SOCIAL CHANGE IS CREATIVE PRACTICE
My professional life consists of words: written, heard, read or spoken. The words I come across with or employ myself on a daily basis can be anything from speeches to reports and their quality vary from courteous to heavy and meaningful. Quite often, especially in political life, carefully chosen words are loaded with messages, which point to some desired action. The worlds of politics and diplomacy are the realms where the creative use of words (or their conspicuous absence) really matters. My playground is government politics and international relations, so I operate with words
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I sometimes hesitate to call myself “a professional” of a certain field. It is because I load the word “professional” with content that is validated by different kinds of authorities who represent gatekeepers who are holding power, and I am not sure which gates I actually value the most in my resume and how much weight I put on my hands-on experiences in working life. I have been eager to receive different kinds of certificates myself and I highly value the institutions I have received them from, but as I also identify myself as a competent rebel, mere certified professionalism sounds a bit dry and theoretical. However, if I would have to define my line of professionalism, I would probably say that I am professional of social change.
Throughout my somewhat eclectic career, I have had one key driver in all the jobs I have had: I have tried to push for social change, which values ecological, economic and social equality both globally and locally. My professional experience stems from different positions in politics (parliament, government, city council), NGOs, cultural organisations and communications. One other driver I consider quite significant in my working life has been crossing different professional and sectoral boundaries. I have always loved cross-disciplinary practices and going beyond conventional formations, with a touch of can do attitude and punk philosophy.
In political life the overwhelming amount of information and the thick web of messages and their sometimes obscure motivations become more absorbable when some basic things are taken care of first: creating trust and space for negotiation, cooperation and action. The way in which politics takes form is half of the work and both halves, content and practice, need lots of creativity. I just happened to reread some books by John Berger and his classic book Ways of Seeing begins with a note to the reader. One sentence strikes a chord with me: “The form of the book is as much to do with our purpose as the arguments contained within it.” You could easily replace the word ‘book’ with politics or diplomacy and there you have it: the creative equation of politics.
On a more personal note, I think being a professional in social change means a continuous quest for personal integrity and finding one’s own voice, even though political work is mainly collective action. I was quite young when I started to hang around in civil society organisations and student politics. I remember myself wavering between uptight activism and a more conciliatory way of pursuing my political goals. If I don’t shout my words with a megaphone, am I being heard? When I was in my twenties, this kind of pondering was accompanied by some uneasy feelings of the reception concerning both the chosen form and political contents. The themes I wanted to shout with a megaphone were not any smaller than global injustice, climate change, disarmament or women’s rights, but it quite often seemed there was a strong counterforce pushing those questions into the margins. It turned out I was never very good with a megaphone, as I felt more like home at negotiation tables. A few years ago I read Deborah Levy’s novel Things I Don’t Want to Know. There was one sentence that I have carried like a tattoo in my mind ever since.
“To become a writer, I had to learn to speak up, to speak a little louder and then louder, and then to just speak in my own voice which is not loud at all.”
The sentence is from another professional world than my own, but it describes quite perfectly, how I see my own evolvement in working life, thriving for positive social change. As I am not a Pokémon, my professional evolution has not been linear and it certainly has not happened through some tangible stages. It is rather a life-long and very uneven journey.
There is a lot of space for maneuver in the arts of politics. Moreover, there is a lot of space for creativity in finding words and ways of doing and trying to understand why some people are standing their ground as they are. As we are living the times when societal polarization, hate speech and misunderstandings are conquering more and more political space, stepping out of one’s own certainties and being on the lookout for those things that unite us rather than divide us, could be seen something a competent rebel could have sensibility to do.
To go back to Berger’s Ways of Seeing, he also wrote that we only see what we look at, and to look is an act of choice. As well as it is true with images, it is true with everything we do, especially in politics. Things we decide to look at or on the other hand, things we do not want to see (or know) are deliberate choices. I started this little piece describing how much I operate with words, but as Berger writes, seeing comes before words.
