R:2025 – An interim stocktake (Sept 2016)

R:2025 is an extended, fifteen year, creative programme of activities; a contemporary exploration (to 2025) of things linked to representations, ideas, people and places.

It has a couple of overall intentions. One of these (To engage in a range of exploratory activities, making the outcomes from these activities freely available) is felt to be substantially being met. There will now be a greater emphasis on developing the other strand (To explore how any insights gained can have real-world real-time impacts and value).

Activities underway since 2010 have been shaped within a loose and flexible framework constructed from a number of threads. Substantial progress has been made in exploring:

  • unfolding interpretations of ‘contemporary’, ‘progress’ etc
  • the pursuit of writing in a range of styles, for a variety of purposes
  • issues associated with cities and urban living
  • thoughts around places, spaces, neighbourhoods and locations
  • the construction of identities (of people; of places)
  • concerns with inequality, fairness and social change

More now needs to be done around:

  • aspects of learning and development
  • concerns with wellbeing, flourishing and sustainability
  • approaches to ‘value’ and ‘impact’ (at personal, public and social levels)
  • the nature of evidence, research, knowledge and understandings
  • the characteristics and usefulness of art and creativity
  • aspects of emergence, complexity, uncertainty and contingency
  • public and private innovation and policy implementations

The website already holds a substantial amount of eclectic content from the first five years of activity. This content is meeting the original aims of being broad-based, interesting, responsible, thoughtful, and different. There have been a number of seminars, workshops and focused conversations in cities in UK, USA and Canada; as well as the use of a small number of related blogs, and the publication of several books. The activity was intended to incorporate other outputs. These have included a photographic portfolio and a small number of paper/clay-based art objects: all based around the same framework listed earlier. There is more to be done to build up this stock of art objects. Links are being made with the broad ‘world of art’ – writings based on exhibitions; an outline framework for work on cities and public art; being Researcher in Residence attached to a 2015 exhibition.

The emphases within the work have ranged from quite personal concerns to recurring issues across an increasingly urbanised, globalised and uncertain world. The endeavour is still considered to be a contemporary undertaking since it reflects many of the themes of identities, change, ambiguities, relationships, fracturings and aggregations: locally, nationally, and globally.

The approach continues to be one of developmental and exploratory puzzling, and of purposeful development. Conversations with key contacts have confirmed that what has been achieved so far can be regarded as linked, curated content that forms an extended creative programme operating at a number of levels and in a variety of ways.

At the beginning of the activity a potential Vocabulary was set out. This was composed of words that would be expected to recur in articles, thinking and discussions. A review of these words has been undertaken. It is concluded that nothing additional needs to be incorporated and that any weak spots in usage of the vocabulary are highly likely to be addressed within the next set of developments.

Sitting behind the activity there is still a desire to impact on a number of social issues, and to explore the ways that creative activities can do this is the current context. Although stress is put on flexibility and emergence, the overall driving idea remains clear:

To use creative activities to make demonstrable contributions to changing the ways in which people think, behave and interact; in order to reach better understandings of social processes and developments with the hope of levering some practical impact on a number of significant issues.

This aspect of the work is seen as an integral part of the project’s development activities and is regarded as one of its greatest challenges. It is in its very early stages and will be a focus over the next three years and beyond. This will be interesting, but not straightforward. Emerging notions around usefulness, public value and social impact will increasingly be drawn on as the work continues. It is believed that continued, occasional reporting against this intention is important.

This is the first of such public reportings.

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