britain's new radicals - are we good for nothing?
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Are we Good for Nothing? Our story for The Observer and Nesta on their hunt to find Britain's New Radicals...TRANSCRIPT
Are we Good for Nothing?Britain’s New RadicalsThe Observer and NestaJanuary 2012
Asi told us about Britain’s New Radicals so we asked the community and got a big “yes go for it”, and 0 no’s
What is Good for Nothing?
a short film of one of our creative collaboration gigs.....
BUILDING A COMMUNITY THAT CAN ACCELERATE AND SCALE THE WORK OF
GRASSROOTS SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL INNOVATORS WHO IN MANY
CASES ARE INNOVATING MORE RADICALLY THAN LARGE CORPORATIONS.
NURTURING MORE PURPOSEFUL, COLLABORATIVE + FUN WAYS OF WORKING
our mission
“It felt a bit like the future....”James Hogwood
BECAUSE WE’D LOVE TO BUILD A SOCIETY
THAT’S MORE EXCITED ABOUT DOING, GIVING,
FIXING AND PARTICIPATING THAN BEING PASSIVE
& CONSUMPTION-LED...
why we do it
It felt more like a ‘love-in of big doing’ than workKatie Lindemann
...WHY ARE SO MANY TALENTED SKILLED PEOPLE
IN THE CREATIVE INDUSTRIES SPENDING SO MUCH
OF THEIR TIME AND ENERGY IN LONG UNWIELDY
LINEAR UNPRODUCTIVE PROCESSES PUMPING
MORE NOVELTY INTO AN ALREADY CREAKING
PRODUCTION/CONSUMPTION SYSTEM?
Good for Nothing started with a question...
WHAT MIGHT HAPPEN IF WE PUT A BUNCH OF SOCIALLY-MINDED PEOPLE
WITH DIFFERENT SKILLS WHO ARE FRUSTRATED WITH THE SYSTEM
TOGETHER WITH 3 GRASSROOTS SOCIAL/ENVIRONMENTAL INNOVATORS
IN THE SAME SPACE FOR 48HRS? HOW MUCH POSITIVE USEFUL WORK
COULD THEY DO AND HOW MUCH FUN COULD WE HAVE ALONG THE WAY?
...which led to our first ‘gig’ in Dec 2010
DOING NOT TALKING
COLLABORATE + EXPERIMENT
SUPPORT THE TRUE INNOVATORS
our 3 practises
we made a manifesto for
how doing GFN should feel...
and 6 rules that challenge
people to work fast...together
we put the call out and 60+ diverse and
amazing people turned up to
give their time, energy and skills
for 48hrs... for nothing
writers designers
film-makers
developers
bloggers
coders
tea-makers
accountants
hackers
lawyers
project managers
strategists
architects
animators
artists
consultants
do-ers
we throw in some great DJ’s, delicious food and the odd drink
and openly share what we learn...
other ingrediants
THANKS!
We funded the first 5 gigs ourselves with lots of free help from our ‘friends’
and recently launched Good for Something - Good for Nothing inside organisations - to help widen community + become self-sustaining
1 year on and we’ve put on 7 Good For Nothing ‘gigs’, helping 18 different social organisations
we hatched our 1st global intervention -> a collaborative digital fundraising experiment
No ‘client’ or ‘owner’43 projects created in 9 countriesHundreds of volunteers involvedNearly £250,000 raised
Nearly 500 people have signed-up to our online community and about 500 people have actively given time doing ‘Good for Nothing’
= about 2 years or 750 days worth of professional time given for nothing to accelerate social causes
Here’s what the social innovators have to say about it.....
“GFN is an intense weekend of creativity and energy turned into concrete projects for social good. The weekend was a buzz of energy, but instead of talking about it, everybody was focused to have something solid that can be taken away to help the organisation. For us, it was two great promo videos, and also a seed that was planted - which led to a major overhaul of our online systems for communications and volunteer management.GFN stirs things up! Kelvin Cheung, founder FoodCycle
“I think the intense creative burst of energy over the Good for Nothing weekend was simply wonderful and that one of the greatest things to have experienced is the atmosphere of genuine support, enthusiasm, problem solving and creativity. I don’t thing anyone left unfulfilled” Neerja Vashista, Global Generation
“The GFN weekend was as Nick put it 'overwhelmingly beautiful.' I came not knowing what to expect and left with a real sense of purpose, renewed enthusiasm to get stuff done and experiment, and empowered by the results of collaboration among exceptional, talented and kind people who gave up their free time to take part. Matt Linnecar, Co-founder Gnewt Cargo
GOOD FOR NOTHING IN NUMBERS AND WORDS
2. CHANGING WAYS OF WORKING...1. AN EXPERIMENTAL COMMUNITY WORKING DIFFERENTLY...
3. POINTING AT THE BIG ISSUES THAT NEED DISRUPTING... 4. IT’S ADDICTIVE...
OF GFN’ERS MORE LIKELY TO LEARN BY DOING - PROTOTYPING, SKETCHING, MAPPING
OF GFN’ERS MORE LIKELY TO SET THEMSELVES MUCH TIGHTER DEADLINES
OF GFN’ERS MORE LIKELY TO SELF-ORGANISE AGAINST THEIR WORK CHALLENGES TO WORK MORE EFFECTIVELY
OF GFN’ERS MORE LIKELY TO DIVIDE AND CONQUER AND WORK IN SMALL, DIVERSE TEAMS
OF GFN’ERS SEE IT AS A GREAT WAY TO BUILD COMMUNITY AND EXPERIMENT WITH NEW WAYS OF WORKING
OF GFN’ERS MORE LIKELY TO SELF ORGANISE ON THEIR PROJECTS TO WORK MORE EFFECTIVELY
AREAS THE COMMUNITY WANT TO WORK ON..
FOOD
EDUCATION
WASTE
INEQUALITY
NATURE/BIODIVERSITY
CLIMATE CHANGE
ENERGY
71%
701%
65%
59%
48%
48%
41%
Faster, less proving of points, people wanting to help each other rather than hinder. A general sense of enthusiasm and positivity. People sharing skills, listening to what others had to offer.
It was great. An opportunity to work with great people for one thing, and a chance to test yourself against the clock. It was self-organising, rapid, agile and iterative and it didn’t really feel like work.
We did more work, of better quality, in 48 hrs than an agency would take weeks to deliver.
And this is what the growing
community are saying...
2012 is all about more experiments for bigger impact
More people
More gigs in more places - London, Bristol, Brighton, Manchester...
Festival ‘Good for Nothing’
More organisations - businesses, universities, local councils...
Bigger challenges
More doing - at gigs and virtually through the online platform
Good for Nothing founders
Tom Rowley @[email protected]
07500 805958
Tom Farrand @tomfarrand
Dan Burgess @dansolo
web www.goodfornothing.com
online communitywww.goodfornoth.ning.com
twitter@g00dfornothing
facebookwww.facebook.com/g00dfornothing
vimeohttp://vimeo.com/goodfornothing
flickrhttp://www.flickr.com/photos/goodfornothingflickrs/