a triarchy press publication
Economies of Life: Patterns of health and wealth
by Bill Sharpe
Publication Date: 11th May 2010
No. of Pages: 100
Book type: Paperback
Print
ISBN: 978-0-9562631-7-9
List Price: £12.00 paperback
Offer Price: £10.00 paperback
A FREE copy of Producing the Future will accompany every purchase of Economies of Life from Triarchy Press (while stocks last).
Book type: e-Version
PDF ISBN: 978-0-9557681-3-2
Offer Price: £5.99 [Download with ability to search/copy/print]
Economies of Life argues cogently that there is a 'default assumption that there is only one economy in our lives - the economy which is the one based on money. Our position is that there are many economies, of which the one based on money is just one, and that they all contribute to the health and sustainability of our shared lives'. To extend this thinking, money is the currency of trade, and art is the currency of experience.
In his collection of five essays, Bill Sharpe uses the principles of ecological thinking to redefine our hitherto narrow understanding of terms like economy and value. The essays consider - with poetic sensitivity and intellectual clarity - what keeps each economy healthy, what sort of wealth each one accumulates and what sort of policies are most supportive of innovation and sustainability in a changing world.
Bill Sharpe and a small group of other IFF* members, working with the Watershed Media Centre in Bristol, took as the starting point for their inquiry the question 'Can we help people who fund the arts develop better policies if we use ecological thinking to understand how the arts work in society and in the economy?'
The resulting parallel publication from the Watershed - Producing the Future: Understanding Watershed's role in Ecosystems of Cultural Innovation - catalogues the thinking undertaken by the IFF and the Watershed in order to understand what makes for a healthy, creative, innovative ecosystem. It offers as a case study the experience of putting these emerging ideas into practice at the Watershed.
The insights resulting from both Economies of Life and Producing the Future offer an ecologically informed and dynamic framework for understanding creativity, the arts and how the arts should be funded into the future.
Economies of Life is beautifully illustrated by artist and IFF member Jennifer Williams.
'[Economies of Life] is a very significant, and hard won, contribution to our collective thinking. I believe the ideas these essays contain open up new perspectives on critical issues way beyond the arts. The notion of multiple currencies being in play, for example, is easy to grasp intuitively and is already proving a useful antidote to conversations that in the context of a recession have become fixated only on money.'
Graham Leicester, Director of IFF
'At last, a fresh perspective on value that reclaims the pivotal role of the arts in the economy of meaning. Thought-provoking reading for policy-makers, grant givers and for artists themselves.''
Russell Willis Taylor, President and CEO, National Arts Strategies, Washington DC
''Invaluable insights to help us build a shared approach to arts practice, measurement and funding. An essential guide to understanding the dilemma between making money and making meaning.''
Dick Penny, Managing Director, Watershed and Chair, Bristol Old Vic*
About the Author
Bill Sharpe is an independent researcher in science, technology and society. He was a research director at Hewlett Packard Laboratories where he led research into everyday applications of technology and introduced scenario methods to HP to support long-range research and innovation. Since leaving HP he has specialized in science, technology and policy studies for business strategy and public policy foresight.
With a background in psychology he is particularly interested in drawing on leading edge research in cognition and systems thinking to find new ways of tackling complex problems. He is a member of International Futures Forum.
About International Futures Forum
International Futures Forum (IFF) is a non-profit organisation established to support a transformative response to complex and confounding challenges and to restore the capacity for effective action in today's powerful times.
At the heart of IFF is a deeply informed inter-disciplinary and international network of individuals from a range of backgrounds covering a wide range of diverse perspectives, countries and disciplines. The group meets as a learning community as often as possible, including in plenary session. And it seeks to apply its learning in practice. IFF takes on complex, messy, seemingly intractable issues - notably in the arenas of health, learning, governance and enterprise - where paradox, ambiguity and complexity characterise the landscape, where rapid change means yesterday's solution no longer works, where long term needs require a long term logic and where only genuine innovation has any chance of success.
Other IFF publications with Triarchy Press:
Ten Things to do in a Conceptual Emergency
Transformative Innovation in Education
In Search of the Missing Elephant
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