The role of art as a bridge in social innovation

Reflections on the SIX Wayfinder Collective Symphony

Art as bridge between the ‘now’ and ‘not yet’

To wayfind is to orient oneself; seafaring communities have long found their way using the stars, the current and the winds. But by nature, to wayfind is to be finding your way, and therefore to be uncertain, often disconnected and sometimes even dislocated from what matters.

How do you find your way when in the present moment you are so disoriented? 

Wayfinding is as much about holding the future vision as it is about being very present. As Otto Scharmer describes it, this means “blending sensing and presence, to connect from the Source of the highest future possibility and to bring it into the now..”

Art acts as a bridge between the “now and not yet”; it helps us to imagine and share all of the different kinds of possibles that remain out there and brings them closer to us. In 2017, we brought the global social innovation community together in London and started an ambitious journey of “wayfinding” from here (2017) to there (2027). We got to a sense of direction, but a sense of destination is not enough. We need constant renewal of thoughts, emotions and most importantly, actions. 

In the middle of a global pandemic, the work of many social impact organisations has completely changed and the mindsets and behaviours of social innovators has come to the fore. So many of us have been searching for resonance amidst the noise; living at our own frequencies, hearing only echoes of our own voices. This moment revealed how we are reliant on each other, and vulnerable to each other in equal measure.

At all three Wayfinder gatherings (in London 2017, Turkey, 2018 and the world 2020), practitioners have worked together to find ways forward that are new, renewed or adapted. By tuning in to our individual and collective stories and sounds, listening deeply, practicing together and journeying through a shared experience, we can grasp shared meaning and shape mutual action in these urgent times. 

Why SIX commissioned six Artist-Composers in Residence

2020 was no ordinary year. So the SIX Wayfinder was no ordinary event. From the beginning, we aimed to develop and share an ‘artefact’ of the moment, showing a spectrum of what people and communities were going through globally. We wanted a tapestry of different stories, rather than a single manifesto. We wanted to show how these things connect and try to see the links between them, highlighting what we need to keep and what we need to end. So instead of creating a structured programme and a report, we transformed our 2-day conference into a 9-month project - an emergent score in four movements. 

We commissioned six Artist-Composers (a harpist, a filmmaker, a jazz musician/tap dancer, a composer, a poet and a painter) who went from being individual creators who had never met, to a makeshift orchestra across continents and time zones. They produced individual compositions and a collective symphony in response to the dissonance and harmony around the world, translating and giving further meaning to the Wayfinder content through their own forms of art and music. 

 2020 was a deeply personal and at the same time fundamentally collective experience. Innovation for transformative change lived in the interplay of emotions. Our resilience was built through waves and waves of powerful lessons and reckonings around social security, justice, and peace. 

By tuning in to our individual and collective stories and sounds, listening deeply, practicing together and journeying through a shared experience, we can grasp shared meaning and shape mutual action in these urgent times. 

...Our metaphorical symphony became real. Our emerging score came to life.  

“Now what?”: The value of artists to the SIX Wayfinder

Our experience of working with artists and composers was absolutely crucial to answering our central question, “what is the shape and sound of social innovation in urgent times?” As the activities formed insights and these insights were layered into our final score, we felt a call to go deeper, to sense what people were crying out for, inspired by and moved to, and to articulate how this all carries forwards.

The Artist Composers were a unique gift in ensuring that we don’t lose what we can’t touch or feel.

As one example, the dozens of dine-arounds we hosted were quite special in that individuals offered up sound pieces that described their individual places and points in time. These archives sparked musical and visual responses from the artists, which in turn gave participants and others an opportunity to hear themselves, to feel heard, and to connect a message to an experience that transcends space and time. 

 Epiphanies can carry forwards but only if we learn how to ground them, practice them, turn them forwards and keep returning them to the question, “now what?”

 “Music is a signal”: The value of artists to the sector

Social innovation without a creative process is impossible. We are not conditioned to see art’s value in terms of generating ideas, problem solving, bringing people together - but art is more than entertainment. In our lines of work, we will encounter very real and hard emotions like uncertainty, fear, anger, trauma and grief. It is crucial that we capture and reflect these in ways that are constructive and healing. What we learned together through this experience, includes:

1. There is so much the social change community can learn from the way artists work together. And even though we might use different languages, we found many similarities between arts and social innovation. In one of her performance lectures, Corina Kwami mentions the ability to actively listen and the importance of call and response in music. For us, the wayfinding process was a constant feedback loop, where we listened and responded and then listened again.

2. Our second lesson was around the importance of letting go and providing a safe space, where people can be completely free to explore -- the only boundary was around regularity of the time we could spend with each other, especially in different time zones. 

3. Our third was an important lesson this year on how we build relationships/connections, despite the physical distance. We challenge everyone that says it’s not possible on zoom. We realised that what we must do has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with relationship building, willingness to push through to a common humanity. We can bring together 6 strangers -- they became friends, part of a tribe, they cried together, supported each other through this journey as if they had known each other for years. 

 We know that this material has the potential to inspire many different people to use music and art for creative change. It can act as a signal. It can show us where we feel lost and what we are being called into. It helps us to zoom into our individual journeys and then points us to somewhere and something bigger than ourselves.

Read more responses to the Wayfinder Sympnonhy on the Wayfinder Miro Board.

Applications for this work

We offer this on to people who will inevitably find their own responses to and applications for this kind of work. Here are some examples you may feel called to:

• use as grounding exercises at the start of in-person or virtual meetings or trainings;

• prompt a reflective and personal conversation between colleagues or in team gatherings;

• play in the background for tasks that require a new mood or frame of mind

• offer to children or young people for multimedia and play-based learning;

• take care of personal mental health by using as a meditation or contemplation tool at the start, middle or end of a long day/week; 

• share with people outside of the sector (including friends and family members) to talk about what you do and why you feel it matters in the world today, or just to reconnect;

• gather with people you may usually hang out with socially or at live arts and culture events, just to recreate a communal experience despite not being together physically;

• send to someone who has been going through a heavy or unhappy time to let them know you are thinking of them and wish them some relief and respite...

This is what is needed in the world: thinking that cannot be automated. It is hard work to support the world through its own gentle awakening, but it is a great thing to try and do. We must invest in the artistic modalities, especially given that many artists are facing extremely difficult choices during this pandemic.

Connecting arts and social change is a bigger conversation we want to have at SIX with all of you going forward. We’d like more organisations to be brave and invite more artists into your work and people who you would not normally engage with, to see things differently, imagine and connect together. This is something we wish to champion for 2021.