Geoff's blog

First encounters

Geoff Mulgan - 29.07.2011

I've been at NESTA a few weeks now and I'm going to be doing a regular update on some of the interesting projects I've been seeing, ideas I've been stumbling across and issues we've encountered.

I hope you'll find this useful, perhaps entertaining and certainly a source of inspiration that elicits feedback. 

Web 2.0

What's really struck me recently are the new generation of web tools which are helping people organise things in different ways. One set of them is around collaborative consumptions, like WhipCar, the alternative to traditional car rental companies where you rent from your neighbour, and online sites like Etsy which has created an entirely new marketplace for crafts as well as a whole host of things around exchanging time.

For me what's particularly fascinating is that I was involved in a project in the mid-90s that tried to set out many of these ideas but we found it very hard to implement them. Now the web has become so evolved and people have become so used to organising around it, this is becoming possible. As a result an entirely new way of thinking about the economy is arising where any bit of equipment that we own like a car or a drill (which is used for only 12 minutes over its lifetime) can be shared with the people on your street.

Creative Councils

This week at NESTA we've also had applications from local authorities all over England making proposals for creative innovations in service delivery. The ideas are there and our role is to help them put the theory into practice. The ideas come from across a variety of fields and range from ambitious ideas for reinventing energy in cities to new ways of involving teenagers in managing budgets and services; many are focused on the issue of ageing and how we help people stay at home- healthier and happier - without all the costs being carried by the hospital system. Hopefully over the coming months we'll see a lot of these coming to fruition.

Arts and innovation

And just today we've had a session with people involved in arts and technology around a project which I hope will take shape over the next 6 months to a year. We are going to try and rethink the link between performance and innovation and how we turn central urban spaces, squares, parks, streets, into really exciting places.

This concept has got heritage: when Leonardo Da Vinci invented things like the helicopter it wasn't designed as a device for getting people from A to B, it was as a prop for theatrical performances. And in the Renaissance there was an extraordinarily close link between performance and leading edge inventions using water and light. I've got a hunch that we may see a resurgence of this kind of collaboration, but now using a whole series of technologies that allow people to interact with walls and lighting and data.

This project we are exploring will bring together organisations involved in dance and theatre, arts centres who have great buildings and architects, planners and designers to turn some public space around the UK into the kind of place that makes you really feel "Wow!" when you walk through them .

So - watch this space!