The Word's the Thing

Forward Thinking

>> Forward Thinking Developments exists to foster research and innovative thinking and writing - within contexts broadly related to learning, social and community behaviours, public developments..........and so on >>

Current interests

Forward Thinking Developments is currently interested in a range of topics linking:

• complexity......and how this related to managing and developing social outcomes
• learning across distributed networks; outcome-focused learning; informal learning; learning cities
• user-determined services; what constitutes 'expertness'
• links between myriads of small actions and larger-scale public processes
• nature of evidence, causability, leverage, models
• nature of progress; why things aren't as good as they can be

If your own thinking connects to any such things, or you want to suggest other areas worth thinking about, email ideaswall@thewordsthething.org.uk.

- Research is increasingly being linked to a need to produce useful outcomes - often with commercialism in mind, or with policy direction in mind. 'Research', like so many other notions, can mean a variety of things to different people. Whilst 'really useful' research is important there is also a place for research-type activities that are undertaken for no immediate gain, for playfulness, simply because a puzzle has presented itself. Such activities have value if they stimulate curiosity and provide different ways of seeing our social world.

Some of the ideas already emerging include:

• In what sense can Birmingham be thought of as existing?
• What kind of city is Birmingham?

- This is an idea that will emerge over time rather than being a single ready-made product. The original thoughts arose during discussions about what extra value loosely-linked networks of thinkers might bring to a learning city; whether distributed learning and knowledge can add to an overall sense of development; the ways that lots of small fragments of understanding might connect up into larger wisdoms......

More thought is needed, in more ways than one.

One of the early activities underway is to explore ways of finding out the kinds of things that a modern complex city (like Birmingham, UK) might need to know more about if it is to really flourish.......