There is an image of an advertising campaign poster making the rounds on social media that has been marked with comments that question the motives and manipulative methods behind the design (see below). It is a good example of social and cultural commentary being added onto a commercial poster, but it is far from a new idea.
Adbusters
The first time I became aware of this type of movement was in the 1990s, by a group called Adbusters. As a graphic design student, and taking great interest in designers such as Jonathan Barnbrook who were very social and counter-cultural in the work they did (and it turns out he was a part of Adbusters too), I was very interested in this movement. Although I didn’t join in with their activities, I followed them with some interest.
Adbusters have spent the 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, and the 2020s railing against capitalism and in particular advertising’s role in capitalism. Their magazine’s international circulation peaked at 120,000 in the late 2000s, but it has been their campaigns which have had more impact. Buy Nothing Day, TV Turnoff Week and Occupy Wall Street have all left their mark, but they are probably best known for their “subvertisements” — adverts which subvert the original message of the advert.
Blaming advertising for playing a central role in creating and maintaining consumer culture, they have used the creative skills and talents against advertising itself. They claim to be combating the negative effects of advertising and empowering its readers to regain control of culture. The big question they ask with all of their work is “Are we consumers and citizens?”
Citizen or consumer?
This is something I believe is an important discussion that those of us who work with brands need to have — are we creating enough space for people to be citizens as well as consumers? This is a big question, and one that brings other factors into play such as ‘brand purpose’ — is a corporate brand the best vehicle to promote a social or environmental purpose — but that is for another article.
Adbusters might have blazed the trail, but now groups such as Brandalism are picking up the ball and sprinting with it. Emerging in the UK during the 2012 Olympics, Brandalism has been using ‘culture jamming’ to rail against corporations with anti-capitalist, anti-consumerist and environmental concerns. Brandalism has also done a lot to expand the people who are able to take part in these activities, by among other things publishing ‘how to’ guides for things like opening poster sites.
Cultural landscape
Now, there are some who are against all of these ‘subvertising’ activities, but that isn’t my view. For me, they are an important addition to the cultural landscape, and can be a valid challenge to corporate power. On top of that, I think that some of the Adbusters and Brandalism work is some of the most creative work out there. Not only are advertising companies getting their work busted, it’s being improved upon at the same time.
If you’re interested in finding out more about this subculture, take a look at the books and websites below.
‘Advertising Shits in Your Head‘ by Vyvian Raoul & Matt Bonner
‘Culture Jam’ by Kalle Lasn
We are proud to share the first annual impact report from MotherBoard – the non-profiting initiative that is powered by ADLIB and sponsored by Not On The High Street. MotherBoard is a Business Charter, Event Series and Community that is creating real long-term change for mums working in the tech industry.
Over the past 12 months the MotherBoard Community and Charter have offered a platform for people to connect and discuss taboo subjects, whilst our growing signatories have committed to, and achieved change. Topics include:
• Mentorship • Promotion & leadership • Coding courses & funding • Infertility • Pregnancy • Sexism • Racism • Parental bias • Miscarriage • Menopause • Toxic cultures • Still birth • Redundancy in pregnancy • NDAs
Within the report you will see the positive impact MotherBoard have achieved since launching in 2021, we are excited to see what the next year holds!
We hope you enjoy having a read, if you would like to hear more about MotherBoard please email the team at [email protected].
MotherBoard is a Business Charter, Community, Event Series, and Podcast driving tangible change for mums working in the tech & data industry. We are on a mission to transform the industry to be more inclusive of mothers by tackling stigmas and supporting employers who want to create real change.
Richard Roberts explains how to create an effective hybrid working culture for your organisation.
This article follows my recent presentation to Bristol Creative Industries, looking at the impact of the new ways of working and how to create an engaging hybrid working culture. It’s a very hot topic because organisations are finding hybrid working challenging as it’s still early days. There’s no ready-made guidebook, no magic formula to get hybrid right – or make your people love working for you. But there are many approaches you can take to make things work better.
