The Undaunted

I've been reading a lot lately about the social imagination crisis. I don't understand it. I witness amazing imagination at play in communities all over the world. So what is going wrong? I have a sneaky idea that it is not about individual or community imagination in any one space or place but more about the coagulation of imagination across multiple spaces. Back to my age old tub thump about patterns, contexts, conditions and emerging common themes. I'm pondering this whilst also missing the high energy co-creative world that I grew up in and ranting on about the power of ideas, creativity and why this is all so important now (it always was). 'Who gets to imagine?' 'Who gets to be heard?' are central questions for The Undaunted as we navigate the spaces between and collectively unmask, dancing together in the name of the great unfuck. I think this imagination crisis is a broader question of social conditioning, the restrictive nature of who has the power to shape discourse and unshackling from the linear, binary, neuro normative systems (and their custodians) that are willing, deliberative blockers to imagination, ideas flow, curiosity, creative exploration and asking better questions. Maybe it stems from an indoctrinated view that our leaders have got this so we don't need to bother - besides, no-one listens to 'my/our' ideas anyway. I've stated that everyone should spend a year in art school or the concept creative teams in a proper, brave ad agency (agency, huh) just to learn what co-creation and fierce determination to protect the integrity of an idea feels like. Besides, joy really is an act of resilience, art really is the voice of the unheard and creativity is often desperation. Then there is the small matter of 'play' versus 'work'. We have been led to believe that imagination is something that we 'do' in our downtime from work. Whose norms is that idea serving I wonder? And then there is the idea that imagination evoked and activated is subversive, dangerous, something for the outsiders and we can't have that on the inside, where the steady state rules ok, can we. So, is there a social imagination crisis? I don't know. If there is, it doesn't exist in the Cookhouse or The Undaunted. #dosomething

In the spirit of searching for systemic social change and ending social injustice, The Undaunted and the Cookhouse have been obsessed for years by two big questions - "Whose norms?" and "In whose or whats name?". These are inextricably linked to our thoughts and ideas around the power to shape discourse, the voices of the unheard, social conditioning/rules, the spaces between, collective unmasking, institutional trauma and social impact. They also fascinate us when thinking about history, narrative, story, propaganda, institutional sociopathy, movements and revolutions, and socio-cultural (d)evolution. Inevitably, for all sorts of professional and personal reasons we are also deeply immersed in all things related to neurodiversity, neurotypicality and what constitutes 'neuronormative', and why. The Beautiful Collective is founded on our shared thinking about all this. In turn, much of our work is rooted in how these things manifest in big social systems like education, health, the judiciary, economics, business, academia and the 3rd and 4th sectors. We will share more on some of our explorations, provocations and play spaces soon but in the meantime I am curious about what 'normal' means to you and where you come up against 'normative' in ways that you just can't meet? #undauntedtogether we #dancewithmonsters in the name of #thegreatunfuck

I wrote this a few weeks ago when uncertainty and confusion rocked my world. I sense that many have been, like me, stuck in the headlights of dread news, conflict and conflicting ideas, needing to earn a bit of filthy lucre or just find somewhere to call home in a world going ever more crazy. Well if a fucked up bloke in a hat can stumble to a way through all this carnage and find a little piece (peace) of space to call his own anyone can. Go for it you gorgeous people. #undauntedtogether we #dancewithmonsters in the name of #thegreatunfuck

All this talk of imagination, creativity, art, design, the origins and progress of ideas, the impact of ideas on outcomes (solutions to problems) and much else has really got me going recently and has made me think about my whole career as an ideas person. I published a sweeping chaos of thoughts and feelings at the beginning of this year (see link in comments below) and have chosen to publish an extract from it (Part 3) that focuses on design, and specifically, social design. See what you think. Here is an extract from the extract (fucking hell Steve). 'The biggest myth for me has always been the concept of insiders and outsiders. Humans seem to have a boundless ability to make rapid, ‘norms’ informed decisions about other human beings based entirely on designed framings and manufactured cultural references. These things appear to have been designed to stop us doing the one thing that I believe we must do now - be curious, questioning, creative, open-minded and genuinely collaborative together. The veneer of steady state has remained precisely because we have all been encouraged, educated, to look at everything and everyone from within the context of the steady state and existing societal systems. We have been ‘allowed’ to question some things provided that these are nothing fundamental about the designed systems that govern us. But the questions about these fundamentals of societal design and implementation have got louder and louder as more and more people are falling outside the norms and systems. Some of us have been questioning and challenging for a long time, voices in the wilderness, outsiders, theorists, unwelcome innovators, punks whether we knew it or not, and self proclaimed change agents. Others have been setting out on a DIY pathway where community initiatives and social entrepreneurs are everywhere and tackling almost every crisis.' #undauntedtogether we #dancewithmonsters in the name of #thegreatunfuck

