The Uncertainty Experts – How to embrace not fight uncertainty.

Before lockdown, my friend James Berg introduced me to a book called “Be More Pirate” by Sam Conniff. It was one of those rare tectonic shift moments when thinking is tangibly and meaningfully shifted for the better.

Sam and I connected, and I started causing good trouble to great effect at my creative social enterprise, Chufd.

So, I was at the front of the queue when Sam’s fellow pirate leader Alex Barker published “How to Be More Pirate”. Alex and I connected too, and she kindly shared the pirate philosophy at a virtual event I was managing.

Sam and Alex talk a lot about operating at the edges of accepted convention, where pioneers, innovators and disruptors find uncharted seas to explore. He told me that he was often asked:

"How should we navigate when we sail off the edge of the map?"

So, Sam brings us “The Uncertainty Experts” as the opportunity to explore and answer that question. But in true pirate style, it’s not a book. It’s so much more.

Experience designer Sascha Evans describes it as “a mash up of neuroscience, film, deep reflection, music and so much more.”

Time Out describes it as “an experimental film event, but it’s also a live science project designed in tandem with scientists at UCL to test and stretch each of our abilities to withstand uncertainty in our lives. If it has a mission, it’s to turn uncertainty into a positive rather than something which stops us sleeping well at night.”

Sam himself describes it as “A powerful three-part interactive documentary scientifically proven to reduce our fear of the unknown, reduce anxiety, increase empathy and improve decision-making and problem-solving.”

The neuroscience is led by the brilliant?Katherine Templar Lewis and a team at UCL. Katherine also co-created the soundtrack to it alongside Morcheeba.

It's not easy to define as a format, which is perhaps only to to be expected. Sam told me "yesterday, we got compared to Punch Drunk or Secret Cinema in their early days, a hybrid format that becomes a new genre."?

Season One is on 9th, 16th and 23rd November 2021 and you can buy tickets (including early birds) at https://uncertaintyexperts.com/

See you there.

Mark Walmsley

I am the founder of the Arts and Culture Network. We are 12,000 strong, challenging conventions and causing good trouble to put the arts and culture at the heart of lives, one new moment of joy at a time.