IMAGINE IF YOU could design your day, right
down to the people you spend time with.
Now imagine if you could design your community
as a vibrant, safe, harmonious, productive,
inclusive place. And what if you could literally
sculpt your body like an artist creates a
sculpture or painting, all the while strengthening
the economy.
Talk with any innovator and they will tell you
that most of the work is in the visualization
process — imagining what can be.
This week at the 4 Days event in Halifax, local
designers took to the streets, talking with people
to uncover what could be and what people envision
for their neighbourhoods. They were led by In the
Bubble author John Thackara, who writes about the
notion that you can design the world around you by
disregarding the clutter and getting down to what
matters.
His book’s title is taken from the term for air
traffic controllers. The idea that all this info
is circling around you and your job is to organize
the information so that no one crashes.
We met and talked about the top five design
priorities: transport, energy, health, schools and
food. In each case he said it requires us to step
back and ask ourselves, "What is the fundamental
question here?"
How do we enable all people to have access to
what they need?
With all of the talk lately about buying local,
I wanted to find out how our personal obesity and
weight issues and costs could be reversed by
buying local. Nova Scotia is one of the heaviest
provinces in Canada with 60 per cent of adults
overweight, costing us $120 million a year in
direct health care costs.
What if we could design a Nova Scotia menu or
guide that would strengthen our economy and also
help us to lose weight at the same time?
Thackara said it is possible, but it will take
getting back to basics.
"Ninety-five per cent of what is required is
right in front of us," Thackara said. "When we are
innovative, we can be authors of our own
solutions, the more aware we become of the amazing
things in this world, then we don’t have time to
get upset about the old regime and the old way of
doing things."
You don’t need permission to come to the
banquet. You can design your own life, school,
diet, company or community.
This is in keeping with research produced
through the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies
that showed the same kind of thinking for the
school system.
Schools in Edmonton flipped the equation and
began out-scoring the private schools. They did
not receive any more resources, but the power to
be creative was given to the principals and
teachers and removed from the top-down
bureaucracies.
The principals act as entrepreneurs, designing
their outcomes by controlling their own
budgets.
So if we give people the power to be creative
and come up with their own solutions, from
personal diet and to committing to eat more local,
healthy produce to designing their urban gardens
to their schools, we will get better results,
higher marks and a more productive, inclusive
community.
Here are a few ways you can put your creative
thoughts and visualization for a strong, inclusive
community into action.
Attend the Visioning Nova Scotia in 2020
Conference on Nov. 6-7. It is open to all and
there is no fee for attending.
Visit AIMS website to learn about innovative
studies on education at http://www.aims.ca/.
Design your own Nova Scotia menu with help from
http://www.selectnovascotia.ca/.
Barb Stegemann is an entrepreneur who designed
her life, company and book, The 7 Virtues of a
Philosopher Queen.
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