And why does this matter so much? As I covered in my presentation, research has shown that 54% of employees say they are more productive working from home, and 66% are not comfortable going back to the office or the old 9 to 5 routine. Perhaps the most striking stat comes from Glassdoor who found that employees without flexibility are twice as likely to move jobs. As hybrid is here to stay, you have to get this right.
In this article I’ve chosen some of the main challenges around managing hybrid working, followed by some approaches you could try that may work in your organisation to create better employee engagement and help retain talent. Of course, no two organisations will be the same so solutions covered here are broad and will need to be bespoke for each company
In a recent survey, 72% of employee said they would prefer a new manager to a pay rise. This clearly demonstrates how important the day-to-day relationship is with your manager. It has such an influence on your motivation levels and desire to contribute. Managing a hybrid team is very different from managing a team that you would see face to face every day in the office.
Here’s a few ideas to support better people management:
Many of us still spend a lot of time communicating via screens, especially hybrid workers. But not everyone is comfortable doing so. Over time, this creates a group of people whose ideas and contributions aren’t as represented as those who are more confident. This creates shifts in power and status purely down to the communication channel being used, which risks disengaging those who could contribute in a more conventional ‘in the room’ setting. While screens allow conversation, it’s easy to miss the subtle nuances of communication you’d pick up talking face to face in person.
Having a voice is an important engagement driver. We need to feel we are contributing and to be able to do this in a safe space without fear of ridicule. Listening is how organisations build trust. It’s important to think through how you can replicate this from an office setting to virtual.
Here’s a few ideas to help people be heard:
Some people are working in the office, others are not. We tend to talk to those who we see in a building, not those in the wider circles we don’t. Over time working relationships ‘thin’ and silos emerge, not helped by missing the conversations that are happening in the building, and outside. People get frustrated by being left out of those informal exchanges and decisions made that they weren’t involved in as they weren’t there. Over time this can grow into being excluded from bigger and more important decisions.
Here’s a few ideas to bring your teams together:
It’s really important that leaders remain visible in the office and virtually. During lockdown leaders were present and often highly visible via virtual comms. Now, as offices have opened up, many have returned and the emphasis on virtual comms has declined – which leaves those people working remotely not seeing as much of their leaders as those in the building. Key messages aren’t being received equally, which also adds to the silo problem.
Here’s a few ideas to help leaders be more visible:
At the heart of organisations are the networks and relationships that form over time. These provide social contact but also enable the professional networks that help people get promoted etc. Research, from organisational thinkers like Simon Sinek, shows that people need social contact. The difference from being present in the building and working remotely creates the ‘them and us’ of those central to the organisation and those who feel disconnected and isolated from the opportunities and social life that come with office life.
Here’s a few to help keep people connected:
Any organisation serious about attracting and retaining the best talent must have a hybrid strategy that works. Recruitment will be more challenging for those organisations that don’t communicate how hybrid working works for their people. Over time people leave and potential candidates won’t know the organisation and will it hard to feel like they belong somewhere that they’ve never been. If you’ve previously recruited based on your office and location this culture will mean a lot less when hybrid workers will rarely visit or spend time together.
Here’s a few ideas to recruit hybrid workers:
Hybrid working is a huge engagement opportunity that can re-shape how we lead, manage and inspire our organisations. But no two organisations – or set of challenges will be the same. The one constant thread running through the issues are your people. The more they are consulted and involved in designing what is after all, their organisation, the more likely you are to create a culture that better communicates, engages and retains. So, the key for successful hybrid working is to work with your people to get it right for both sides.
Richard Roberts is a freelance HR consultant and culture and employee engagement specialist. He runs en:Rich HR.
Listening to podcasts is a great way to inspire and inform your creativity. We asked members of the Bristol Creative Industries LinkedIn group, which has over 7,400 members, to share their recommendations. Happy listening!
Created by the magazine dedicated to the creative industry, the Creative Boom Podcast features candid conversations with artists and designers about their creative journeys. Listen here.
Recommended by Ellen Carroll.
This is a podcast that “questions assumptions in the tech world and celebrates those working with technology in unconventional ways.” Listen here.
