Progress and women´s magazines

I gave a talk today at the Diaconia University of Applied Sciences to an auditorium filled with media students. The subject of the entire day was the responsibility of lifestyle media for what they present.

My talk (unfortunately in Finnish) is below. I focused on how a progressive lifestyle journalist should position himself or herself. I claim, that it is very easy to get stuck to the old rant on how journalists should be independent and not promote any specific idea. I claimed that the justification for being progressive for instance on sustainability can be found from the Ethical Code of Conduct for Journalists where it states that journalists have a responsibility to tell people what is happening in the world. And as climate change is the big issue of our time, you do your job poorly if you don´t build ethical and environmental norms into your work. Already journalists have made a commitment for human rights, this is the other big ethical test.

In the presentation I suggested that when dealing with sustainability, lifestyle media should build on what they do best: enthusiasm and encouragement for action. They should promote excellent and ethical choices with the same enthusiasm they promote a new eyeliner. Making things appealing works far better than the message about giving something up.

The third main point I raised was on how change in lifestyles happens. This I would claim is the ultimate test for women´s magazines. Most lifestyle media still deals with change by showing one person one morning transforming their life completely. This is understandable cos it´s easy to build a story around it. But if you actually look into research on how change happens, people who do big transformations always relate to other people. By showing this link and giving the readers tips on how to win support and get people along, lifestyle media could be one of the most powerful instigators of action for the better.

Edistyksellisyys ja naistenlehdet

View more presentations from Demos Helsinki.

How Are You Doing?

Serviced & Virtual Offices - Bishopsgate, Meeting Room
Originally uploaded by ExecutiveOffices

As part of a project we are doing at Demos Helsinki, I have spent time reviewing and reading various future reports on the competencies and skills the Finnish society and Finnish companies need. One of the big issues seems to be the need for better people skills. Companies and experts see that customers are more and more demanding year by year. Simultaneously companies need to make sure that the best people really want to work for them. This means that understanding people is broken into better HR, better customer understanding and better self understanding.

One of the ways to support better self understanding are the annual evaluation talks that managers are required to give to the staff. I have taken part in two of them in the last two weeks. In one of them I was the one interviewing, in the other I was being interviewed.

These talks usually get quite a bad rap. Most of my friends are able to tell horrid stories of a boss who really does not listen or continuously interrupts the staff member. I have also taken part in a talk where the boss starts the discussion by saying:"Well, we have two hours reserved for this but I don´t think we need all of that." In another case the boss had left most of my critical comments on her performance out of the report. Experiences like these or not letting the employee talk send a clear signal of inequality.

I do understand that experiences like these make a lot of people frustrated. However, I would encourage both the boss and the employee to take this experience seriously. This builds from the amazing two positive experiences this week.

At Demos Helsinki we do not have a clear hierarchy, which means that we have divided the responsibility to give the evaluation talks amongst the staff. This means everyone gives and everyone gets a talk. Especially in an organisational culture like ours a structured question list really helped making the discussion useful for both parties. When you are asked to evaluate your own competencies and get feedback on them and your performance, you are also given a chance to recognise how you could develop yourself. Somewhat formal questions on your development ideas for the organisation are actually somewhat challenging.

At least I noticed that my own view on my work and my colleague´s view differed quite a lot. I was quite surprised by the things mentioned as my strengths and as areas that need improvement. Discussing them through and searching examples that prove the point makes one realise how others see you. The talk made me like my place of work more. When a person you value tells you what you are good at is incredibly empowering - and useful. I left both of the talks smiling, feeling like I learned something.

The views in the reports I have gone through paint a picture of a working life where the need to develop and renew oneself is continuous and never-ending. If this estimate is correct, the need to know oneself becomes crucial. But we too often think that all this needs to be done alone.

Shaken, Yet Still Standing

SDP - social democratic party of finland
Originally uploaded by heipmann

Yesterday´s elections were quite exciting, I have to say. It is always fantastic and good for democracy when things get shaken. Here a few observations:

- True Finns: Most of Finnish media is making the wrong analysis on this political party. Putting the party leader Timo Soini and his folks in the same category with the Dutch islamophobe Geert Wilders is a misrepresentation of the truth. The policy and popularity of True Finns works much more on the anti-establishment card than on xenophobia. This is quite obvious when you listen to them in debates. The party has a natural attraction amongst poor pensioners or unemployed youth - people feeling abandoned by the illusion we call the welfare state. Taking these fears and this anger seriously is a difficult challenge for the rest of the parties.
And let´s face it: how low would the voting rate have been WITHOUT True Finns? The fact that people wish to express anti-establishment sentiments and disappointment by voting is something we should take joy from.

