A playful invitation to all interested in creativity climate and health:

This is the season for hibernation and recuperation and we hope you get to do a bit of both. It is also time to dream about the future we choose. In December 2023 the Creative Health Review was launched, on how policy can embrace creative health – it makes surprisingly exciting reading and can be accessed here. https://ncch.org.uk/creative-health-review
19 interesting people, from 3 continents, met on Halloween ’23 to do some playful thinking with us around the intersection between creativity, climate and health. It was a toe in the water, to see if talking about this in groups about this would provoke interesting conversations – and it did! 
This is something we are moving forward with because it feels like meaningful work. Themes on that Spooky day included connection and complexity across multiple issues, and that creativity can clearly link many approaches to both climate and health emergencies. The metaphor that Vishnu gave us:  when do we use a claw and when is it a paw?  stayed with me. We already have so many tools at our disposal – the question is do we agree on how ‘best’ to use them ? Is this something we would even want to agree on, or is it about each person finding new ways forward with the tools they already have? 

We do agree that there needs to be a shift in mindset in order for any climate and health targets to be met over the next decade. Continuing with ‘business as usual’ is simply not environmentally, financially or socially sustainable. As Albert Einstein once said, “We cannot solve problems at the same level of thinking that we were at when we created those problems.”

We have been struck by the brilliance and creativity of the people we have already connected with – and what could happen if we shared this more widely. Our conundrum since the Halloween get together has been: 

1)  How to make a useful container for people’s creativity and new approaches to ongoing problems, something which allows and encourages new ways of doing things by gathering together ideas from a diverse group of people ?   We have been revisiting Sharma’s Theory U from MIT for some inspiration here, and the work of Nora Bateson

2)  And secondly, how do you ensure these this cross pollination of ideas is useful, is cultivated and over time becomes action focused? We want to make a difference, not just talk about it. 

Our current invitation is to 3 online meetings, you can come to as many of them as you want to and can get to , in January , February and March of 2024. 
In addition to this we are collaborating with The Royal Society of Arts to create a face to face workshop so we can get to know each other online and then have a chance to meet in real life. This will be on the afternoon of Thursday the 14th of March in Brighton or Lewes. There will be bursts of creativity and delicious cake. 

We will kick off 2024 with our online January meeting: Friday the 26th 1 – 2.30 Zoom Meeting
 
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84934119099?pwd=czNiVW1kaU1GYlNLQWVJNU5VWi9Hdz09
 
Meeting ID: 849 3411 9099
Passcode: 065459

February meeting : Tuesday the 27th 1 – 2.30 online

March meeting : Friday the 22nd 1 – 2.30 online 

Your time and energy is super precious so we will start each session with a question, and there will be a chance to tackle it in small groups and then together to create a more focused question for the following session.   We choose not to be prescriptive – your creative input is what we need – and at the same time we want to develop ideas and to enable them to flourish.  Do let us know if you have burning questions or contributions to share with us before the first meeting.  One last thing – please respond to let us know if you can come along and join in! 

With love and small acts of creative transgression, 

Sarah, Will And Tom

Sarah Andersen,  Will Nicholson and Tom James