Recommended by Jessica Morgan (see Jessica’s BCI profile for Carnsight Communications here).
Hosted by Adam Tuckwell and Jon Wilcox, the PR Hub Podcast is a conversational PR and marcoms podcast with special guests discussing the world of communications. Listen here.
Recommended by Gina Jones.
This podcast includes interviews and discussions between Robert Craven and digital agency experts providing insights to help you grow your digital agency. Listen here.
Recommended by Robert Craven.
This podcast focuses on documentary film making and the people who do it. Listen here.
Recommended by Stuart Fox.
This podcast features marketers telling the stories behind the strategies that led to amazing work. Listen here.
Recommended by Kevin Mason (see Kevin’s BCI profile for Proctor + Stevenson here).
Hosted by Jon Evans, this podcast “uncovers the bulls**t and carefully managed PR messages to explore the good, the bad and quite frankly downright ugly truth about marketing”. Listen here.
Recommended by Matt Ramsay (see Matt’s BCI profile for Activation here).
This podcast features B2B marketers and creatives from the tech world discussing the role that creativity plays in helping them market their business. Listen here.
Recommended by Dave Corlett.
Hosted by entrepreneur and Dragons’ Den investor Steven Bartlett, this podcast is described as “an unfiltered journey into the remarkable stories of the people that have defined culture, achieved greatness and created stories worth studying”. Listen here.
Recommended by Alli Nicholas, membership manager at Bristol Creative Industries.
This podcast features conversations on the art of creative entrepreneurship. It is hosted by leading creative business experts David C. Baker and Blair Enns. Listen here.
Recommended by Alli Nicholas.
David C. Baker joined BCI for an event in February 2021 to share brilliant tips on how creative businesses can write the perfect positioning statement. Read a summary of his advice here.
“Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans help teams all over the world discover a more adaptive and human way of working. Now it’s your turn. Each week, they’ll bring you a counterintuitive take on a common challenge at work—and you’ll hear from guests who have been there and found their way to something better.” Listen here.
Recommended by Kim Slater.
This podcast focuses on the smallest changes that can have the biggest impact. It shares simple evidence-backed tips to help you kick bad habits, get a raise, and grow a business. Listen here.
Recommended by Dr Thomas Bowden-Green.
“Organisational psychologist Adam Grant takes you inside some truly unusual places, where they’ve figured out how to make work not suck.” Listen here.
Recommended by Chris Thurling, chair of Bristol Creative Industries following a recommendation by Ann Hiatt.
This podcast from Creative Review looks at what is wrong with the creative industries and how to fix it. Listen here.
This podcast, from the community for creatives to make our industry a better place, interviews creatives, mental health experts and consultants to share advice, stories and conversations. Listen here.
The West of England’s first-ever Good Employment Charter has been launched by Metro Mayor Dan Norris as part of a push to develop good jobs, deliver opportunities for workers to progress and help local and regional employers succeed.
First to sign up is the world famous, four times Academy Award winning animation studio Aardman. Others already pledging their support include Visit West as well as Bristol’s Wake the Tiger, Bath’s Storm and Stoke Gifford’s Service Robotics.
The Charter has been designed by trade unions, employers and employees from across Bristol, Bath and South Gloucestershire.
Local firms big and small will be supported by the West of England Combined Authority, led by the Metro Mayor, to raise standards across a number of areas, including regarding recruitment and worker engagement, with a two-tier approach to help them progress.
The two tiers of the West of England Good Employment Charter are:
Tier 1: Supporters – working with aspiring organisations to help them take steps to improve their own practices, including through a personalised action plan, workshops and other events, raising employment standards across the whole region, to meet the requirements of accreditation.
Tier 2: Membership – requiring employers to demonstrate excellent practice in key characteristics of employment practice. These are:
Businesses receiving funding through the West of England Combined Authority’s investment funds will also now be required to become Charter supporters, confirmed the Metro Mayor.
Currently more than 15% of West of England workers take home less pay than the Real Living Wage, while an estimated 111,000 in the wider South West are on zero-hours contracts.
