Olafur Eliasson – The weather project 2003
Dear Social Innovation,
You have become my obsession in the last weeks. We met at a European competition and you further engaged me in a publication and an article. I was asked to write a chapter on good goverance in the sector for a book due to be published next year, and realized the editors want the chapter to be focused on governance for social innovation.
Now, I’m going mad putting together the first draft for the Social Innovation Coalition, and in the mean time you keep popping up in every other application we work on!
I’m having quite a lot fun but it seems you only attract policy makers, entrepreneurs, lobbyists and bureaucrats. Isn’t it time to bring art in to the mix?
2 weeks ago I was in Brussels and invited to speak at the DICE conference. It was quite a strange event at first sight: Drama Improves Lisbon Key Competences in Education. I was asked to address the connection between artistic creativity and entrepreneurship.
I must confess I didn’t have a clue at the beginning, but then realized that I’ve spent all my life making this exact connection. I’ve worked with artists of all disciplines, transforming their ideas into projects and making them sustainable.
I started my career with Art for the World and now lead Euclid Network. Despite their different missions, both organisations share something: they don’t respond to market needs, but have been established to turn an idea into a reality and convince people this is the reality they want as well.
Ideas when dressed with art become more attactive than any other product that you may or may not need.
My final proof came this WE. I spent it in Berlin hosted by my friends Anna Maria and Sebastian. They work with the Icelandic artist and world class celebrity Olafur Eliasson. You’ve seen his sun at the Tate Modern, haven’t you?
Sebastian gave me a guided tour of the new studio which is actually a converted brewery transformed into an art centre made up of labs, an art school, studios and my friends’ loft apartment.
The place is not only a gigantic playground, where you can get lost in artistic mirabilia, but is also a very successful enterprise, which has made artistic creativity a business.
That place is your house, Social Innovation. You are not just in what they produce but in the organisation of the space, the staff, time; everything. Even the kitchen is a magic place where fresh food is cooked every day for the employees.
And this project isn’t the first example of social innovation and art enjoying a happy marriage. As social innovation spreads through the sector bringing ideas to life and weaving them into successful enterprises, it is when social innovation meets the artistic ideas that the potential to unlock more imaginations is created.
A bientôt, Social Innovation!
