Ki Futures - an introduction to the Pilot

The following is a transcription of the introduction to the Ki Futures launch event that took place on September 8th. You can watch the video on our YouTube Channel.

Hi to all my Ki Futures fans. It has been such an amazing day for us here at Ki Culture. And I'm hoping that you're feeling as excited as we are, as we get this programme ready to launch.?

Now we've met some of our amazing coaches, talk with some of our amazing champions, and had conversations with people who are going to be supporting this programme through the Ki Futures Network. But what exactly is Ki Futures? How is this different from what's currently available? And why do we think that this is going to be such a game-changer? Let's talk a little bit about how this programme actually works.?

So Ki Futures breaks down the paradigms of the way that sustainability is currently dealt with in the cultural sector. Nowadays, if you want to talk about sustainability, you need to have money because you need to either hire a consultant or an in house sustainability director in order to address these issues. Because let's be honest, as a conservator, as a curator, as an artist, as a registrar, as a supplier, you probably don't have time to go do all the research yourself. So this is why you hire people, right? Experts who have the answers and can help us be more sustainable. The only problem with this is that sustainability is for everyone. And in order for everyone to get on board, we all need to know what we're talking about. And we all need to get involved. Not just people who have money, and not just people who are in the upper management. Sustainability is for everyone, and everyone should be able to be part of the solution.?

This is why we think that Ki Futures is going to be such a game-changer for all of us. Because we are breaking down that paradigm of consultancy, and empowering you and all of your colleagues to be champions for sustainability within your own workplace and with your own institution. It is so important for us to know that we have the capacity to make real change. No matter who you are, where you are in the world, or what your job is, you can be a leader for sustainability. And we totally believe that.?

So Ki Futures is everything that you need to make real change in your workplace today. It is a training programme. It is a coaching programme. It is an international network of supporters and actors to help you and to help each other make sustainable changes.?

One of the things that I felt very frustrated with when I was a conservator and I wanted to make more sustainable changes is that I didn't have anyone to ask questions to I didn't know what the right resources were. And I felt completely alone. With Ki Futures, you will never feel like that. Ki Futures training programme goes through a comprehensive background about what sustainability is and what it means to cultural heritage.?

We have two parts of the programme, which includes our core training courses, which go through the themes of the key books, shout out to key books. If you haven't downloaded them yet, please do so they're free off of our website. Ki Books are your step by step guides and how to be sustainable. But during these trainings, we go into the theory behind these. We talked about circularity and wasted materials. But what does that actually mean? When you hear circular economy? Do you think Wall Street because I hear economy and I don't think that has anything to do with me. But circularity is actually the key to a more sustainable future when it comes to valuing our resources and the materials that we use every day. When it comes to energy, why can't we just switch everything over to renewables? Wouldn't that solve the problem? Well, if we learn about the energy hierarchy, we might get an idea about why we need to first conserve, and then we can switch over. So the core curriculum really takes deep dives into the theory behind sustainability.?

And then we learn how to apply those critical thinking skills to our actual actions. In addition, we also have deep dive programming, which goes into real nitty gritty, specific topics about sustainability, especially for cultural professionals. Things like accessibility. What does that mean for a museum? What does that mean for a social media account for an artist? What is accessibility when we're talking about hiring and our policies? What about climate communication?

If you're talking about climate and everyday environment, that might be one conversation. But if you're talking about climate, as a cultural professional, maybe it needs a different kind of lens when we're approaching our colleagues. Maybe it needs even more of a different kind of lens if we're talking with our audiences. So how can we start to harness these nuances in ways that we can have positive and productive conversations? These are just a couple of examples of the amazing trainings that we offer.?

Now, all of the trainings we offer are unique, and consequently, we want to make sure that you always have access to them, which is why every training from Ki Futures is put on the Ki Port this way, we're able to provide you with new trainings every month, while still being able to offer all of the playbacks that you need in order to make sure that you have access to the information we've already given constant new information. That's key.?

In addition to our training programme, we offer an amazing network of mentors, our Ki Coaches. Ki Coaches are specialists in culture and sustainability. And they bring their expertise from all over the world and all areas of cultural professions in order to help us find real solutions for sustainability.?

One of the important things about sustainability is that it can have a local context. Recycling rules in Amsterdam are not the same as they are here in Asheville. So it's very important for us to make sure that we have local experts who can hook us up with the right partners, and help us find the right solutions for our context.?

Additionally, our Ki Coaches also mentor groups within regions so that people can start working together and seeing what's going on in their area. This is also a great way to facilitate collaboration and partnerships within the cultural sector. And within our cities and countries. coaches are also able to work with each other. So if your coach is an expert in, let's say, waste materials, and you really want to do something with decolonization, we call up Nicole and say, Hi, can you help us out? a really great way that we can share expertise, not only directly with our champions, but across the world, and across all fields or culture and all expertise and backgrounds. This is how we're breaking this model. In addition to the coaches, we offer the Ki Futures network.?

As we mentioned before, sustainability is not something that you have to do alone, every single person must play a part. But this means that every single person should be involved. The way for us to ensure that everybody has a role in this is to build a network so that you never feel alone. Ki Futures is a network within itself, connecting actors from all over the world to help support each other and inspire each other. And you can connect on the Ki Port.?

Ki Port is our online hub, which houses not only all of the communication platforms throughout the network's both local and global, but also the Ki Toolkit, where you can find the recordings from our trainings, as well as an additional array of guides, tools, and resources that can help you in your sustainability journey. In addition, the Ki Port is where you can access all of the Ki Reports, which are case studies logged by your fellow Kj Champions, this case study data database is searchable, which means that if you have a question about composting in Poland, you can just search composting, and 25 case studies are going to come up, you may see this one has a really relatable story. And then you can read it and immediately contact that Ki Champion to say Hey, would you mind jumping on a call with me, I'd love to hear more about what you did with your composting programme. So I can do something similar in my institution, best way of streamlining best practices.?

So we hope that you're going to be joining us for our Ki Futures event today, and in January for the official public launch. In the meantime, we're going to be testing out all of these different features through our pilot programme, which starts today, eighth of September, and will go for three months. Throughout the next three months. We invite you to be part of this co creative process. We want to hear how Ki Futures can help you. What would you like to see from us in addition to coaching, training, and the pilot port, or if you have any ideas of how to enhance any of those features. This is the time to refine the programme and really make it something special. So keep posted.?

Follow us on all of the social media outlets. And we'll be keeping you posted on what we're doing. And we'd love to hear from you about how we can help improve the programme to make sure that it suits your needs best.?

Thank you again so much everyone for joining us for this incredible day. I'm so excited that this programme is finally starting. As I mentioned already three times today, this has been a dream of mine for years. So I'm so thrilled that you all believe in it as strongly as I do. And I know that together we're going to make a huge, huge difference. So thank you everyone for your belief in me. Thank you everyone for your belief in Ki Futures. And thank you everyone for believing in yourself.