So the Open Thursday at City Studio was nothing like what I thought it would be. I pretty much assumed that it would be a series of talks given by invited speakers – and that I’d just have to sit there, listen, take notes and write about it. Boy, was I wrong. And I’m glad I was because it turned out to be much more engaging and interesting.
The session was led by two of the current City Studio students, Spencer and Victoria. The invited guests for the session that I attended were Kevin Milsip, a trustee for the Vancouver School board, Andrea Curtis, a community influencer and an advocate for environment stewardship and Amy Fournier who works for the City of Vancouver and is the coordinator of One Day Campaign. However, they weren’t the ‘speakers’ of the day. They were the so called ‘thought leaders’ who raise ideas, questions or concerns to get everyone else to take on the speaker role and participate in an open dialogue/discussion.
The agenda for the session looked like this:
- Warm up/intro to get acquainted with one another
- Introduction of the thought leaders
- Small group discussion
- Open discussion
The topic to be discussed was “how to encourage citizens to make small lifestyle changes in their lives.” As we broke off into three small groups to discuss, I was put into Amy’s group. She started the dialogue by introducing the concept of community-based social marketing, which I found particularly interesting as a marketing student. This form of marketing came about from the failed notion that if people know something is wrong and why, then they won’t engage in that activity. In other words, if people are educated, they will make the right choices. Failed because that is not what people do in real life. Education does not necessary eliminate unwanted behaviour and that’s when community-based social marketing came into the picture. It’s about identifying the barriers that hinder people from taking the desired actions and removing them. It has to be implemented on a very small, micro level and therefore, is expensive.
It makes sense. It’s not enough to simply educate people. You have to guide them to choose certain actions over others until they can do so on their own. But I think education is just as important as well. People are not some robots that can be trained. They need to understand why certain actions should be taken over others, especially if you want them to continue making those choices on their own even when new barriers appear or incentives disappear. So, the two disciplines actually go hand in hand.
Some of the ideas that were brought up by others in the small group and during the big discussion were:
- Exchange of learning on a more personal level
- Brings people together and builds a sense of community
- “Change through attraction, not through promotion” as A.A’s say
- It’s not about forcing a change upon others but by showing them how the alter native can be much more attractive
- I really liked this idea. I hate it when someone tells me to do something; I almost never listen. But if it seems like you’re having fun or enjoying whatever it is that you are doing, I get curious and often want to try it out myself!
- But the problem is, it’s difficult to make cold showers or recycling look sexy. There needs to be more leaders who possess that spark and passion to get others excited about changing their actions but it’s hard when passion can’t be forced
- Policy change vs. cultural change
- Should the government be more proactive? In Fort McMurray, plastic bags from grocery stores and retailers are banned
- Or is it all on the citizens and the culture that we live in
There are so many different ways that change can be promoted and hopefully implemented. It’s about knowing what works and when – a lot like the design process actually. Come to think of it, this whole thing IS an ongoing design process. Asking what needs to be done, trying ideas – generating and evaluating, scrapping and re-generating and doing to make that change and to go back to the drawing board to target the next group. Maybe sometimes the answer will be ‘no this certain group of people will never change,’ but we will never know unless we ask, try and do, do and do.
Someone during the discussion presented a statistic, which states that even if everyone in the world started making environmentally friendly choices, it would only make about 1% difference in the world pollution level because of the corporations out there. So, individual actions may not matter. I strongly disagree. Who are those corporations owned by? Individuals. If everyone started making conscious efforts to green the world in every aspect of his or her life, the world will definitely see a change.
Another statistic was brought up by Kevin, which I will leave you with. Taking everything into consideration, you had 1 in 4 TRILLION chance of coming into existence. Such a small chance of being but yet, I’m sitting here writing blog…and you’re sitting there reading it. It blows my mind. Knowing that, how do you want to walk the earth today?