Creative Conscience

She's going to tell us about creative conscience, which we are now finding online. Great. I feel like it's something I'm doing what, a reporter or something. Yeah, sorry, I haven't got much time, have I? I've got to go. I'm just going to show you a film really quickly that explains better than I can what we're about, hopefully, if the internet works. We've got some sound and stuff. Is that one that the sound's off? That's coming slowly. Yeah, that should work. It's saying no to the sound. Oh well, we can do it without it. It's kind of... There's no sound. Yes. I don't know if you can hear it. It's not really working, is it? It's spooling. Okay, I'm just going to talk. Turn it over. Turn it off. It's a shame because that kind of sums up what we do, so I'll try and explain to you what we do. Do I press this thing? I'm not very good with these things. Okay, that makes it go forward. Basically, we're a virtual organization that... There we go. We set up about four years ago, and the aim of the organization was to encourage the creative industries to use their talents for good. We started by trying to engage young people, students and graduates. So we set up student design awards that cover all spectrums of design, from architecture to fashion and textiles, graphics, advertising, film, photography, illustration, animation, the lot. It was really just an idea that we had. With no money, with no PR, it turned into a global initiative, which I still can't quite believe that it happened the way it did. The agency that I worked for at the time liked the idea. I was on the board of that agency, and they had tasked me to get people to talk about the agency. So I ran off and asked my friends and journalists to talk about us, and they said, well, why should we talk about you? You're just the same as every other agency in the world. But at the same time as that, I was doing a project outside of work that was all around creating a community. And creative consciousness was something that I was working on outside of work. So I said to the agency that I worked with, why don't you get involved with this? Because then people will want to write about us, about you. And they said, no, no, it's not. There's no return on investment. There's no business sort of reasons for us to support you. And then probably a couple of months later, we had another board meeting, and they sort of said to me, oh, how's your project going there, there? And I went, oh, it's going well. We've got Sir Jonathan Porrett, who's an internationally known environmentalist involved. We've got Sir Quentin Blake and Helen Story and Michael Wolfe. And I listed all these great designers and people, and suddenly they decided that it was worthwhile getting involved, which was fantastic. And we built a kind of very clunky website, and we just stuck it out into the world, this idea that young people from all over the world could send us projects that were all about our aims. So our aims were all about sort of promoting social value, human-centered design, and changing people's lives for the better. So we got endorsed by the British Design Council, and kind of off we went. And within just a couple of years, the awards part of what we did had grown massively. Last year we had 500 projects from around the world, probably over 50 countries, maybe more. Every single project that was sent to us was about changing the lives of people for the better, which is very exciting and very, very powerful. So that in itself is quite a nice thing to have, but it's also a little bit of a kind of so what. What does that do? Okay, it encourages young people to think about what they're doing and why they're doing it and to change people's lives. But where the real magic lies is creating impact. It's like you can talk about changing the world all you like, but unless you actually do something, it's just fluff. It's hot air. So I'm going to show you a couple of concepts. I'm going the wrong way now. I don't know how to work this thing. Is that going forward? Oh no, it's going back. I've broken it. How do I stop it? Anyway, this is a project that was all about gender equality. Definitely gone the wrong way. Definitely gone the wrong way. So that was a project. I really don't know how to use this thing. I don't know which way I'm going. Am I holding it upside down even? I'm such a luddite. Which way is it going? That's forward. Yeah, I was holding it upside down. Can you be my humble assistant? So that was a little project that some students did. What was interesting about that was they created that idea as having a product that was just equal for everyone to try and get this understanding of we are equal, that men and women don't need to be paid less or more, and that we should all have an equal place in the world. And so companies like Unilever and Boots in the UK and globally are interested in taking some of these ideas and making them real. How are you going to click for me? These are some of our lovely ambassadors. So Sir Quentin Blake is a very famous illustrator. He did all the Roald Dahl books. And as I mentioned, Sir Jonathan Porritt is also one of our ambassadors in the world. He's an amazing guy. So click. As I said earlier, we're all about impact. So the awards are all very nice and fluffy, and everyone loves them, and aren't they great? And we have a lovely event, and everyone comes, and it's brilliant. But without creating the impact, it's really nothing for us. So click. I'm going to tell you very briefly about a story about a young Romanian girl who was studying in the UK. And she created a graphic novel for us. She was an animator and illustrator, and she was studying Coventry. And she created a project that was about teen suicide. Now, I don't know what it's like here in Denmark, but in the UK, teen suicide has gone through the roof. It's the largest killer of under 30s. It particularly affects young men for some reason, and it's a massive issue for us. So she did this project, and she got an