- SDP: That old poster in the picture tells it all. SDP´s slogan: We will make some noise on your behalf. A political party unable to provide a role for the citizen deserves a defeat. As someone wrote on Facebook today: the problems of this party-turned-institution are the same as the Lutheran Church´s. And it is not saved by recycling Blairite slogans from 1997. Defending the System goes down badly at a time when people are seeking for a sense of involvement and belonging. Yes We Can is not only a disguising slogan for old politics, it means that you actually involve people in making change happen. It is a new way of doing politics and calls for a new way of building trust and communities. If they have the courage, this is a great opportunity for Social Democrats: empowering the people in the margins to be change makers in their own lives.
And let´s face it: we have come far from the 1903 goal on the separation of church and state when the leading man of the Social Democrats is a priest who is not even a member of the party.

- Greens: Good tail wind, have to give them that. I am not really interested in the boxes provided by other parties for the Greens: garden party of the right or the new Communists? This discussion does not really solve anything and is purely an intellectual masturbation exercise of political hacks.
If I would be making strategies for the party, I would try to find ways to diversify the party´s image from the current one: an upper middle-class smart party posse setting themselves above the rest of the society. The Greens should listen carefully to the increasing comments on arrogance and inability to understand other view points. Softening of actions, image and policy might be worth considering.

- National Coalition (Kokoomus): Kokoomus is still the biggest party in Finland although they did not make their target of keeping four seats. The party ran a campaign relying highly on the youthful Minister of Finance and the Minister of Foreign Affairs (neither of whom were running). They ran a campaign focusing on good mood, simplifications and happy-happy-joy-joy - an exemplary campaign of the republic of entertainment.
But the party stumbled in the last weeks when some candidates pushed some content to the surface which did not fit the party line. Cartoon TV ads do not explain away candidates calling immigrants social bums or questioning climate change.
This is the destiny of all parties controlled by spin doctors: there comes a point when you need to realise that you just cannot control it all.

All and all, the results tell a good story. The parties which have invested in their local actions and on bringing new people in did well in these elections. The ones at a loss with their objectives were punished by the voters. This is what we call democracy.

The Other Iran

Iran: A nation of bloggers from Mr.Aaron on Vimeo.

This video is a skillful and important reminder on how we need to make the difference between a country and its leaders and remember diversity when we talk about a country. Something to keep in mind whether we talk about Russia, the US, Iran or Finland.

It also makes me think of a book I got from Reza Abedini on Iranian contemporary graphic design. Reza´s book shows how there is another layer of graphic reality next to the government-controlled images we see in the news every day. Videos like these are truly empowering. Thanks, Charlie.

Nordic

Dagens Nyheter
Originally uploaded by Henrik

I sat the last two days in a seminar by the Nordic Culture Fund on diversity and Nordic cultural work. On the last day we ended up in a heated debate in our workshop on whether being Nordic is an identity and how does that come together with goals of inclusion and integration.

I said first in the discussion that I would see the Nordic countries rather as a natural area of collaboration rather as an identity with historic routes. The ethnic-cultural-historical argument for the Nordic countries easily stands in the way of true equality and integration. The links are obvious to those Europeans who claim that we share the same values and a history.

I realised towards the end of the seminar that my idea of the Nordic region was something special and I feel parts of it can be explained through the Finnish language. I realise that I have grown up with an idea of the Nordic region as something where peace and justice prevail. This is something I picked up from school, not that much which country oppressed which Nordic country at which time and who really had the vikings.

I was brought up with the idea that the Nordic identity and aspiration can be explained through actions of people like Anna Lindh, Olof Palme, Martti Ahtisaari or Hans Blix. That Finland was on its way to being Nordic. That Nordic means also peculiar people who do not fit to all conventions and who dare to touch our sensitivities like Tove Jansson, Lars von Trier or Ingmar Bergman. That Nobel Peace Prize illustrates Nordic actions by Nordic and non-Nordic people. That being Nordic means believing in the human being, having a clear sense of ethics, trusting your neighbours (passport-free border-crossing for ages) and working for the benefit of mankind. That here in the North we give from our own when we have enough. That Nordic is something we need to work for - hard. And more often than we would like to admit, we we fall short in living up to those noble ideals. That Nordic is not a state of being, it is a responsibility for action. And that of course we should not claim to own this package of ideals but that the combination of them makes our life up in these circumstances worthwhile.

I wonder if this articulation of the Nordic identity could also function as a tool for integration and inclusion. It may sound slightly naive but it gives me a sense of direction and a reason for optimism. In term of integration we wound need recognise those beautiful ideas, make concrete the individual and societal work needed to make our way towards them and be honest about the shortcomings in terms of greed, protectionism and selfishness. Of this we have a tremendous amount of examples from the last 20 years.

That we would consciously shift our focus to what we can become at our best and to our personal responsibility rather than obsessing over a shared past. The Nordic Dream seen here would be very different from the European or American one.

Minorities in the Media

Henry Jenkins
Originally uploaded by Joi

"One is tempted to argue that African-Americans (and other minorities) enjoy greater opportunities to communicate beyond their own communities now than ever before. But we need to be careful in making that claim. Recent research suggests that there are far fewer minority characters on prime time network television shows this season than there were five years ago. There remains an enormous ratings gap between white and black Americans: the highest rating shows among black Americans often are among the lowest rated shows among white Americans. The exception, curiously enough, are reality television programs, like American Idol, which historically have had mixed race casts.