Metro Mayor Dan Norris said: “I’m delighted to see this manifesto pledge fulfilled. No matter what job you do, everyone deserves dignity at work, fair pay and secure work in a safe workplace with clear opportunities to progress and develop. I want to praise the brilliant employers we have in our region such as Aardman.
“Recognising those good employers and seeking to persuade everyone else to do the right thing is what this is all about. We know that employers who are best at properly supporting their employees are usually the most successful. So this a win-win for employers and employees. I welcome the employers ego have started the journey with us today, and I’ve no doubt that many, many more will join them soon.”
Aardman Managing Director Sean Clarke said: “We’re really pleased to support the Good Employment Charter and feel that improving employment standards is crucial for staff wellbeing, retention, engagement and productivity. Many policies such as the Real Living Wage and Secure Work have been in place for some time, which has already made a positive impact to the business.
“As an employee-owned business we are always looking to expand and improve engagement with the ‘partners’ in the studio and have various forums for partners to have a voice on the how the studio is managed and our business planning and priorities. Aardman is committed to providing a workplace where people and their ideas can really thrive.
“We believe that implementing these standards helps us to nurture our most important asset – our people – and ensures we are well placed to attract and retain our talent in an increasingly competitive talent market.”
Employers interested in signing up to the West of England Good Employment Charter should email [email protected]
Yuup is looking for community heroes and local champions to take on a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
Know someone that is a local champion? An unsung hero that gives their spare time to supporting their community and making Bristol a better place for everyone to live?
Yuup is on the hunt for local Bristol community heroes and you can nominate them to win the experience of a lifetime in the Yuup hot air balloon ride giveaway.
Community is at the heart of Yuup and the company is known for enabling positive social impact. Every day the business works closely with people, charities and small businesses that pour their hearts into making a positive local impact. It’s clear that there are a number of unsung heroes that Bristol wouldn’t be the same without.
The Bristol-born local marketplace is giving away a hot air balloon flight over Bristol to one lucky person that deserves some recognition for their hard work and dedication to bringing positive social impact to their local area.
In appreciation of people making a difference in their community, Yuup is inviting you to nominate someone via the Yuup Instagram page @say.yuup.
Head to the balloon flight giveaway post pinned to the top of the page and follow the instructions to nominate your special person.
They might be a whizz at volunteering or brilliant at fundraising, they could spend their weekends clearing rubbish or caring for animals, they might have started a community group, club, or night out that helps people connect.
The winner will be picked at random from entries with the most inspiring individuals.
Nominations are open until 6pm on 25th August. Full T&Cs can be found on the Instagram post.
“There are many people who don’t believe this actually happened. But it was real. There are the facts.”
Yuri Trush.
What makes a good story? What combination of narrative, character and place makes a story powerful enough to last? To break out of the confines of a single creative interpretation, it must be capable of jumping from one medium to another, adapting in form whilst retaining that universal seed of magic, re-inventing itself in the hands of successive authors, creating its own mythology as it goes.
I was interested in what had happened to people living in the remote forest communities along Russia’s eastern border with China after the collapse of the Soviet Union? What happens to people when the protections of the state disappear? How do they live with no work or pension?
Looking for a commercial ‘hook’ on which to hang this somewhat abstract question, I began researching the illegal tiger trade when I came across a small but epic story.
All great stories tend to be focused on a single emotion- anger, sadness, disgust, happiness, surprise and fear. These combine in subtle ways to create a colour wheel of emotion.
The potent emotion at the heart of this story was fear. That particular fear of being hunted, a fear that still lurks deep in the recesses of our primitive imagination, buried in our pre-history when the tiger was our most feared predator, and man was easy prey. Slow, deaf, blind and foolish.
Long before the ‘blog post’ was a cultural norm, the internet was still a treasure trove of fragments of personal experience ripe for creative treatment. All one needed was a keen sense of the necessary ingredients and a focused search. A local Russian journalist had uploaded an account of a very unusual series of tiger attacks on people, written from the field notes of an eminent field ecologist, Dimitri Pikunov.
