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This blog has been integrated into the new blog and website of Philip Patston, Diversityworks Group and Diversityworks Trust.

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I blame soap operas and reality TV...

Curtis at Attitude tipped me off that this thread on Hard News was hotting up - great to see. Thanks Russell Brown for posting the clip and Hilary Stace for the kind words. Bless.

I always feel slightly torn when considering contributing to these kinds of discussions around impairment and disability, mainly because the language used is so inconsistent and, in many cases, either confusing or just semantically inaccurate.

Disability, disabilities, disablement, different ability, physically/ intellectually challenged, mentally retarded etc...all are words used in such an ad hoc manner that they become meaningless in my mind. Sometimes they are used to define and categorise individuals; at other times to describe social processes; then again to paint a picture of behaviour. The only thing they have in common is that they serve to draw a comparison with what we interpret as a "normal" experience of being in this reality we call life, the world, society (look, more ad hoc, confused semantic redundancy).

Russell alluded to my talking about human diversity in place of disability on the Attitude Awards on Wednesday night. That's part of it but I'm actually more interested in diversity of experience and how we describe and value it. For instance, look at our quest for "normality" and the high value we place on our children "being normal". What if we reframed "being normal" as "having a common experience" and revalued it as somewhat dull and boring? How tedious to experience life as a human being with the same physical, cognitive, emotional, social etc capacity as most other people. How would that change in value impact on us as human beings, individually and collectively? How would it change the world? If common experience became passe, old hat, would we all start hankering after a "unique experience" of life? Unique means "different in a way worthy of note", and having a unique experience is a much less emotive, constructive and interesting way of being different than being disabled (or having a disability for that matter). Who cares about medical diagnoses to explain why and how you are different from everyone else, when you are fascinated with being as different as possible from everyone else?

Alas, I forget how scared most people are of being different, let alone in a way worthy of note, and how important it is to fit in. Not to mention how our popular culture teaches us to catastrophise and demonise anything out of the ordinary. Personally, I blame soap operas and reality TV. I think people spend a lot of time trying to add drama to their lives to make them as interesting as Shortland St, Neighbours, Days of our Lives and Coronation St. Disability in its current frame is all one needs for a lifetime of cliffhangers.

Fellow ventures

I recently penned the column, "Fellow ventures", which was originally published in Idealog #16, page 87.

There are two Kiwi courses for social entrepreneurs. Will either pay?

Read the article here »

Idealog :: the magazine and website of creative New Zealand business, ideas and innovation

Dad is the Word

Article in "The Aucklander" promoting "Diverse Dads" forum - see here for more »

Future or fantasy?

Today I attended a workshop run by AnewNZ on what matters most for NZers. One of the exercises was to write a personal vision for NZ. This was mine:

"My vision is that everything anyone does is done with the realisation that their action has an effect on their and everyone/thing else's being. That people's sense of connection paralyses them - for seconds, minutes, hours, days, even a lifetime - while they consider the impact of their action on the entirety of life and make a conscious decision that that impact promotes constructive progress more than anything else. And that, when there is doubt, it is seen as the opportunity to explore the nature of human beingness."

Other thoughts that surfaced for me through the day:

The media was created to reflect reality. Over time it has become more and more a reflection of fantasy, which we try to emulate in reality. Therefore, reality is becoming less and less real.

Global networks of sustainability activists who connect via the internet are becoming more and more common. But, in an environment where connectedness is recognised as crucial to a sustainable future, do these virtual connections actually disconnect us? Are communities of interest eroding communities of place?

I was inspired!

It's been so long that the dashboard at blogger.com has changed.

No time to write but last night I was inspired by Maggie Buxton.

It's been too long...

I knew it!

Red, over at walkingisoverrated.com  (I've wanted to say that "over at" thing for ages) says in a recent post that it was a "shock to me [that] more than half of the respondents of a recent online poll said they’d rather be dead than severely disabled."