On social imagination, I read an excellent post by Mathias Behn Bj?rnhof (see link in comments) referencing an equally awesome paper - ‘The Imaginary Crisis (and how we might quicken social and public imagination)’ by Sir Geoff Mulgan. Mathias asks a hugely important question at the end of his post - 'What are some ways you think we can reawaken social imagination?' I think this is down to the old brand/marketing concepts of mass market and awareness campaigns - applied to social imagination and social change rather than a business, NGO, Political party. In terms of society, mass market is all of us. The barriers to engaging mass market are, I think, endless competition and shit communication. Those societal change institutions and think tanks are being short termist and focused on their own products and solutions (as Mathias describes) but they are also trying to out compete each other. It is the same for the change makers, weavers, intellectual elitists, complexity theorists, social scientists, systemic thinkers..... In the pursuit of social change ideas that bring them money and plaudits they are getting ever more knotted up in impenetrable language, models, niche thinking etc to create that holy grail of market differentiation. The outcome is that none of the people who really matter, aka us messy humans in the streets and fields, are being listened to by them, listening to them or are even aware of them, so a lot of intrinsically good ideas disappear into the void after failing to be heard from the ivory towers. I learnt a marketing process 40 years ago - awareness, understanding, belief, adoption, loyalty, advocacy. So far, the established systems that want to shut down imagination at scale are winning the hearts/minds, brand/comms marketing game. We need to change THIS. I look to those who are NOT 'leaders' of the established social systems but who do have what The Undaunted refers to as 'the power to shape discourse' and the ability to 'spread joy is an act of resilience'. I look to the creative industries, the marketers, the brand folk, the strategists, the designers, musicians and artists but I also look to the people (the unheard, voiceless, marginalised, isolated, blamed, gaslighted etc) who have had their voices suppressed but whose lived and living experience should be the loudest voices in the room. I truly believe that - Art is the voice of the unheard. Design is activism. Creativity is desperation. So, let’s actually be inclusive and let our collective social imaginations run riot. The Undaunted has chosen to evoke this from ‘the spaces between’ because, having woken up, unmasked, unshackled from the systems that were traumatising us, got terrified, recognised the 'horrific gifts' we have been given and then (with a lot of help from our friends) become liberated, we realised that despite having choice, we have no choice in this. #undauntedtogether we #dancewithmonsters in the name of #thegreatunfuck

We are so thrilled to see The Undaunted and some of our thinking in such an important new book. We hope it has some real world social impact.

This is a little snapshot of the state we are in and the things we are doing right now, as people and as The Undaunted. Our spirit is rooted in ideas, our heads are rooted in depth and rigour, our hearts are rooted in challenge and change and our hands are rooted in action and impact. But our soul is rooted in social justice and injustice, in peoples lives, in the things people do to each other and with each other, together. It would be awesome to see you in a space between sometime soon. #undauntedtogether Melea Press