Pikunov describes a dark and disturbing series of events initiated by a desperate hunter called Vladimir Markov.
To make a mistake is only human, and we hope and expect to learn from each one. But Markov made a series of mistakes, each one compounding the next, and each steadily reducing his chances of applying the benefit of hindsight.
First he stole meat from a tiger. Then he shot at the tiger. And missed.
A wounded animal is much more dangerous, forcing ‘unnatural’ behaviours that lead inevitably to confrontation. In this case, the tiger was intent on revenge, tracing the scent of the man back to his hut where it lay patiently in wait before stalking and killing him.
Markov had triggered what was to become an infamous series of tiger attacks on people. The authorities called in specialist tiger trackers, a ‘Conflict Tiger Unit’ headed up by Yuri Trush. Yuri was charged both with investigating what had happened and with finding, and killing, the tiger.
This is Pikunov’s account of the final moments of Yuri’s deadly encounter-
“The tiger, now limping badly, wandered the logging road when, in the frosty air, came the rumble of an approaching vehicle. The predator turned off into the glade where the log deck had formerly been and lay down in a shallow ditch overgrown with wormwood. The GAS-66 truck had already made its way up to the corner of the glade.
Yuri Peonka, sitting next to the driver, saw some tracks from inside the truck that appeared to be the ones that they were looking for. Jumping out of the truck, he tested the tracks in the tried and true manner: if it ‘crumbles’, then it is absolutely fresh. Rushing to get his gun, Yuri yelled out to his partners: “He’s here!” Their dog, catching the scent of the tiger, yelped in confusion and, tucking in his tail, hid behind the truck, only sharpening even more the unbelievable tension that mortally threatened all the participants in what was now an inevitable confrontation.
A quick check of the log deck, with its occasional clumps of wormwood, yielded nothing. It was decided that Trush would be the first to go along the hot trail, to the right would be Shibnev, and a bit to the rear and to the left, Peonka. In this kind of wedge, holding their fingers on the trigger, they moved forward. In a little more than twenty meters an instantly soul-numbing roar cracked the frigid air forcing everyone, as if on command, to come to a halt.
The tiger, not more than ten meters away, flew out at them as if from under the ground from an absolutely open, clear spot.
The enormous, ferocious mass of stripes, mad from pain and enraged at people, flew like a hurricane at the first of the shooters – Trush. In a half-unconscious state, he managed to get off two shots. In a simultaneous echo, from the right and the left rang out his partners’ shots on whose accuracy Yuri’s life now depended. These two experienced hunters did not let him down and the bullets hit their mark. The enormous carcass struck the barrel of the rifle and the already lifeless mass slammed down on top of Yuri, its claws, like knives, shredding his outer, winter coat and bloodying it with hot tiger blood.
The three guys immediately composed themselves. The confrontation had taken place so quickly and so unexpectedly that no one even had time to freak. Only later, when talking about what had happened, did the three of them come to the conclusion that everything had come together all too well. And especially the fact that the confrontation had taken place on a completely open spot. What if the confrontation had occurred somewhere in the thickly wooded Bikin taiga? Most likely there would have been yet another victim. Everyone seemed to agree that Yuri Trush was born under a lucky star.”
The idea of a vengeful tiger, enraged by man’s stupidity, was lure enough for me travel to Luchegorsk, a 10-hour train journey north of Vladivostok, to meet with Yuri Trush in person. Pulling into the station on a winters night, I was greeted first by the silhouette of a small back dog, followed by the imposing figure of Yuri himself. I nervously introduced myself and explained my interest in his experience. I mentioned the idea of making a film whereupon Yuri gave a broad smile, revealing a set of sparkling gold teeth. “Sasha”, he said “I have something to show you.”
Back at his flat he sat me down in front of his old TV and inserted a VHS tape. It was only at this point that I realised that he had used a video camera to record parts of his investigation of the Markov incident and I had a film to make.
The story clearly had a universal potency, playing at film festivals around the world from Seoul in South Korea, to Goias in Brazil, winning 19 festival grand prizes and audience awards.