I commented that they are "great stats to have, backs up what I’ve been saying for at least two years. Over half of people fear functional change/loss more than death. That says a lot about the emotionally created mindset behind why we make it so difficult to be disabled. We’d have to change things quite a bit to make it easier than dying, wouldn’t we?"

1000 visits and a great TradeMe experience

Yay, this blog has reached 1000 visits - a private goal achieved, for what its worth.

Even a daily research journal hasn't increased my posting frequency or consistency -- sporadic is as sporadic does.

But here's a good news story: a great experience of customer service from TradeMe prompted this feedback from me:

Possibly the best TradeMe experience I've had to date. Allyse and Paul, you have a great business - excellent service and, in particular, timely and professional communication. Even when I had a concern, you expressed support and gave me factual information. An incredibly reassuring mix that alleviated all stress - and turned out for the best. So bravo, keep up the honesty and openness, thank you and hope you don't mind me popping this on my blog with a link to your profile (is that allowed)?

Living in Auckland

Yesterday I started keeping a daily journal for some research I'm involved in about being disabled and living in Auckland. As I'm far more motivated to do things (in the short term) for others than for myself, it'll be interesting to see if I keep it up for the two weeks. I thought it would be a good opportunity to leverage it and do some regular blogging too, so here's the first entry:

Another day at home in my lovely house, for which I feel grateful on a daily basis. Two visitors commented on what a lovely place it is (a regular occurrence), and I’m reminded of feeling embarrassed to have people visit in the past, in this place before the renovations and previous dwellings.

I was going to go out this evening to a seminar at McLaurin Chapel in Princes St, but ended up not going, partly to finish AMP Scholarship application but also because the thought of going out put me off! It means finding a park, getting someone to bump me down steps or through the ridiculously long accessible path through trees and up and down hills. Then it’s often cold and the toilets are not accessible so it’s a matter of struggling through three doors. And then sitting there thinking about getting out again!

I called two people today about access to a restaurant where a dinner is being held on Friday. The second person, who’s responsible for the event, didn’t return my call. These people have known me for 18 mths yet I still have to check up on this stuff. The first person said they’d thought about access but wasn’t sure, and I’ve been to the place years ago and it was hopeless – split levels (steps) and dodgy toilets if I remember rightly (the restaurant is in Cornwall Park).

Anyway, I’ve done my bit. I’m not going to pursue it and if they don’t respond, I won’t go.

The remote control of leadership revisited

In January I proffered that even deciding to change the TV channel was an act of leadership. Recently I adapted and developed the post for an article for Sync Leadership. So, in my usual desperation for blog fodder, here's the renewed article:

Leadership is often mistaken as a quality that only some people possess. When we look for leaders to lead others, we look for particular developed skills and attributes - perhaps extreme competence in a certain area like the arts, sport or technical skill, or superior qualities like confidence or charisma.

But leadership is a quality of which everyone is capable and we all do it at some point in our lives. When was the last time you suggested seeing a movie, having coffee or dinner with friends, or doing something, however small, differently at work? That was you being a leader, without even knowing.

Even deciding to change the TV channel is leadership. If you don't believe me, let's look at an analysis of the five tasks of leaders, originally developed for business by Warren Bennis (1):

• Develop a positive future vision (dream) - "I want to watch a different programme."
• Incorporate the vision into daily life (think) - "I need the remote."
• Sell the vision to others (talk) - "Hey you guys, you'll really enjoy this programme."
• Take calculated risks with the vision (do) - "Let's just watch it for five minutes."
• Click! Involve others with meaning (share) - "Hey, isn't this a great show?"