We've seen some increased visibility of black journalists and commentators throughout the 2008 campaign season -- and they may remain on the air throughout an Obama administration -- but we need to watch to make sure that they do not fade into the background again. But, if we follow your argument, even those figures who make it into the mainstream media are, at best, relaying critiques and discourses which originate within the black community and at worse, they are involved in a process of self-censorship which makes them an imperfect vehicle for those messages.

The paradox of race and media may be that black Americans have lost access to many of the institutions and practices which sustained them during an era of segregation without achieving the benefits promised by a more "integrated" media environment. And that makes this a moment of risk -- as well as opportunity -- for minority Americans.

I suspect we are over-stating the problem in some ways. There are certainly some serious constraints on minority participation in cyberspace but a world of networked publics also does offer some opportunities for younger African-Americans to deliberate together and form opinion, which we need to explore more fully here."

In the quote above, MIT Professor Henry Jenkins brings together the two issues that I am focusing on at the moment: future of media and diversity. Jenkins upholds his reputation as a critical, academic but enthusiastic researcher. In his blog, Jenkins is currently engaged in a debate on the future of African Americans communities online with Dayna Cunningham, the Executive Director of the Community Innovators Lab at MIT. In her first post, Cunningham described how the black voice is disappearing from the media sphere:

"However, I would argue that today, black politics has largely been reduced to the electoral and legislative spheres; African American media too often promote black celebrity and individual advancement, and along with much of the black civic infrastructure, rarely focus on freedom discourse as a means of exploring strategies for collective political action and accountability to black interests. Perhaps only the Church has survived as an independent space for black voice--and even the Church is sometimes compromised by "prosperity gospel" preachers who have little time for freedom discourse."

Jenkins answers well to the concerns expressed by Cunningham and acknowledges the risks posed by the fact that online it is very difficult to contain ideas in a certain context. There are still two chapters to follow in their discussion, I recommend staying alert.

Greener Across The Border

Globalicious!
Originally uploaded by rogiro

Today´s Forum Virium Hidden Treasure seminar showed the difficulty of international comparisons in policy debate. A presentation painted a picture of the Dutch innovation system and Innovation Platform as a smooth and efficient actor in fostering innovations. However, what was not mentioned was the heated discussion before the last Dutch parliamentary elections whether the entire organization should continue. It was largely seen as an inefficient bureaucratic failure. Alike what was not mentioned today at Vanha was the recent book by Frans Nauta, the first General Secretary of the Innovation Platform, in which he highly critically went through the setup and work of the body. Nauta, who is currently lecturing on innovation in Arnhem, left the office out of frustration quite quickly due to immense struggles with the government engine.

Before the last elections I did an article for Suomen Kuvalehti on the Dutch Innovation Platform as it was assembled following a Finnish example. Most of the interviewees then criticized the Innovation Platform for its broad agenda and the big publicity around its launch. Whereas in Finland the Science and Technology Council is not known by most people and is largely seen as a coordination body, in the Netherlands the government did a huge publicity stunt around its launch – i.e. it was doomed to fail in its delivery. As Joeri van den Steenhoven said in my interview for Suomen Kuvalehti then:”In Finland compromise means that people discuss, vote on the propositions and everyone lives with the result. In the Netherlands compromise means that we discuss and discuss, we split into numerous subcommittees and make an overall strategy so broad that everyone can keep on doing what they were already doing.” As someone on the coffee break rightly said in the Forum Virium seminar:”The problem with the Innovation Platform is that it has no money so it really cannot initiate much.”

I am all for international comparisons and learning from others. I also hope the Innovation Platform has learned from its start. I am also all for investment in innovation and R&D. But without a full picture of the international case, we end up making the wrong conclusions of it and therefore carry out our changes in false consciousness. But then again, I guess we have come full circle now in the Dutch-Finnish relations: some years ago van den Steenhoven´s and Nauta´s Kennisland was an active lobby in the Netherlands for learning from the Finnish model following Manuel Castells´ and Pekka Himanen´s work. Now we are presented in Helsinki the work of the Innovation Platform only to be followed by statements praising the leadership position of the Netherlands in investing in innovation. How did it go: what goes around, comes around.

Some Men Are More Equal Than Others

Milk Movie Poster
Originally uploaded by monikalel42

"All men are created equal. No matter how hard you try, you can never erase those words." That quote from gay activist Harvey Milk was one of the most moving scenes in Milk, the film on his life and death. Milk´s bold stand on equality led finally to his assassination. Some of his positions sound radical still in 2009 like the strategy that only by showing that we all have gay friends, teachers and family members, you truly pave the way for general support for equality.

Gus van Sant´s film is a great act in showing the struggle Milk and his peers went through, how far we as societies have come from those days (homosexuality is largely decriminalised) and, sadly, how far we still are from living up to those words (Proposition 8 passed in California just a few months back). And in the Obama era, it is good to remember that he was not the first one coining a phrase like:"You gotta give them hope."