A year after its first release, I received a call out of the blue from the American author John Vaillant. He had seen ‘Conflict Tiger’ at the BANFF Mountain Film Festival and described a ‘light-bulb’ moment in which he realised that he had found the subject for his next book. He asked for my blessing, for some help with contacts, and, by way of thanks, sent me a copy of his previous novel in the post. ‘The Golden Spruce’ dropped through my letter-box a week later and began an extraordinary 7-year creative exchange, a subject for a separate post.
The story first made public in Dimitri Pikunov’s journal had made the leap to another medium, and was on its way to wider international exposure. 3 years later Penguin Random House published John Vaillant’s ‘The Tiger- A True Story of Vengeance & Survival’.
Here is an extract from the book that recounts the lead-up to Yuri’s brush with death-
“The sun shone brilliantly on the undisturbed snow; the only shadows there were those cast by the men themselves—long, even at midday. Gitta continued darting up the trail and then back to Trush, barking incessantly, but she gave no clear indication of the tiger’s whereabouts. She didn’t know. As they walked, the men scanned the clearing, an expanse in which it would have been difficult to conceal a rabbit, and then they focused their attention on the forest ahead, which was beginning to look like one enormous ambush. With the exception of the dog, everything was calm and nearly still. Behind them, smoke rose lazily from the Kung’s chimney, drifting off to the north. Gorborukov was still standing there by the back door, holding his rifle like a broom. In the clearing, the slender stalks and blades nodded reassuringly, as if everything was unfolding according to plan. The men had gone about twenty yards when Shibnev, picking up some kind of ineffable, intuitive cue, calmly said, “Guys, we should spread out.” A moment later, the clearing exploded. The first impact of a tiger attack does not come from the tiger itself, but from the roar, which, in addition to being loud like a jet, has an eerie capacity to fill the space around it, leaving one unsure where to look. From close range, the experience is overwhelming and has the effect of separating you from yourself, of scrambling the very neurology that is supposed to save you at times like this.
Those who have done serious tiger time—scientists and hunters— describe the tiger’s roar not as a sound so much as a full-body experience. Sober, disciplined biologists have sworn they felt the earth shake. One Russian hunter, taken by surprise, recalled thinking a dam had burst somewhere. In short, the tiger’s roar exists in the same sonic realm as a natural catastrophe; it is one of those sounds that give meaning and substance to “the fear of God.” The Udeghe, Yuri Pionka, described the roar of that tiger in the clearing as soul-rending. The literal translation from Russian is “soul tearing-apart.” “I have heard tigers in the forest,” he said, “but I never heard anything like that. It was vicious; terrifying.” What happened next transpired in less than three seconds. First, the tiger was nowhere to be seen, and then he was in the air and flying. What the tiger’s fangs do to the flesh its eyes do to the psyche, and this tiger’s eyes were fixed on Trush: he was the target and, as far as the tiger was concerned, he was as good as dead. Having launched from ten yards away, the tiger was closing at the speed of flight, his roar rumbling through Trush’s chest and skull like an avalanche. In spite of this, Trush managed to put his rifle to his shoulder, and the clearing disappeared, along with the forest behind it. All that remained in his consciousness was the black wand of his gun barrel, at the end of which was a ravening blur of yellow eyes and gleaming teeth that were growing in size by the nanosecond. Trush was squeezing the trigger, which seemed a futile gesture in the face of such ferocious intent—that barbed sledge of a paw, raised now for the death blow.
The scenario was identical: the open field; the alert, armed man; the tiger who is seen only when he chooses to be seen, erupting, apparently, from the earth itself—from nowhere at all— leaving no time and no possibility of escape. Trush was going to die exactly as Markov and Pochepnya had. This was no folktale; nonetheless, only something heroic, shamanic, magical could alter the outcome. Trush’s semiautomatic loaded with proven tiger killers was not enough. Trush was a praying man, and only God could save him now.”