Next time you're looking for leadership, take a lesson from your own inner couch potato. See what potential lies beyond the remote control, by applying these principles to more lofty ideals – like changing the world. My leadership goal at the moment is to move the world beyond ideas of impairment and disability. Here's how I've used Bennis' framework to guide social change:

• Develop a positive future vision (dream) - "I want the world to understand about experiential diversity as an alternative to impairment and disability."
• Incorporate the vision into daily life (think) - "I need to change the way I think about myself in order to communicate that new identity to others."
• Sell the vision to others (talk) - "Hey you guys, I have unique experience, you have unique experience and this is how things could be if we all valued our experience differently."
• Take calculated risks with the vision (do) - "This is how I use my unique experience to add value to my work and my lifestyle."
• Then I get on and run my business, projects and life in a way that expresses who I am.
• Involve others with meaning (share) - "Hey, isn't this a great way to think – can I offer to show you how this way of thinking can change your world?"

Thinking in this way about leadership has helped me demystify the role and understand three things:

• You don't have to lead 24/7 – in fact, leadership is more like a relay race – you run for a bit and then pass the baton.
• Leadership is about you – it's far more effective to change things for yourself than to set out to change things for others.
• The dream of a better way and convincing others that they will benefit is the most important thing – leadership doesn't point out the error of where we are now. Its value is in showing the beauty and excitement of the next destination.

(1) “Becoming a Leader of Leaders” in Rethinking the Future, Rowan Gibson (ed). Nicholas Brealey Publishing (May 25, 1999)

Square wheels of innovation

I read a blog about blogging today (go figure), which discussed its pros and cons. One of the cons mentioned was the need to write regularly in order to keep readers interested and returning. Others I've talked to say it doesn't matter whether it's regular as long as it's consistent, so that people know when to return, whether daily, weekly or monthly. Well, I like the element of surprise, so my blogging strategy is "sporadic". 

Hopefully that isn't reinventing the wheel in such a square shape as elevator manufacturers have, with their new "buttonless" design.  New lifts popping up in corporate buildings (like the PriceWaterhouse Coopers building in downtown Auckland, which we visited today) have no floor or call buttons - you now enter the floor you wish to go to in a separate console and it tells you which lift to take (the cars are lettered). If you press the button with the Universal Access (wheelchair) Symbol, it embarrasses you by shouting the lift letter (hopeless if you are  blind because it doesn't say where it is). Once you're in the lift there are no floor buttons except to open and close the doors, which made me feel strangely like I had no arms. 

Obviously  designed for efficiency in car management, where the system really falls down is if you pick the wrong floor. You can't just push another floor - oh no, you have to get out, find the console, punch (yes, by now you're punching) the floor in, find the right lift,  wait for it and get back in.

It makes you wonder if the nods who design them actually use them. What do you think - do you like these nouvelle elevateurs - or, like me, are you thinking nothing was broken, so who decided to fix it?

While I'm grumbling about innovation that just makes life more difficult, how about the new Microsoft Office Fluent user interface? Fluent?! Luckily I don't use it because I use Apple, but I've had a couple of goes and it must be the most unintuitive UI I've seen for ages. Like the buttonless lift, it's innovation for the sake of it, as useful as a square wheel. What was wrong with menus, Microsoft?

Your thoughts? Come on people, talk to me!

Revenge of the fat, pink Americans?

[Image: www.tv3.co.nz]

While mainstream New Zealand agonises over whether pink "Tagger" jackets will suggest taggers are gay, I wonder what the choice of colours conveys about the cop who chose it and, by proxy, all cops – all heterosexual men for that matter. I mean, subconsciously, what was he thinking? Skater boys with spray cans wearing caps and baggy shorts, clad in pink. Sounds like a secret little homoerotic fantasy, if you ask me.

Meanwhile, America is about to make a gay-looking black man President - what does that say about Americans? They've come a long way, haven't they? Now, if Obama turns out to be a female-to-male transsexual, I'll eat my hat.

And apparently two thirds of New Zealanders are fat and offended by the stating of the fact. Well, I'm sick of being told I'm too thin, too.

So. Interesting times.

On the UK radio...

While I was in Manchester in April I was interviewed by the local gay radio show about being gay, disabled, vegetarian, kiwi and funny...

