Tuesday 21 April 2009

What would a resilient (arts) world be like?

Brian Walker and David Salt’s Resilience Thinking ends with a handy check list of 9 things a resilient world would value. I’m going to conclude this little series of posts with them – and by repeating the invitation from the book to send your 10th attribute to Brian Walker at Brian.Walker@csiro.au - though please post it here as a comment too!

1. Diversity: A resilient world would promote and sustain diversity in all forms (biological, landscape, social and economic)
2. Ecological Variability: A resilient world would embrace and work with ecological variability (rather than attempting to control and reduce it)
3. Modularity: A resilient world would consist of modular components
4. Acknowledging Slow Variables: A resilient world would have a policy focus on ‘slow’, controlling variable associated with thresholds
5. Tight Feedbacks: A resilient world would possess tight feedbacks (but not too tight)
6. Social Capital: A resilient world would promote trust, well-developed social networks, and leadership (adaptability)
7. Innovation: A resilient world would place an emphasis on learning, experimentation, locally developed rules and embracing change.
8. Overlap in Governance: A resilient world would have institutions that have ‘redundancy’ in their governance structures and a mix of common and private property with overlapping access rights
9. Ecosystem Services: A resilient world would include all the unpriced ecosystem services in developing proposals and assessments.

You will be able to apply this to artsworld without me pointing out the obvious. It might be worth saying, though, that an ‘unpriced ecosystem service’ , might, for instance, be the ideas of individual artists that often go unpaid,or the amateur and pro-am arts.

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