To guide me along on my 15-year creative project (aka Retirement) in 2010 I set out a grid of words that seemed most important to me at the time. Referring back to these words gave me a sense of being on track to some, as yet unkown, destination; opened up new lines of thinking; and acted as a very loose form of self-assessment (re being on the right track).
In 2025, as this phase of my creative development was drawing to a close and it was time to pivot on to new adventures over the 2025-30 period, the set of words still seem just as relevant as steering references. Only 4 of the original 135 guiding words were dropped (2025, twitter, undertaking, and -Stans). A few others had minor adjustments (‘business models’ became ‘models’; ‘art’ became ‘arts’, ‘potry’ became ‘poetics’ and ‘lodged’ was extended into ‘nested’).
This still gives me a flexible and supportive vocabulary with which to think my way forward towards 2030.
| fragments | aspects | flexibility | constructions | linkages |
| networks | contemporary | arts | writings | poetics |
| creativity | careers | public | curated | content |
| transitional | developmental | progress | photography | authenticity |
| serendipity | exploration | wanderings | walking | capacities |
| capabilities | support | simplicity | expertise | consistency |
| aspirations | puzzling | research | knowing | evidence |
| what might work | outcomes | impacts | innovatory | understandings |
| interpretations | solutions | perceptions | imagery | being/doing |
| models | enterprise | conversations | policy | implementation |
| (multi)layered | representations | ideas | people | ethnography |
| social practices | emergence | ambiguity | complexity | uncertainty |
| contingency | structurings | regeneration | renewal | reshaping |
| organisational | leadership | managing | Places/spaces | Spaces |
| locations | neighbourhoods | cities | urban | resilience |
| smart | hesitancy | doubt | maps | landscapes |
| meanings | sense-making | story-telling | meanings | histories |
| cultural | identities | wellbeing | flourishing | interesting |
| thoughtfulness | reliability | responsibilities | value | Gain |
| changing | thinking | forward | differences | Worth |
| reportings | recordings | (non) fictions | archive | Lodged/nested |
| pursuit | concern | outputs | eclectic | broad-based |
| geographies | psychological | personalities | by design | features |
| electronic | publication | readings | peripheral | usability |
| documenting | articles | notions | plannings | contribution |
| made | Birmingham | engaging | globalisation | scale/pace |
| learning | pull/push | up/down/across | shared | existences |
| alternative | future | picturings | granularity | services |
| employability | caring/careful | quality/qualities | observations | accounts |
| journeying | resource(s)/fulness | state(s) | sides/edges | Gaps |
| changes/changing | patterns | range | variety | constellation |
| variety | quirkiness | extending | framework | inter-connected |
| conceptual | relational | real/virtual | indicators | options/choices |