Listen here: Part 1 || Part 2

SELF AWARENESS KEY TO UNDERSTANDING DIVERSITY, SAYS COMIC

MEDIA RELEASE

Self-confessed gay, disabled, vegetarian, Kiwi comedian Philip Patston is prone to reinventing himself – and he's on a mission to change the way the world understands human diversity.

He started his career as a social worker, a counsellor, a Winston Churchill Fellow, a human rights activist and a trainer, then became an award-winning comedian, a soap opera actor on Shortland Street, a columnist, and even New Zealand’s inaugural Queer of the Year as voted by TV show Queer Nation.

These days Philip is leveraging his personal and professional diversity as a consultant, mentor, life coach, inspirational speaker and team facilitator. And, just for kicks, he's a New Zealand Social Entrepreneur Fellow and an ArtVenture Creative Entrepreneur, and leading the development of Momentum’09, an international symposium on disability arts to be held in Auckland in March 2009.

The wheelchair-using comic-turned-entrepreneur just returned from a month in the UK on a speaking tour, one of five international arts practitioners funded by Arts Council England to contribute dialogue, debate and inspiration to the creative sector. He also addressed the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship at Oxford University where, ironically, he was unable to access the opening reception because of steps. Frustrated but unperturbed, he used the faux pas to push his point - that he has turned his disadvantage into a unique social experience that has fueled his social and creative innovation.

"The way we currently view socially marginalised groups like disabled, gay, indigenous or poor people has to change," says the company director of Diversityworks Group. "Our contradictory obsession with highlighting yet ignoring difference is almost pathological. We're either paralysed by fear that we'll get it wrong for other people - or indignant that other people will get things wrong for us.

"What's far more useful to consider is that we may be only a moment away from being disabled ourselves, or being poor, or having a gay son or a daughter-in-law who's from another culture. So we need to think about getting it right for ourselves given all the possibilities of the future. Being fully aware of ourselves, rather than trying to understand others, is the key to valuing human diversity," he says.

Philip thinks that if everyone truly understood and expressed their own uniqueness creatively - and allowed space for each other to do the same - people would live together much more harmoniously. "But that takes a bit of a complex mix of self-responsibility and commitment to others," he cautions. "It's not difficult, but it's hard work keeping the balance. It's about realising that we create everything we experience."

"Creativity is essential when it comes to expressing ourselves uniquely. And in order to be creative, we need to trust our innate ability to adapt to change."

Philip now shares publicly his own engaging story of overcoming fear, cynicism and poverty in order to create an autonomous lifestyle of success and happiness. His journey led him to design WISE SPECIES(tm), a new, creative framework that allows him to work with individuals, groups and organisations to explore all aspects of their identities and potential.

"I've enjoyed finding unique ways of thinking and acting to achieve my goals and realise my dreams. Nothing is more fulfilling than self-discovery and exploring the vital connections between people. Now I'm helping others do it too."

Philip is available as a speaker, consultant, team builder and facilitator for personal and social change.

Online: www.philippatston.com | www.diversityworks.co.nz

ENDS.

For further information contact:

Phiip Patston
09 376 4837
021 76 4837
philip@diversityworks.co.nz

From Whinger to Wise Man

Presentations by Philip Patston in Newcastle, Oxford, Manchester and Exeter, UK | March/April 2008

Kia Ora - that's hello from New Zealand and it's great to be here and greetings from one of your colonies.

I've titled this presentation ‘From Whinger to Wise Man’, which is just blatant self-promotion really but it does summarise what I want to share with you. It took about an hour and a half usually to do this in Oxford so there will be bits that I gloss over and say “that's not important”. I'm not self deprecating, I'm just trying to keep to time!

So just to give you a sense of where I come from, this is a picture of an oak tree with a lovely blue sky and a bit of cloud, which is typical for Auckland in New Zealand. We have 4 seasons in one day. The oak tree is what I look out on in my home - which is also my office - and I'm really grateful to be in such a lovely part of the world. It's great.

