Sparknow blog

Knowledge innovation... in a roundabout way
Victoria Ward, Saturday, October 25, 2008

This illustration has little to do with the blog, except that it's about invention and resourcefulness. Here's the shed my daughter's friends made this September out of old bits of garage, chicken wire, M&S plastic shopping bags, pallets that were used to transport the roof tiles for redoing the roof down here in France. It's called The Mattress Factory, because our 1950's garage used to be just that, when the previous but one owners lived here. I had the most marvellous time there this afternoon dreaming up Future Story exercises for a workshop for Shell and bracing myself for some Serious Mowing using my new galvanised iron bridge to get from terrac to terrace with the mower over gullies. A brilliant technology, the portable galvanised iron bridge.

Here’s a gorgeous little gift of story, thanks to my friend Josie. I really don’t want to spoil the aha moment 2 minutes in, so I’m begging you to go and look first before reading the rest of this blog…...

See?

A marvel of invention, a triumph of simplicity, the imagination runs riot in the way that only the best ideas can bring on. I always remember Max Boisot’s useful idea that although there’s a continuum from conversation to commodification along which axis one slithers up and down in the knowledge and information transfer process, the really clever thing is to take a thing from one setting and move it to another (abstraction, Max called it), and, hey presto, come up with something new and brilliant. That, to me is the delightful bit of knowledge transfer which moves from literal to lateral thinking.

It reminds me greatly of the story we use to open the SDC story guide with.

And I like a few other things about the telling and the tellers too.

• It’s a Youtube video. It’s a bit long but it’s still less than 5 minutes (the Centre for Digital Storytelling reckons on 3 minutes)
• I got it through my personal networks because it’s delightful. It starts out as a yet-another-Africa-&-water-story and turns into a springboard story of vision and future without you seeing quite what’s coming. It practically begs you to pass it on to everyone you know.
• Although it’s a kind of marketing story (and a sponsored one as you’ll see if you look to the end, the originators and perpetrators of this particular invention are characters in the story in quite a low key way and its cheeriness does not detract from it being a good story with some surprising after effects if you keep going for the second half for some lower impact but thought-provoking surprises.
• If you go to the website of the originators you get a real sense of social software being used to further their cause in interesting ways, which is fuel for the imagination about how to get involvement, engagement and good stories travelling well to do work.

I once read a marvellous article (sent to me by my friend Alec when he was trying to convince of get another world domination plan I should be hatching, which is the insurmountably hard task he has set himself in relation to me) that I’ve quoted before in a blog about Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland. It said words to the effect of

She carries stories to the other side

So in Africa, she’ll tell stories of the deprivation of her Irish upbringing. In Ireland she’ll tell stories of sweatshops conditions in Africa. In thinking of visioning, future story, leadership storytelling there are two things to think of here:

• Putting yourself in the picture
• Putting yourself in the shoes of your audience
• Putting your audience into different shoes and skins and giving them different listening ears.

I seem to have come over all Africa and suddenly find another thread of African storytelling to weave in here which I didn’t see coming.

Some of the best storytelling about Africa, its potential, its present, its history, our shameful history with it, its ghosts (a huge sweep of myth, autobiography, ranting polemicism) is something I never imagined I’d recommend, as I can’t stand the bloke, but Geldof in Africa is an astonishing 11 hours. You can see exactly what I thought about it if you read Elsie Clutterbuck’s review on Amazon after you’ve followed the link. In fact it’s simply some of the best witnessing and storytelling I’ve ever heard anywhere. He puts himself in the picture. The Black Baby box in the Catholic Churches of his Irish childhood. I gave my set away to a friend a couple of years back and I’m cursing because I’ve never quite summoned up the £25 to get myself another.

So all in all, a little gem to enchant for the weekend.

Thanks Josie.