The Academy Awards take place in a week or so and I have now seen three of the Best Picture nominees: Milk, Frost/Nixon and Slumdog Millionaire. Even before seeing Benjamin Button and The Reader, I dare to state the wish that these three films would win the main prizes. As much as The Reader looks into guilt and human responsibility, I feel the other three films are ones that need more the boost of the win: Milk is a powerful caption of the human sacrifices on the road towards true equality and one of the people who have paved way for all minorities. Slumdog Millionaire captures the aspiration, diversity, celebration and inequality called India and is also one of the rare films that do not need a white man telling a story of Asia or Africa (read: The Last King of Scotland etc.). And finally, Frost/Nixon shakes us awake of the corrupting influence of power and shows what is really the power of journalism.

I would dare to make the following wishes:
Best Picture: Milk
Best Actor in a Leading Role: Frank Langella or Sean Penn
Best Director: Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire)
Best Actress in a leading or supporting role are tricky as I have seen none of the films and actor in a supporting role is hard to judge before seeing Philip Seymour Hoffman and Michael Shannon.

The driver stops his black taxi on a parking lot on Shankill Road. Clear and crisp air flows in from the half-open window. Victor has been driving a taxi in Belfast for 32 years. “31,5 years too long”, he grins.

The entire end of the nearby house is covered by a massive, bright painting. The mural depicts a Protestant paramilitary fighter who was killed before reaching his 30th birthday. As we drive forward, the paintings continue. One celebrates Oliver Cromwell with a gruesome text:”We will not rest before the Catholic Church is crushed.”

This is my first visit to Ireland but these images on the walls are familiar to me through news coverage and popular culture. However, for some reason I had always assumed that these murals were old, from the time before the Good Friday Agreement and ceasefire. Victor sets me straight: most of them are painted in the last 10 years and more keep coming. Same continues on the Catholic side where the British flag is nowhere to be seen and the signs carry out the street names also in Irish.

But the murals were something I saw coming. I knew people have partisan sentiments and that they feel an urge to share them. But the thing that struck me was the so called “peace wall”, a high concrete construction splitting the Catholic and Protestant areas, with additional barbed wire to make the point clear. The backyards near the wall are protected with heavy metal frames to keep out the bricks and stones thrown from the other side. Images from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict pop into my head.

Victor tells us that the hostilities have mostly calmed down and that most of the city is a shared space where people live in peace next to each other. But still, if a Catholic girl meets a Protestant boy from the divided areas, they have no possibilities of living next to their families. A Catholic family would not consider moving into Shakill Road and apparently a house here in these divided areas is still a bit of a risky investment.

There is no plan to tear the peace wall down. Victor tells us that the wall gives people a sense of safety. This is also European Union, this is also in 2009.

On the evening before the tour we meet a friend of mine, a Belfast-based architect, for dinner whose stories validate that Victor is not fooling the poor tourist. The architect tells us that driving around the divided areas makes him so depressed that just some weeks earlier he had to drive over to the sea at Doneghal to get rid of the sense of anxiety. Similar stories occur. A Dublin-born friend tells us that he has never been to Belfast and would feel anxious going over. A Belfast-based Englishwoman tells us over a cup of tea that heading to Dublin for work makes her always much more relaxed. According to her, the tension can be sensed when living in Belfast. We also realise afterwards that Victor was very clear not to disclose his religious background.

Our restaurant on the first evening is called Made in Belfast, a trendy hangout focused on organic and local produce. It is obvious that humour is one way of dealing with the division in the city. The restaurant features a bright-red British poster from the Second World War stating in capital letters an advice that could function as a slogan for Belfast: KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON.

That´s Me

Through a Hazed Mirror
Originally uploaded by Catch the dream

I love these kind of projects. The Finnish Literature Society calls Finns every ten years to send in their stories of what they did on a particular day. These stories are important material to researchers in history and other cultural studies. Ten years ago they got 23 000 stories of Finnish life on a specific day. Today is that day again. I am taking part and encourage every Finn reading this to do the same. You can send in your story the latest on 28 February, more details here.

I am currently involved in a project where this kind of material would definitely be very handy. With a group of people we are putting together a cultural statement around national identity and self image. More details on that later.

When you talk about a self image of a nation, the last weeks have been interesting in this country. Helsingin Sanomat published a big story yesterday stating that Nokia has threatened to leave the country if legislation is not changed in a way that allows employers to look into the basic information (sender, recipient, form of attachment, time etc.) of an email if they suspect leakage of company secrets. Nokia and the government deny these accusations but it sure is interesting how the constitutional committee of the Parliament sees no problem with a legislative change that according to a great majority of legal experts they consulted is in full contradiction with constitutional rights to privacy of correspondence and freedom of speech. Not to take any stand on the validity of these accusation by Helsingin Sanomat but this is once again an example how the idea of civil rights and liberties is not really high on the Finnish political agenda.