This is me when I was 5, growing up as a boy. The photo gives me a nice warm feeling deep down inside and it feels like I may have at that point in my life been thinking about what the world held and how could I create the world for myself.

So let me tell you a bit about who I am. First of all I'm a gay disabled white man and I have always found that being of those 4 groups in society is quite interesting. As a white man I'm the absolute privileged top end of people in society and as a gay disabled person I'm in the bottom end - so I don't know whether to be a callous bastard or just simply look ‘interesting’! It gives me a sense of the world and a unique experience of the world and that gives flavour to how I see things.

All through my life I have played a lot of roles and here's just some photos. I won't describe them all because we'll be here all day but suffice to say I've played a lot of roles in my life. Here is a new role - my drag role - Philly del Phia - that I sometimes play on stage. I'm also recovering social worker (!); I've been a Counsellor; a human rights campaigner; a consultant; business owner; columnist; actor; leader; amateur designer; entrepreneur. I've been crowned ‘Queer of the Year’ in 1999 whilst I was playing the boyfriend of a woman on a soap opera, and I won the Billy T James comedy award in 1999 and, when you're a comedian in New Zealand, you are basically washed up after that!

I'm trained in counselling, community and social work, and in 1992 I was a Winston Churchill Fellow. I worked at the NZ Human Rights Commission for 4 years, got bored and did a comedy course! So I ended up on stage thinking “What the hell do you think you are doing?” but everyone laughed and suddenly this whole new career began as a comedian. I went from doing open mic nights to doing professional nights on the comedy circuit in New Zealand then ended up on TV programme that ran for 8 years - a stand-up comedy series called Pulp Comedy.

Around 2001 I began getting involved in the Global Disability Arts Movement and started performing around the world. First ‘kickstART!’ Vancouver, Canada (where I first met Moya); ‘High Beam’ in Adelaide, Australia; Moya’s ‘Above and Beyond’ in Cheltenham UK, and ‘Art of Difference’ in Melbourne. During that time I began a dialogue with disabled artists around the world, but the connections made would end when the festivals finished and we’d come together again a year or so later and have to start the conversations over. So I set up the International Guild of Disabled Artists and Performers.

I also directed ‘Giant Leap’, New Zealand’s Disability Arts Festival and it was fabulous beyond our wildest dreams in terms of audience - we got 800 people through the door over a week, and in Auckland it’s quite difficult to get people out of their houses, we are a slovenly lot! I’ll quickly show you the photos.

My next creative destination is to run Momentum ’09, an international disability arts symposium at Auckland University next March. Moya wrote the Development Plan and Programme for that – we now refer to it as the ‘Bible’! The idea of the symposium is to embrace and engage in the dialogue over 4 days and come out looking forward and moving into another realm internationally around disability arts.

Lastly, I'm working on a project I devised called The Diversity Challenge which is a programme in schools, looking at creative ways of expressing diversity and also am about to create a web site which will help disabled people manage their support more creatively.

So when people ask “what do you do?” I spend 5 minutes reeling off a string of roles; I never quite know what to call myself. If you say one thing you kind of lose everything else and people pop you in a box as consultant or performer. So I came up with a new description of myself about 6 to 8 months ago – ‘creative philanthropist’. The interesting thing about philanthropy is most people think it’s about giving money but it's actually about having a genuine concern for humanity. When I looked at all the roles that I play, most of them have some connection to the concern that I have about people and the way the world is progressing. And what I ‘throw at it’ is my creativity. So it seemed to me a way to begin a dialogue with those people who ask me what I do – I say “I'm a creative philanthropist” - and they go “Wow!” They haven't got a clue what I mean but it opens the door to a conversation about who I am!

Ten years ago I set up a business called Diversityworks and it's become a philosophy, a brand. It's about looking at similarity and difference, acknowledging the contradiction that they are opposites but they exist together. It looks at the natural variety of people and the synergy you get when you put all that together and make it work. Personally, I think that is what we often miss with diversity - we get a whole lot of people together but often that creates conflict because we don't look for the synergy and we don't look for the way to make it work.