It’s a strange experience to see ‘your’ story through the prism of another narrator’s imagination. John had brought new depths and insight to it with the space and time a book affords both author and reader. It’s interesting to compare how different media handle the spontaneous moment, a narrative territory that is meant to be the special preserve of the documentary film. But the written word exposes different kinds of meaning, and the experience of reading, as opposed to watching, allows us to ‘inhabit’ the story over a longer time. We become immersed in it over days, slowly losing track of where the story ends and we begin. Film is a much faster burn. But what medium has the best claim on the ‘real’? Does it matter? Working together they achieve a higher, deeper meaning, refracting different shades of emotional truth.
And so the story moves on, mutating in unpredictable ways, waiting to make the next leap in the collective imagination.
A month ago I received another note from John Vaillant. ‘Did I keep abreast of the movie news’? he asked. ‘The Tiger’ was to be adapted again, this time with big money and Hollywood production values. Ukranian Director Myroslav Slaboshpytskyi is to direct Emmy and Golden Globe winning actor Alexander Skarsgard.
He attached a link to an article featuring this quote from the producer Darren Aronofsky-
“As a producer, I’ve wanted to do two things for a while now: one is to make this film, and the other is to work with the brilliant auteur that is Myroslav Slaboshpytskyi. I am truly excited to be involved with a project that will allow me to do both, and cannot wait to bring this story to the world.”
Aronofsky doesn’t make boring films, and his partnership with an out-an-out ‘auteur’ (best known for his 2014 film ‘The Tribe’ set in a school for the deaf using Ukranian sign language and no subtitles) bodes well for a fresh re-interpretation rather than a dumbed down ‘Hunt For Red October’ version, with Yuri as some tooled up ‘Rambo’ hero primed to tame the wild and bring ‘civilisation’ back to the Taiga.
I pray they do the story justice, but I know it would survive even a proper mauling. Already percolating in the public imagination in multiple forms, it has already proved resilient and adaptable. We have to hope that we will fare as well as we continue to distort nature as we pursue our foolish ends.
Returning to the question of what makes a good story? A mysterious location, vivid characters and an epic battle do not alone explain its universal appeal. Its lasting impact comes more from the way it unfolds. It offers the familiar tension of a dramatic thriller pivoting our empathies from the preyed upon man to the suffering animal. But ultimately resolves as a parable, timeless and universal, that speaks emotively of their shared destiny.
Got a story to tell? Or purpose to communicate? Need some friendly advice?
Would you and your team benefit from learning about and committing to experimenting with new ways of working? If so, join my online course in July – BCI members receive a 10% discount 🤗
In a nutshell, we’ll focus on the common challenges and tensions felt by teams (the perfect inspiration for your experiments); what Harvard, MIT and Google research tells us about great teams; healthy meeting structures; helpful mindsets; power; encouraging a culture of feedback; and techniques for better decision-making.
I love delivering this course. The first seven have been full houses, the feedback has been fantastic, and I can’t wait to go again!
100% of participants “feel more comfortable experimenting with new ways of working” & “would recommend the course to colleagues” 💯
The course objectives are for you to enjoy your job more and to be an even better member of your team. You’ll learn collaboration and leadership skills, how to facilitate meetings that don’t feel like a chore, and how to make better decisions by quickly seeking and integrating the wisdom of the group. You’ll learn how to give ‘brain-friendly’ feedback, recognise what’s getting in the way of being a great team (tensions), and understand the mindset and power dynamics that help or hinder change.
To do this we’ll borrow from the best sources. These include agile, self-management, organisational psychology, and the most progressive companies on the planet. There’s more detail below in the ‘Course overview’ section of the course page, including who’s been attending, eligibility, and course feedback scores.
– By far one of the most useful, practical, engaging, interesting courses I’ve been on. Hats off to you, super well thought out, from a practical, mental and emotional perspective.
– The experimenting methodology gives me the opportunity to not only “take a course” but actually practising in the “real world”.
– The benefits to the business have been tangible and resulted in me thinking about work in a very different way.
– I loved having another colleague on the course and would totally recommend others try to do the same… I loved the organisation of the course, it all felt incredibly “slick.” … I loved Marks humble approach, he listened to us all intently and was patient with us when we needed more time on certain things.