This kind of discussion never really catches fire in Finland. This country has a tremendous amount of CCTV cameras and quite extensive rights to security guards but most Finns still think that this is all good and you have no reason for worry if you have not done anything wrong. It all stems from the idea that we are good and honest people and so are all the people holding these extensive powers. Following the same line is the idea that Finland is corruption-free. I have often wondered why there´s no more discussion about the way power ends in the same hands when a person can be at the same time in the city council, in the parliament and in the cabinet. The arguments I have heard are not very convincing:
1. this allows information to go smoothly through the system
2. people have the right to vote whom they want

Journalist Jarmo Aaltonen of Helsingin Sanomat follows the Finnish mentality disturbingly well in his article about politicians sitting in company boards:

"Of course different obligations influence people, some more, some less. This, however, does not make them automatically corrupt criminals. This is just the price one pays for democracy and open society. The alternative would be prohibiting all human interaction."

Seriously, this was published in the biggest daily of the country.

Building Blocks

Stuart Hall, 22 May 2008
Originally uploaded by Rock Chalk Jayhawk Cartographer

Very often in this blog I have made critical remarks on the employer I am about to leave behind, many of those remarks deserved. However, it is essential to also give praise when it is deserved. Today's Princess Margriet Award for cultural diversity was one of these occasions.

I was highly impressed by Stuart Hall, a British thinker I remember reading during my studies. Hall is one of the leading thinkers in the world when it comes to cultural diversity and very much deserved the award handed to him today. His short address to the crowd was very moving on the relationship of many immigrants to their place of origin as a place that does not offer comfort.

The programme stated that his speech would be commented by the Dutch Minister for European Affairs, Frans Timmermans. He very much impressed me with his clarity, his sophistication and his urge to build societies where the majority feels that newcomers do not threaten their belonging. Timmermans quoted well the old notion that if you build a society focusing on the fear of the barbarian, you end up creating a barbarian society without the barbarians. Valuable warning for the European project. It happens too often that ministers use these kinds of occasions for just arrogantly stating the importance of their own presence.

The event also proved that we can create and we need settings where sophisticated art and insightful thinking actually complement each other and where both are needed for making the argument. Thai dancer Pichet Klunchun and French choreographer Jerome Bel's dance performance Pichet Klunchun & Myself on understanding the essense of different traditions of dance and their relationship to their countries of origin was needed to cristallise Hall's speech on the importance of listening.

Moving, straight to the point and warm. Well done, European Cultural Foundation.

Echoes From The Diversity Chamber

Venez comme vous etes
Originally uploaded by amsterboy

It is obvious to everyone that the face of Europe is changing. We are entering an (in my opinion healthier) era, which builds on difference as an opportunity and as a creative potential for Europe. There are more people and countries who are moving away from the “difference does not matter, let´s just get along” rhetoric and wanting to find practical strategies for negotiating the house rules of our cities, countries and Europe. More and more of us are understanding that we can never agree on values and that it is next to impossible to change one´s values. However, what we can do is agree on the ways we live and work together in a way that builds on aspirations rather than on backgrounds.

It is no wonder that the European Union is busy with the subject. With all its languages and growing migration, Europe is going through a serious shakeup. A continent that built up the nation state is now struggling with it. Therefore the year 2008 has been announced to be the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue and a new slogan has been launched: united in diversity. It is difficult to find a politician who would not mention the magic words in an opening speech: intercultural dialogue. Having spent the last two days in a conference in Paris on the subject, this has also been empirically proven on local, national and EU level.

But there is a great risk in this rising interest. The more the phrase ‘intercultural dialogue’ is used without definitions or concrete proposals, the more it faces the risk of turning into a hollow phrase. When intercultural dialogue becomes the issue rather than a practical tool for mediation, the more it detaches from our daily lives. Intercultural dialogue is not something we experience, we experience interactions with other people and we deal with concrete differences of opinion. The last year has taught me that European politicians need serious training on storytelling and on touching also our emotional side next to the pragmatic one.

I cannot change someone’s values by banging them on the head with mine. If I express no sincere interest towards his or her positions and beliefs and do not recognize the difference, we just end up having a pretentious and shallow conversation. We need to focus less on compromise and more on comprehension. We need to dare to go on the level of goals and aspirations and stop with an obsession for instance on national/shared values. The core issue is what we do when we live together, not what we believe in. By being more explicit and detailed, we can also be tough on the ones that break the rules - regardless whether they are native or immigrant.

(This photo from the streets of Paris works well for this theme. Massive McDonalds rebranding campaign on all billboards in Paris saying: Come as you are.)

This Is Who I Am

Saira Khan
Originally uploaded by amsterboy

Having spent a tremendous amount of time in discussions on diversity in the last few years, I cannot tell you how refreshing it is to hear at times also something different than the standard "let´s all just get along" rhetoric. Yesterday´s Diversity Show conference by the Dutch public broadcasters and the European Broadcasting Union was a fresh and bold attempt to get beyond the discussion about problems and cultures. Diversity Show looked at multiculturalism in a way that inspires people and offers us in culture and media fields much more solutions: how diversity on screen and in the workforce allows us to do our work better, find new subjects and make more interesting content.