internship. She was mentored. She won a gold award. And her project was launched onto social media platforms. She got two million hits to her project from around the world. She received thousands of emails from young people saying how her project had saved lives and stopped young people from self-harm. So Elena was one project, one young Romanian girl studying in England who created the most amazing images. Some of them, I think they're just amazing images. She did it all on a wacom. And that project has already affected the lives of two million young people around the world. Elena has gone back to Romania. She has created another graphic novel around the issues of dementia, which is also a massive problem in the UK. It's on the rise. And she continues to be mentored by our network. What's interesting about Elena is that this piece of work came from a personal experience. And our award systems are quite unique because we don't necessarily give the students and graduates briefs. We let them choose what they're passionate about. And quite often, the most powerful projects that we've had that have created impact have come from someone's personal experience. Like her, she was bullied horribly as a young person and yet she's created an amazing thing from her own experience. Some more images from her project. So she's won one case study. This is another project that we're working with actually at the moment with a young lady called Fatma. And Fatma created a whole series of images that were around female genital mutilation, which isn't just a problem in West Africa or across Africa. It's also a massive problem in the UK and probably across Europe because we have lots of those communities living within our cultures. And it's never, never talked about. So again, Fatma has experienced and her work has been a great success. Fatma's experience and her work came from a fear that this was going to happen to her. And she lived with that fear for many years. And this is the result of a campaign about talking about this issue in a way which is kind of palatable to the people on looking. It was published in Design Week and we are currently working with Barnardo's, which is a huge charity in the UK and a national female genital mutilation kind of organisation. They've got a conference in about two weeks and we're hoping to get this campaign out into the UK. The thing about our organisation is it's run completely on volunteers. No one gets paid. We have no salaries. We don't have an office or anything like that. It's just a group of people that come together who believe in what we're doing, which is also kind of quite unbelievable. And we give great ideas away for free. So we've had loads of projects, apps and different ideas around food waste, which maybe I should share with you. It's lovely where you can see a wonderful idea and you know an organisation in the third sector which is looking for a campaign they can't afford to work with agencies and you just say to them, we're giving this stuff away for free. It's very exciting. This is another project that we're working on which is much harder to get made real but in the UK we have a problem with people donating blood. I don't know if we can make this any louder. The donation is the opportunity of bringing a variety of people while you're at work in the UK. That is what that is. This gives women digital functions and spending, specifically and for women. These funds will not be spent on the long term and the long term. For example, you receive about 12,000 people in the UK per month. It is not your general proportion, but what that means is that each donation is one time and two times less than the daily pay and per year. The actual donation is going to be one time per month, three times per year, two times per month, three times per year, or 30 hours per day, without and without. Over 200 million people are on the train from the South London Station to the East. It's only one donation per train and the last thousand people are on the train. How much money do you think that would be able to give? So, really, really nice idea. People don't give blood because they don't have time. When do they have time? They have time on the trains. So you create... Oh, I don't know how to stop this. Can I go back one? Keep playing. Okay, this is another idea around using Tinder to educate people on sexual health issues because sexual health issues are going, again, up because of apps like Tinder. What they did was they created two fake profiles and launched them on Tinder and those people who swiped unconsciously were then sent a message through the GPS system telling about where their nearest sexual health clinic was and that they should learn to be more responsible. So it was a brilliant campaign because it took existing technology to educate people. And that's something that I think we need to look at. How can a brand work with a piece of technology and work with an NGO? This is just going to go. This was one about human rights. I'm sorry. Label. Amnesty International. And it said, Amnesty International will be able to protect the anonymity of the sender by using Snapchat self-destructing messages. Automatically deleting potentially criminalised photos or videos shown on the sender's phone or BDL and from where the content is stored and distributed through Amnesty International's network, supplementing the information and expanding the network. So another really lovely example of using two brands working together to create change. We've seen this one. I don't know how to stop it. Stop, stop. How do I stop it? Sorry. It's got a whole mind of its own. I'm terrible with technology. We can leave that last one. It's fine. So there's a few examples of some of the projects we've had in. And I guess the talk was from awards to impact. I've shown you a couple of impact projects. We're working on a dementia project, a massive dementia project. We're working on the blood class one where we're trying to engage Virgin in the train lines to take that on