Over the years Diversityworks has grown in to a business and a Trust. This slide shows a picture of the kind of work we do – contracts for strategic advice, support and training; workshops; speaking; gigs and projects resourced by government and philanthropic funding.

So that's what I've been doing for the last 10 years but I want to now tell you a bit about what I've been thinking and hope it presents new challenges for you. At the moment I'm a New Zealand Social Entrepreneur Fellow as well as part of a creative entrepreneur programme. That means I network with 25 people who are involved in a range of social issues & creative endeavours. It's been very interesting for me to have a peer group of people that are working in very different areas than the ones that I've been involved in. What I've realised is that, as disabled artist s, we are both entrepreneurs and innovators. The stuff that we do is different. The barriers we may come up against are less about disability than about entrepreneurial focus and when we start thinking about that wider theme of innovation we begin to think about things differently.

Edward de Bono points out that we don't get taught how to think we get taught what to think. So how might this reflect on how we think about disability? I want to suggest to you a way of thinking that might move us on a bit. To show how thinking about things differently can change our perception - or maybe it's the other way round: that changing our perception makes us think differently. Here's a picture of me in Kew Gardens in 2005 going up a hill, resting on a tree, I jump out of my wheelchair and lean on the tree. But actually when you look you see that the tree was leaning on me! That’s different take on the world. And whereas me might describe me as 'not normal' because I don't stand straight, we'd probably describe the tree as 'interesting' or 'unique' for not standing straight. So my thinking is about moving beyond marginalisation thinking about disability. I don't want to say this is what we have to do or should do, but the great thing about thinking is that it creates a dialogue, it creates other ideas that we might not have thought about had we not thought about the original idea. We may disagree completely with the original idea but, even by disagreeing, we create new ideas.

So the statement, ‘Impairment, disability or marginalisation limits experience' is one perception, while ‘Impairment, disability or marginalisation creates purpose’ is another. The interesting thing about the statements is that they are both true but depending on which one you believe, your view of the world will be very different. I feel it's really important to reflect on what we believe about our situation because it can change the way that we experience the world.

When I work with groups in workshops, I ask them to imagine they've woken up tomorrow to a number of scenarios and ask them how they would react to each scenario if it happened, based on a scale from ‘hatred', fear’, ‘not sure’, to ‘peace’ or ‘love’. So if you woke up tomorrow with different coloured hair how would you react. Or what would be your reaction to waking up rich and famous, or having become the opposite gender. Or maybe waking up to find you have the opposite sexual preference, or you are from another race or culture. People are generally good humoured and laugh, talking about what they might lose and what they might gain.

But when I ask them to imagine if they woke up and had 50% of their physical, intellectual or emotional capacity, suddenly the room gets really quiet - people get very serious and stop laughing. They talk about what they would lose but they don't talk about what they might gain on the other hand and I think that's very interesting. It seems to me that the reason that there is such a difference in response is because losing function is actually the one thing that is most likely to happen to people. You're going to have to work very hard to wake up tomorrow with a different gender or different coloured hair or rich – unless you happen to dye your hair or win the lottery. But anyone could have a stroke or get hit by a bus, without chosing it. So people fear this possibility or probability. They think they would feel self doubt or trapped or dependent if they lost function. But what I think people are really scared of is that they wouldn't be able to adapt to that change. We all doubt our ability to adapt to change and that hatred or fear of disability is around our doubt of our ability to adapt.

What we forget is that human beings are infinitely adaptable. We adapt to situations really, really well so it's a groundless fear but we assume it readily. I call that ‘dysfunctionphobia’ and dysfunctionphobia is something that we don't talk about. We talk about homophobia; we say to individual people it's not okay to treat other gay people badly just because you're scared of it; xenophobia – it's not okay to treat people of other races badly just because you're scared about difference in culture and race and beliefs. But we do not say, ‘if you're scared about having to use a wheelchair or if you're scared about losing some intellectual capacity, it's not okay to treat other disabled people badly’. We let people off the hook.

