Eamonn Kelly, president and CEO of the Global Business Network (a futurist think tank of sorts), knows something about the future — or at least how individuals and groups can project dynamic trends into what might be someday. So, it’s interesting to hear his perspective on the next 500 years of civilization…especially when he can deliver it in 20 minutes or less.
Boldness or lunacy led him to do just that this past December at the Scottish Parliament Futures Event, and his brief speech is available on-line through GBN.
Two take-aways for me, relating to the world of arts and culture, are his points about how and why countries should be involved in a global dialog, and how we are woefully limited in our perception of solutions. I’ll take each in turn.
First, Kelly says that one of his larger ‘mind-changes’ in how he views the future is in the scope and purpose behind any country’s involvement in a global dialog. Instead of focusing global conversations only on improving their own lot, he suggests countries like Scotland should engage in a conversation because they can inform the future for everyone. Says he:
….increasingly I’ve concluded, with the issues that are in play at the moment in the world, that it’s important for Scotland to engage with the global conversation, not just to create a better Scotland. Because I truly believe that Scotland has a role in creating a better world. It’s a major shift in my thinking in terms of the aspiration for a group of this sort. The world is in flux at the moment and it’s going to be recast and reshaped in the coming decade or two. I truly believe that Scotland and the Scots can play a significant role in helping to recast and reshape the future that we are all going to exist in globally.
Second (at least my second, he has more), he wonders about our limited view of solutions to world conflicts…particularly our obsessive focus on ‘nation states’ as the appropriate scale of intervention and resolution. Says he again:
In the twenty-first century I think the nation state is becoming an increasingly meaningless concept — yet it’s the only real form of government we have in the world. If we look at what’s happening in Iraq right now, for example, we are absolutely dedicated to retaining that nation with elections for the whole nation. Nobody is talking about whether we could do elections in cities. Nobody is talking about whether Iraq should be split into regions. Nobody is talking about anything other than the nation state. It is completely locked into our consciousness as the form of government.
How does this relate to arts and culture? For me, these two issues strike at the heart of our current conversations as an industry facing structural challenges and seizmic change. To the first point, for all of our preaching about the arts as an engaged element of a vital society, the true motivation for most conversations I’ve been in has been to preserve our way of doing things (sustaining a symphony, preserving the nonprofit form, shuffling revenue streams to maintain business almost as usual). But, in fact, arts and cultural leaders have a central role to play in a larger conversation…not always because it is in their organizational self interest to do so.
The second point is much like the first, and I’ve made it several times before: the large, centralized nonprofit (our version of the nation state) is not the one best way to produce, preserve, deliver, and sustain authentic cultural and creative experiences. If we opened our eyes to other options and opportunities, we could go far in advancing our stated missions even as we reluctantly sideline our traditional means of achieving them.
Preachy, preachy, I know…and probably an awful stretch of global futurism to fit U.S. cultural practice. But this is a weblog, after all, home of the unaccountable provocateur.