– The experiments each week really helped me grow my comfort towards experimenting further. They gave me the perspective of how much needs to be a done, and an eye for what might be ‘bite-size’.
– I loved Marks generosity, he clearly spends a lot of time preparing and introduced me to very cool tools that we are now using in the organisation.
– The depth of experience and further research Mark has done to curate bite sized resource for us to cover weekly, in a number of mediums, was incredibly satisfying to absorb and kept me engaged over the 5 weeks.
– As a facilitator, you do add quite a bit of magic sauce to holding the space, and your curation of materials is unbeatable.
Your New Ways of Working journey will be more impactful if you have colleagues along for the ride, so you are advised (and incentivised) to bring one or two along.
To secure your place please double-check the eligibility criteria on the course page then send a note to confirm ([email protected]) and that’s it, you’re enrolled!
Most of the time we wander around trapped in our own heads. Left to its own devices, our sense of self is remarkably resistant to change.
But stories offer a way out by ingeniously diverting us via someone else’s experience, disarming our defences by temporarily altering our point of view.
Released from the confines of our delusions, we are able to make fresh insights about how the world works and our place in it.
And the greater the jump the story can make away from what we know, in culture, language, environment and experience, the more we are confronted with the inadequacy of our preconceptions.
Take for example the act of killing. Most of us tend to think that the act of ‘murder’ is only committed by ‘murderers’. It is not only outside our experience but beyond our frame of reference for what is even possible.
But what if the capacity to kill exists in each and every one of us? What if it’s our circumstances alone that can define us ‘in the moment’?
And by circumstances I don’t just mean the immediate circumstances over which we might expect to have some measure of control, but also the larger forces at play in our family, community and society over which we have no control at all. The two can work together to insidiously bring us to the point of no return.
This was the question that I wanted to explore in ‘Arctic Crime & Punishment’.
Transported to a totally different context, a frozen village at the end of the world, could a story still provide the bridge to understanding our own capacity to kill?
And Arctic Greenland is a very interesting place to ask such a primal question because their code of justice is founded on this same principle of good storytelling. Those called to stand in ‘judgement’ of a crime must first step into the shoes of the ‘criminal’- they are required to give priority to the circumstances of the crime over the act itself.
This apparently tolerant view was not born out of some high-minded nobility, but from the necessity for survival.
“We cannot just expel people from society. We need all the people we have, and we have to accept those that we have been given. In Europe you can afford to sweep people under the carpet.” Judge Jens Kjeldsen.
Furthermore, as small, mutually dependent communities, they are able to judge from a position of knowing the defendant’s shoes very well.
But what about for the outsider? Cast into a completely different world, across the chasm of language, culture and environment, could a story persuade the viewer to step into the shoes of a killer too?
And what purpose does an understanding of such extremes of behaviour serve?
“Among all the miseries, there’s one that pierces our hearts most deeply, that wrings the bitterest tears from our eyes. It’s the awareness that we have committed a mistake that we can’t go back and fix. When we look back on our actions, I’m afraid there’s nothing quite so painful as thinking, ‘What have I done?’”
from ‘How Do You Live’ by Genzaburo Yoshino.
We met Naalu 3 days after her arrest. Our Greenlandic translator knew her and her parents. Over the course of the 3 months it took for her case to come to trial, we got to meet her family, and the relatives of her husband, the man she had killed.
If story can be a path for shared understanding and self-knowledge, it can also be a path to redemption and forgiveness.
“It’s truly painful to admit one’s own mistakes. Most people think up any excuse they can to avoid it. However, when you have made a mistake, to recognize it bravely and to suffer for it is something that in all of heaven and earth, only humans can do.
For error has the same relationship to truth as sleeping does to waking. I have seen that when one wakes from error, one turns to truth again as if revived.
We have the power to decide on our own who we will be. Therefore, we will make mistakes. However— We have the power to decide on our own who we will be. Therefore, we can also recover from our mistakes.”
from ‘How Do You Live’ by Genzaburo Yoshino.
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