I think some of this affects how we feel and think about ourselves and part of my inspiration around the thinking has been my own experience about what I call incongruent identity. I see that identity has two parts. The first part of identity is how we recognise our self - who we are from our internal point of view. The second part of identity is how other people recognise us - who we are from others' point of view. What I have noticed in my life is that, at different points in time, those identities have been really different. So how I think about myself and how I'm recognised by others don't have a lot of resemblance. If I'm feeling really good about myself and I go out and somebody treats me like a total idiot, then suddenly I'm competing with myself and thinking, ‘Well, who am I? Am I the person that I thought I was half an hour ago? Or am I who that other person just reflected back to me?’ The truth is that I am both. So the question becomes, 'How do I get the other person to recognise who I know I am?' I'll come back to that.

Another inspiration for me was the movie, 'What the Bleep Do We Know', which is about quantum physics. The energy we create in our minds and the energy that makes up this table is all the same energy, it's just a different speed of a vibration. It talks about how our thoughts create our material reality. We are completely unaware how efficient we are at changing thought in to solid matter. Another movie that's worth a look, 'The Secret', is about the law of attraction which is a similar concept - what you put out into the universe or what you are thinking about the world, about yourself, about everything, comes back from the universe, which is like a genie that says, 'Your wish is my command.'

So this is how we see the world at the moment and this is how we see ourselves as disabled people. This diagram shows two boxes. In New Zealand roughly 20% of people are disabled (the left box) and we're thinking about those people as being disabled and they are thinking about themselves as disabled. Then the right box is the 80% who are non-disabled people and we're thinking about them as non-disabled and they are thinking about themselves as non-disabled. The 80% are probably thinking, ‘God I really don't want to move in to that other box of disabled people’, and they are feeling really scared about that possibility, both consciously or unconsciously because of all the negative crap that we hear about being in that box.

But that's only one way of looking at things – it's pretty simplistic and, in my estimation, inaccurate. I think it's more useful to see things like this: we are all in one box but we all function differently - physically, emotionally, cognitively, sexually you name it. Within all the different ways we function, we are moving in and out of ‘common function’ - which is how most people function - and ‘unique function’ - which is not how most people function most of the time. But some days, even people who function commonly most of the time, function uniquely. Anyone who has woken up with a hang knows they have some pretty unique cognitive and biological functioning going on, but that changes and becomes less unique as the day goes on, hopefully. Other people function physically uniquely over a lifetime and that might stay quite steady. It’s just a matter of degrees.

When I presented this in Newcastle people didn't like the word ‘function’ as it was too medical or clinical. So I said ‘fair enough – the good thing about this thinking stuff is that it can change overnight.' I thought about changing the word ‘function’ and realised that if I subsituted the word 'experience' it could include any marginalisation – not just disability but also racial, sexual, wealth or any other social marginalisation. We then begin to talk about common and unique experience on a wide scale.

Interesting that the dictionary description of the word ‘unique’ is ‘different in a way worthy of note’. So when I say ‘I have unique experience of the world’, that's a very different energy that I’m putting out there to the world than saying, ‘I'm disabled’ or 'I'm poor'. Try it yourself if it’s relevant to you - how does it change the way that you feel about yourself and the world?

So, this is Constructive Experiential Diversity. It’s about accepting our variance rather than comparing ourselves to something that we're not. So in disability we have the Medical Model which is about how we can change people; how we can make people more normal. Or the Social Model which is about how we can change society? Well it's really difficult to change society - we know that because we've been trying to do it for 30, 40, God knows how many years. Just last week at the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship, I couldn't get in to the opening reception because there was no access! The organisers hadn't thought about a wheelchair-user turning up - and that’s in a world meeting of leading innovators in the social field! That told me a lot about where the world is. So I don't know whether the social model is working or not. If only the organisers had been thinking about unique experience and thinking about what they would do if they used a wheelchair, rather than being terrified of the thought that they might one day need a wheelchair and so denying everything about it.