A gentle start. The thing I noticed most in 2024 was a subtle but significant shift where people all over the world and for very different reasons began to move from either accepting or questioning and challenging the established design and implementation of society and social systems, to really starting to get to grips with how to create a very different type of society. This has been happening quietly and without any need to be revolutionaries, intellectual elites, theorists, artists or storytellers; or proclaim any grand ideas about an alternative society or go toe to toe with the established systems. It is what The Undaunted has been describing as ‘Collective Unmasking’. It seemed that away from the headlines, increasing numbers of ordinary people were saying to the custodians of established systems, norms and steady states, through quiet actions rather than loud words, “it’s ok, you carry on doing what you are doing and we will carry on doing what we are doing and let’s meet in the middle sometime”. This is what we call ‘the spaces between’ where designing a very different society, born from learning exchange and exploration of ideas WITH rather than FOR the lived and living experience experts who have been traditionally, normatively, marginalised, is just, underwhelmingly, “the way we do things around here”. It is as though there is a fundamental change happening right now, a tipping point where more and more people are excited about the idea that society is something that they create, design, craft and engage in, together, rather than something that happens to them, for them, by unseen people who they neither relate to or even trust. In 2021 Unstitution, the precursor to The Undaunted, stated “Look what happened while we slept at the wheel. It’s time to wake up” as part of a question “Just who the fuck is in charge?”. The answer back then, as now, was “We all are”. I sense that many people have been living a 5 year waking up process and period of questioning, challenging, exploring and testing. Some of this has been deliberate, a kind of science or industry, but the big difference now is in the numbers of people from across society who have just arrived at conclusions and ideas unscientifically, intuitively and with their own ‘hang on a minute’ moments and realisations. There has been a lot of trial and error, debate, competition, exhaustion, fragmentation and barrier building but now, at the start of 2025, here we all are, awake, alive and very much inspired by each others and our own potential, our collective power and our own capability, as messy humans, to feel, think, do, create and design for ourselves and each other.? So the questions for me, The Undaunted and, maybe, you, are how will we conduct ourselves from now on, how will we come together to create and design a society that we want to live in, how will we organise this and how will we ensure the legitimacy of our and each other's multi-dimensional humanity?

As I have alluded to in a few posts and a shitload of comments on other peoples posts since the start of this year, I have been thinking about my place in the world and, as a consequence, the place that The Undaunted lives in. We have been talking about some central concepts and beliefs for years, where these have never really changed in their core and substance but have evolved in our depth of learning and understanding - and articulation - as we have roamed around the world, listened and contextualised, formed patterns and connections and explored concepts and ideas. In the midst of all this beautiful chaos and mess, I have never really been certain about who and what we actually are, where we play, who we play with and how we roll. I've never been certain about me either and have been going through my own personal unmasking in the midst of really debilitating anxiety, soul searching and addressing an extraordinary amount of negative, personal impacts and trauma - what my wife and The Undaunted co-founder Melea Press calls so brilliantly our 'horrific gifts'. For years I've chanted the mantra 'fear comes and goes but regret lasts forever'. For the last few months I have been battling with both and, finally, have come to the conclusion that I don't want to regret any more things because I'm carrying enough of these around already. I am fearful, daunted, every day but I choose this over regret now. So, from now on, as I suggested in my previous post, the 'old, dying world' is of no real interest to me now but dancing with monsters together and being part of the birthing of a new world (the great unfuck) very much is. I'll share more on what The Undaunted is doing now and will focus on from now on in my next post but, as a reminder of where this starts, I'm sharing this again. Fuck, here we go, finally!!!! #undauntedtogether

I'm re-posting this for a few reasons, even though I only posted it originally a couple of months ago. My own state of being, my own privilege, endless vulnerabilities, fears (of myself), boundless hopes and dreams are wrapped up in this so, I felt like sharing it again as a kind of link between past, present and future, between 2024 and before and 2025 and after. The central themes of individual and collective unmasking, what is normal?, why we wear/wore masks in the first place and what social conditions exist/existed to create these states are all core to where I search for learning, how I think about stuff like 'the spaces between' and how I choose to chaotically present The Undaunted and our ideas. This is not only rooted in tons of lived experience in my career and life, it is also deeply personal to my living experience now. My experiences and reflections, the things I've listened to and the things I should have heard but didn't, over the last 4 months of 2024, have led me to some choices and decisions about how I want to carry on learning and growing, showing up, conducting myself and representing The Undaunted in 2025. In this, I will be fully unmasked. The Undaunted will be fully unmasked too. I wrote a kind of part one about all this (the set up) and published it as 'Love. Fury. Design. Conduct. Legitimacy. 2025' on New Years Day. I am part way through writing the promised part two now but am really struggling to lay down what I want to say in the way that I want to say it. This is self generated demand gone mad. It is an overload of concepts, influences, contexts, aspirations, intentions and impacts gone mad too, where even my powers of patterning and expression are found, currently, wanting. So, this post is a kind of excuse - and maybe a way of kidding myself that I get more time. I want to draw a line under a lot of things and start from here, now. I think that we must all start from a different place and 'now' seems to be as good a moment as any. It is time to end the circular conversations about the fact that we need to get out of this mess and just get out of this mess, by bringing it all, all of us, together. I have some thoughts on this but cannot, today, express them well. But I will, when the crush of demand goes away. We have also worked out what The Undaunted will do from now on and I'm excited to share this too. See you soon. Hugs.