business Network’s trade mission.
For those who don’t know the Picnic festival, this is what they say on their rather fabulous website.
PICNIC is about innovative ideas for business, people and society. It is a platform that brings together people from diverse backgrounds who like to exchange ideas and insights and are keen to expose themselves to ideas outside their own area of expertise.
Urban Futures
This year’s festival revolved around the theme of urban futures. Like most conferences there was a good deal of talking about current problems and their causes.
But what I found unique about Picnic were the solutions and answers that people were offering up. It wasn’t just the amount of answers being shared, it was the creativity, insight, and boldness of many of them. In most cases people were not just theorising about what could happen, but they were talking about visions that they’d already realised in truly inspirational and jaw dropping projects.
William McDonough told us that (even though there’s four times the body mass of them on the planet than us) “Ants don’t have a population problem, and they all have jobs”. He warned us that: “A regulation is a signal of design failure”. His overriding message was that “Being less bad is not being more good. We need to turn around”. He went on to show us breathtaking examples of his own, tree like, living architecture projects.
You really should watch the video of his talk here (with an introduction from Brad Pitt no less)
Charles Landry put his vision forward for a creative city which “allows ordinary people to make the extraordinary happen”.
Harry van Dorenmalen from IBM believes that “Creativity is the best thing in Life. It opens minds and brings people together”.
And Mark Rolston of Frog Design showed us how “The city is the platform, the people are the computers and the sensors”
Through his work on New York’s 911 memorial, Jake Barton guided us through how digital tools can be used to tell stories, bring communities together, and provide platforms to activate human relationships.
Many heads were nodding in the audience when Beeker Northam of Dentsu London reminded us that “When you make anything, you are making it for the world, it adds to our culture, so make it as good as you possibly can”.
Joost Bakker would make the perfect dinner guest. Not only would he cook you the healthiest meal you’ve possibly ever eaten, but he’d also build a sustainable and waste free restaurant in which to eat it.
There was also a very tangible spirit of openness, collaboration and sharing from everyone I heard from and spoke to.
Peter Corbett’s talk summed this up perfectly. He spoke about his hack project work with digital communities and how it’s important to “find a mission that is greater than yourself”, “give more than you take”, “give without expectation” and to “grow the ecosystem not the profits”. All points with which I strongly agree.
A full hamper
One of the values of Picnic Festival is that it:
is a gathering of friends old and new, where everyone brings something to the table.
So what did I bring along in my hamper to set down on the picnic rug?
I was talking to people about hack projects. A little bit about how we work them and what we’ve made, but mostly about how they can be such great tools to get things made, to turn ideas into real projects, to get concepts up and running quickly so they can be tested, evaluated and progressed.
Hack style projects offer a framework and a mentality of working that fits so perfectly with the spirit of what I saw at Picnic Festival 2011. They’re about people working together, using the platforms now available, being creative, making a difference and making our urban future a wonderful place.
And if I’m wrong and all else fails? Well, you’ll soon be able to buy a brand new, perfectly legal, off the shelf, ready to roll, new identity from artist Heath Bunting
Many thanks to ECBN, South West Screen, fellow South West representatives: Mehjabeen Price, Anthony Story, Matt Golding and Jake Hobbs, and all the other fabulous people I met that week.