I was most impressed by the approach, which the presenter Saira Khan and many others had chosen. They defined themselves on stage before the audience had a chance to make their assumptions. They made the statement I would love to hear more often: this is who I am, I am not asking for any special treatment and I have no problem talking about my background - but allow me to do it on my terms. Saira Khan coined the issue well referring to her experience in The Apprentice TV show:"When the rules are the same, you get surprising results."

Personally and professionally the conference was a great inspiration for me. It gave me more confidence that we are doing things right in StrangerFestival: we allow the young video makers to choose what they talk about and what matters to them. We are all experts in our own lives and equality allows us to co-exist and share and feel part of something bigger. This does not mean shying away from differences, it means recognition of everyone´s right to define themselves. Diversity for us in StrangerFestival means that we strive for getting as different voices as possible from a diverse youth population, i.e. giving opportunities for more people and getting better content. In this manner we take a deliberate stand away from projects where minorities are invited to explain how different they are.

Way too often diversity is tackled on the level of an individual and not on the level of the system. Diversity needs to come in to the game in the recruitment phase and when negotiating the shared rules, not only in individual job interviews. As the speaker from IBM said in the Diversity Show:"If I would ever feel that I am promoted because of my cultural background and not my performance, I would leave. But the fact that I know the number of women and minorities in executive positions at IBM, means that someone is keeping score."

And as the last praise for yesterday, the great thing the Dutch public broadcasters had done was making a conference on diversity fun, visually incredible and good entertainment. I have often wondered why people who are able to do great programmes, are not able to translate their skills into making great events. Diversity Show built on competences from television in terms of length and formats of speeches, use of visuals and interaction amongst people. As EBU´s Head of Television Björn Erichsen put it yesterday: Diversity Show has set a new standard for European media conferences.

My Name Is Moscow

DSC07351
Originally uploaded by amsterboy

A smell of urine hits you as you take the steps down to the underpass. The tunnel is swamped with people selling electronics, kitsch souvenirs, pastries and alcohol. As we make our way through the gates down to the metro, the numbers from the presentation earlier during the day hit me: 9 million passengers in public tranport every day. This is Moscow.

And this is only the people who choose for public transport. In the information pack from the British Council they instruct us to head to the airport four hours before departure. It seems absurd but already on the way into the city upon arrival it starts making sense. Two hours moving on snail speed for something like 20 kilometres.

During a presentation by a young architectural office we see fancy designs for gated communities and ski slopes on the rooftops of shopping centres. One of them looks a lot like Rem Koolhaas´ star architecture in China. The smooth PowerPoint presentation makes me think of the demand by lecturer Roy van Dalm: a future plan of a city needs to be authentic, it needs to link to the city´s DNA.

We cannot all become Bilbao or Amsterdam. It is not the right answer for the struggles of Moscow to copy an internationally famous architectural plan when the city is barely coping with its amount of traffic and the thousands of homeless people. Copying others results only into being a second-rate version. An answer to Moscow´s challenging is not starting from scratch, it is seeing how people can start imagining a new sense of being together building on the history of the city. In other words, how Moscow can become a better Moscow. In order to build a community, you need to give citizens the possibility to continue and enhance their individual experience of Moscow.

I would not trust governments to come up with this new imagination. I have seen two many cities proclaiming themselves as the creative capital. But I do feel that you need artistic and activist interventions to stimulate seeing common things in a quirky manner. You need positive engagement and a bit of silliness even in a form of a apartment block bingo or guerilla gardening. This does not mean wasting a lot of money on star architects, it means change in the IKEA style: giving people affordable access to imagination stimulates them to start experimenting with new looks and feelings. Moscow needs the attitude of guerilla gardener Richard Reynolds: I can do this too. I can change Moscow.

The Troubles

Tampere 1918
Originally uploaded by mun kuvia

"What name did they use in your family, Madam President?"

An innocent question in a discussion between Finnish secondary school students and President Halonen earlier this year on the Finnish civil war led to an unsurprising reaction from the President. She hesitated for a moment, clearly felt uncomfortable to answer and finally said:"red rebellion". Halonen´s reaction to events long before she was born showed how deep the civil war is still especially in the generation of my parents. How it is still, in 2008, more or less leading the list of things people don´t want to talk about.

The small article in Helsingin Sanomat earlier this year describing this moment popped into my mind tonight when listening to Kjell Westö talking about his book Missä kuljimme kerran - one of the most widely read Finnish novels of the last 10 years. The book describing the generation born around 1900 has now been translated into Dutch and Westö was visiting the Finnish Embassy for that occasion. He shared with an audience a comment he heard, which describes to a large extent still the attitude of Finns to the tragic events of 1918 where according to some estimates 37.000 people lost their lives:"We have not discussed that for 100 years and we are definitely not going to start now."