board. Even if they don't do it, we're thinking about maybe we could do it in first class lounges at airports and it would be a really lovely brand connection with giving blood and obviously the red engine and what they're about. We've done one which was called the Great Pants Run. It was an idea of bringing awareness to young men around testicular cancer and we partnered with the Movember Foundation which are the guys with, you know, you have to grow the moustache. And they actually launched that last year in universities across the UK where they also partnered with H&M where they created Y-Fronts with the Movember branding on and then they got young guys running around campuses raising awareness for that. So it's this kind of idea of you getting a great idea from a student or a graduate then partnering with someone in the third sector like yourselves and then possibly getting a brand involved to create a really lovely sort of 360 impact in the world. So that's what we're about. Sorry that was so hashed together and I'm sort of slightly nervous as well because we're running really late and I'm worried about you. You're all good. It's going to work out perfectly. Thank you. That was terrible. That was really interesting, Chrissy. Thank you. So questions, comments, anything you want to know from Chrissy before she takes off in 15 minutes or something like that, 20 maybe? Yeah, hello. So Ine, do we have the microphone there? Thanks. Well, I really enjoyed your presentation. I didn't. But while you were here in Denmark, did you actually go and talk to Index Award? And do you know about Index Award? No, I don't. Oh, it's a pity you're leaving now because you should really go and talk to Kitty Wawner because they're actually doing quite the same just in another scale because they're working with businesses and making designs for a better world but having the biggest worldwide reward about this. So go check Index Award. Maybe you can connect me. Ine or Design to Improve Life? Yeah, Design to Improve Life. You should really go. I think you could make a really nice, you could have a nice coffee date or you could make a nice partnership. Now you'll have to come back and visit us. There's also I mean, I was talking to Cathy Katerina here around their project in Norway and there's obviously everyone knows the IDEO open platform thing. And I think where the best things have happened is when people are brave enough to share like share all their contacts, share their network, talk about other people's projects on their social media and things like that. And that's really where magic comes, I think. It's where people are just willing to share and it was so lovely listening to Monica talk about this idea of just creating these models and then just putting them out there. My question would be how do we get the British to take any note of what you're doing with your urban design systems and stuff like that. So yeah, be really, really good. I'll check them out or maybe someone you can send me the stuff around that. Yeah. Was do you, nope? Alright. You were asking for design Yes. Sorry. Because we were talking about this design that I'm working with. And well how can we help increase it's about sharing but what's the most practical way to approach this. If any of you know people who work in education you probably do, Monica through your connections with art schools and stuff like that. What we're really hoping to do is to get this built, this way of thinking built into curriculums all over the world. So instead of us designing for designing sake that every single thing we do is purpose driven. Imagine a world where every design that was ever created was layered with the idea that it would serve the planet and humanity. I mean that would be the best thing. That's the way we should be behaving but sadly the way the world's gone has been a slightly misguided and we're not in that place. So if you know any educators or you know people involved in education and we can connect and we can come and do talks and we can build this because it is a global initiative and we have whether you love or hate Unilever they have sponsored the actual awards events for the last two years and paid for the the kind of do and Unilever house and stuff like that and they're taking some of these ideas and they're sharing it with their marketeers to try and inspire them to create different ways that brands behave. So I don't know if any of you are involved with education but that's really what we want to do and when we came up with the idea trying to get agencies to focus purely on purpose driven design is almost impossible because they say well our clients aren't interested and we have to listen to our clients and we talk to them and so to encourage and reward young people at the beginning of their journey is great because if they see the value in what they're doing and they're really thirsty for it then they will infiltrate these businesses and these agencies and these organisations and it will come from the bottom up because it's almost impossible to talk to unenlightened CEOs who have got three homes they're on six figure salaries it's not really that they don't want to change they're just in a completely different world that they don't understand that change needs to take place they're too separated from it so this was our idea really was to inspire young people to get involved with this way of being so that's it really great alright thank you Chrissie for a great talk thank you I'm sorry I got you there thank you that was perfect and so I just spoke briefly to Nicholas the last part of the programme today is having a further discussion and debate we also have coffee and I think even cake am I right yes so we actually agreed since it was a bit delayed with the lunch that we just go ahead and take that final part of discussing and questions and whatever we might have that concerns the entire day and then there is coffee and cake and so on and people can sort of stay for as long as they want or leave