How to Change the World by John-Paul Flintoff

Author:John-Paul Flintoff [Flintoff, John-Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781447213062
Publisher: Pan Macmillan

Assignment 63: Make an encouraging banner. (This is one by Sarah Corbett of the Craftivist Collective.)

There were seventy assignments in all. They included: ‘Draw the news’, ‘Make an encouraging banner’, ‘Start a lecture series’, ‘Give advice to yourself in the past’, ‘Spend time with a dying person’, ‘Perform the phone call somebody else wished they could have’, ‘Photograph strangers holding hands’ . . .

Some of the other assignments were more introspective, but all shared the quality of inviting people to engage directly with their community and the wider world. In the course of carrying out the assignments, the thousands of people who uploaded reports needed to overcome fear (think of what it takes to ask two people who don’t know each other to hold hands!) and to use their creativity. Having done that, they became just as ‘expert’ as Fletcher and July. One American family successfully completed every assignment and was invited to put on a show at a local gallery. The family’s lecture series took the theme ‘Art Is Where You Find it, and Everyone Can Do Art’.

I mention this project because it seems typical of what the best works of art can do: reconnect us to sources of energy and engagement that can be stifled by routine and habit.

A good world is not a world where everybody fixates on global problems according to some externally imposed framework of ‘importance’. A good world is one in which people find meaning in the particular things they do – and that means a world that has a place for beauty, creativity and play.

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