Westö´s book is an important book for me. It helped me understand what my grandparents have gone through, what was the world my parents were born into and why the Finnish identity is the way it is. It also helped me start a discussion with my older relatives on the time before I was born. Westö said tonight beautifully that with his books he attempts to help the audience to remember that there were people on these streets before. He also reminded the audience that even when language played a big issue in the civil war, there were Swedish-speaking and Finnish-speaking people on both sides. The histories of people are more complicated than we often allow ourselves to realise.

I always thought that the tragic incidents of 1918 as well as 1939-1945 are issues that I can talk about with an open and critical mind. I mean I had no part in them. This was until 2004 when in a New York subway an American lady in her 60s asked me and my friends in the middle of a casual conversation:"I just wanted to check. During The War, which side were you on? On our side or the other side?" That uncomfortable feeling of shame, that sudden sweat and the blushing caught us all by surprise. We stuttered and it took us a lot of time to deliver an answer. Maybe Westö was right today when he said that it takes 6 generations before a war turns into another historical event.

The Video Republic

On Monday we launch together with Demos a report on youth and video which has been carried out associated to StrangerFestival. From Monday 6 October the report is available for downloading at www.demos.co.uk. I highly recommend reading it. But here as a taster, a video building up the excitement. The report is funded by Helsingin Sanomat Foundation.

Kid, Young, Youngish, Aging

Guernsey ID card 2 of 2
Originally uploaded by xxxrmt

Last week at PICNIC I had dinner with someone I have been working with for a year or so. Somehow the discussion drifted into age and aging and I was very surprised by the fact that someone I thought was exactly my age, was significantly younger. Someone I had thought shared the same story of struggling through their 20s, was not even halfway there.

Next to the few jokes made about the age issue, for a moment it threw me off rails. To be exact, my own surprised reaction was more troubling than the age difference. What’s in an age?

I have often been in situations where I am the youngest person and I have found people addressing me in a highly condescending manner. I could list numerous examples where I have got upset by comments such as “oh, you will understand when you are my age’ or ‘you young people’. I just have zero tolerance towards using age difference as a lifeline out of a professional debate. But the dinner last week made me wonder whether I have now gone full circle and started addressing people in a manner that I would not tolerate for a second. Why on earth would it change my approach that there is seven years between me and a colleague?

Due to my work I use the phrase young people several times a day. I use it in discussions, advocacy work, articles and funding applications. But I sincerely hope that last week, I catched myself early enough. I do not want to be that person who looks down on young people with that irritating amusement on their face. I really wish I can be a person who listens without prejudice, who makes judgements based on arguments and who is willing to explain their position to both young and old.

But I also want to recognize that I am getting older. I acknowledge that there are things that just go beyond my taste, my judgement and my understanding. But I wish I can live up to Robert Kennedy’s notion of qualities of youth: "not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease."

Making Sense

First day of networking and learning at PICNIC08 done. Got home at 22.00 after a spontaneous dinner with corporate trend analysts. Great stuff and discussions on how to create governments able to recognise the issues that matter to people. Basically the question was: why is a marketeer able to develop a working model that benefits product development, brand recognition and also profits the individuals taking part? Or more importantly, why governments are not able to do this? More surely to follow on that. As Charlie Leadbeater put it: why does it feel like governments are doing things to us when they claim they are doing things with or for us?

So what else did I grab from today?
- Google is not very good - some even said crap - in suggestings things to us that we were not aware that we are interested in (like for instance newspapers are)
- nearly all creativity requires collaboration but not all collaboration is creative
- "free form internet is a pure myth"
- Aaron Koblin's work on visualising data is amazing (see video above on visualising SMS sending in Amsterdam)
- internet platforms have corrupted the way we use the word friend and the meanings we give to it.

By the way: PICNIC is doing a huge mapping on trends. If you can think of one, let me know by giving a short explanation and an example and I will add it to the mapping exercise they are doing. One I saw added today was sharing rare music via YouTube.

Switch

European Union
Originally uploaded by tallpaul34a

I was asked to speak to our board tonight with the title: what does Europe mean for young people? This is what I said.

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During my summer holiday I read a great book by a Finnish young philosopher called Tommi Uschanov. The pamphlet by this quite peculiar character is called What is the matter with the Left. In this book that he had apparently been working on for more than six years he wondered why the European left is doing so badly when most of us buy their values of solidarity and compassion nearly to the full. What Uschanov wrote about the Left’s thinking I feel links well to the subject of this intervention. Uschanov claimed that an overall problem of European social democracy has been to tell people that their understanding of themselves and their priorities is wrong and that only if they would understand that they live on false premises, the society would function better. This was very visible in the 1970s idea in the Nordic countries that there is a Social Democrat in all of us.

In my work with young people – once again I wish to stress that I am not part of this group – I meet engaged and worried young people. These people are busy with a million things at the same time on a personal and local scale. The young video makers and fashion designers I meet also seem to be extremely allergic to fake things. If I was asked to describe the generation just shortly, I would dare to state that their jargon tolerance is the lowest of all generations I know. I see people driven by real emotions, real actions and real skills, not by big ideas, great achievements and global movements.

I think this is where it somewhat goes wrong for Europe. When a generation of personal action is coupled with ambitious ideologies, they detach from each other quickly like oil and water. The message being pushed is about big things such as peace and prosperity where people want a role, they want a genuine feeling and they want an emotion. The question I hear is: what should I do with Europe and what does Europe expect me to do? I really don’t have a compelling answer based on the current paradigms.

In the videos I see online on our projects but also on platforms like YouTube, the majority of the videos are not making explicit statements about the state of the world. They are more saying “this is how I think I am feeling today” or “this is what I think matters to me today”. As a research commissioned by the ECF around the StrangerFestival points out, young people use video for deliberation and they very seldom make their work for a specific audience. Video is in most cases a public tool for self exploration.

A superstructure like Europe is not an issue tackled often when it is nothing you can touch, nothing you can strive for and nothing you can influence in your daily practice. Just as an example we can take last year when the European Union celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome. The message put forward was 50 years of peace. A lot of references were made also to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the progress Europe have made since then. I could not help wondering what this all should mean for an 18-year-old today who was minus 32 when the treaty of Rome was signed and just about born when the wall was hammered down. 50 years of peace and now what? When Europe seems to be a deteriorating mega project, it is very difficult to get excited.

Coming back to Uschanov, I feel we need a switch in our thinking. Young people are not stupid and don’t buy Europe when you attach a popstar to it. Europe needs to be demystified and it needs to start from people’s realities. What this video culture offers us, is this pool of deliberations for us to dive into. Now what we are mostly doing is asking them to adjust their reality to a supersystem without no practical implications.

So what could be done? I would have two suggestions:

1. Provide access for more young people. If we want to see a Europe that goes to the skin and feels like something, we need to make sure that more people are involved. With this I mean work that we do for instance with theoneminutesjr by providing access to culture, supporting self-esteem to enter the public sphere and in that sense tackling the symbolic inequality in the public sphere created mostly by white heterosexual men. But we need to allow people to decide what matters to them, which brings me to my second point.

2. And this is more difficult: We need to support connections and curation and help people – both young and old – to make sense and find their place. We need to build links between strangers but on matters that matter to them. This does not mean that people need to agree but we need to work towards exposing commonalities in interest. We need to allow people – young and old - to test, modify and attach rather than buy a message about a superproject. When you start from something that matters to the people, you are already more than half way there. And when these millions of expressive people with millions of aspirations happen to be in Lisbon, Pieksämäki and Cluj, I bet there is a feeling of being part of something bigger than our own village. I really think free self-expression is the key: if I matter to Europe, Europe could matter to me.

Refreshing Honesty

Finnish PM Alexander Stubb
Originally uploaded by Pink Beret

After two days in Helsinki, I am getting back to my news junkie routine. I have by now glanced through the latest issues of the biggest daily and the major weeklies. My favourite piece of news comes from our refreshingly different Minister for Foreign Affairs, Alexander Stubb. I cannot help but like him.

With a strong academic background, fluency in several European languages, marriage to a non-Finn, openly liberal agenda in both economics and values as well as a background in the European Commission and Parliament, he must be the most European politician Finland has to offer. He manages to surprise people by daring to enter policy areas such as rights for sexual minorities which are usually considered minefields within his (still rather conservative) party. During his time in the European Parliament he took strong stands on LGBT issues as according to Stubb, human rights are where the European Union is tested. It shows boldness to step outside the comfort zone.

This civil servant-turned-politician is immensely popular within his own party as well as outside although he gets a decent amount of mockery for his athletic hobbies, big and white teeth and the un-Finnish strong tan. He is to some extent a dandy combined with substance. My favourite part of Stubb, however, is his frankness in language and action.

It seems Stubb has no need to prove things to anyone. First of all, he seems to avoid official and formal language and prefers spoken language even when talking about policy issues. He dares to say things like they are and blogs daily which has raised some eye brows within civil service. Some people think that Foreign Minister should not open his personal life and daily activities to the people in such extent. I disagree.

Last weekend Stubb pushed his head into a beehive rather delicate for small nations like ours. We Finns tend to love every time a foreign politician mentions us and we tend to exaggerate our role in global politics. Finns like to maintain the cold war reputation of being a key mediator between East and West. As a Chair of the OSCE, Finland and Stubb have been involved in the Georgia-Russia negotiations which was covered in Finnish media as Finland´s neutrality being a key asset in the negotiations. Stubb responded with great irritation saying that he thinks this kind of nonsense is not needed in this century. He said bluntly that Finland´s neutrality was not the key, it was France´s role as a nuclear power and as a permanent member of the UN security council.

I admire Stubb for this. It shows an attitude which encourages also others towards honesty and sincerity. I admire his boldness to be openly who he is and allowing himself to break stereotypes of what men in expensive suits should be interested in. In a way it is the same uncommon combination as the Kennedys who never hid their privileged background but never allowed that to stand in the way of taking bold stands and getting passionately involved.