I’m not the first or only person to think this way. Chilean Economist, Manfred Max Neef, says,

“I have reached the conclusion that I lack the power to change the world. I only have the power to change myself, and there is no force in the world that can prevent me. And if I change myself something may happen as a consequence that may lead to a little change in the world.”

So what would happen if we all changed the way we think about ourselves - could it create a progressive change in the world?

Jewish writings say,

"We do not see things as they are. We see them as we are.” (The Talmud)

And on the side of an arts centre in Newcastle – this:

‘Improving the world doesn't mean improving me. I want a better world, I want a better me’. (The Baltic Arts Centre, Gateshead, UK)

So I've designed a tool for individual and social change called ‘WISE SPECIES™’. WISE stands for Wisdom, Identity, Synergy and Expression. SPECIES stands for seven ways we express ourselves. It’s an exploration tool to make the first three things more congruent and consistent through the last.

We don't want who we are to become invisible because of bad access or fear of impairment; we need to keep our uniqueness shining. But if we want to create a world where that uniqueness can be valued as much as common experience, we need to start changing language. When we call ourselves disabled artists, what are we thinking about ourselves? What are we putting out to the world and what is coming back to us from the world? What if we used different language, like the ‘art of unique experience’ or ‘art of experiential diversity’? I don't know exactly what the language should be, but let's start thinking about it so that we can move forward.

Anyway, it’s time for a break and but thank you for having me here. In New Zealand we have the same word for thank you as hello, so it's very easy. Kia Ora! I look forward to taking your questions after the break.

-------------------------------

Q: What or who has been important to you in your career? Did something happen that made a real impact or change in where your career was going?

PP: I think my connections with others involved in the disability arts movement internationally - people like yourself Moya, Julie McNamara, Mat Fraser, Victoria Maxwell (Canada) and David Roche (USA) - really inspired me to get out there and do things bigger & better. I'm a bit of a high flier in NZ and so being able to see the quality and scale of people's work overseas raised the bar for me - gave me something to aspire to.

Q: Looking back, can you think of any missed opportunities which might have helped you achieve your goals earlier or differently? Why do you think you missed the opportunity?

PP: I think there are so many opportunities, especially these days, that you can't possibly take up every one. I live my life with the intent that everything I do moves me closer to my life purpose in the best way. So I think, yes, things could have been different but they would only have been that - different.

Q: Are there times when you’ve thought that particular people or organisations have missed out on using your skills; that you’d have been just the person they needed? Why do you think that is?

PP: Absolutely, I couldn't count the number of times that I know some event organiser or producer has assumed that I wouldn't be right for the event or audience. But I know from feedback I receive from people in the street that they enjoy my difference - the quirky edginess that it brings. So, there's only so much you can do about others' short-sightedness. I try my best to focus on the work I do get.

Q: Were there training courses or development opportunities you would have liked to undertaken but for some reason, couldn’t? What were the main reasons? Do you think your career development was affected by this?

PP: I'm an experiential learner and I learn best by creating situations for myself that put me out of my depth. So a lot of what I do I've never done before and I learn by finding out what I need to do. Trial and error, making mistakes, observing others who have done similar things. I think that my lack of conventional training has fostered my entrepreneurial and innovative qualities.

Q: Who is or has been your Leadership role model? What qualities do they have that makes them a good leader?

PP: I've always had a bit of a problem with the concept of 'role model' - personally I've always strived to be a bad influence more than a role model! I read a business article years ago on being a leader of leaders by Warren Bennis, which I've used as a model for myself and others. In a nutshell, Bennis defines the task of a leader as having a strong vision, incorporating it into daily life, selling it to others, taking risks with it and, finally, involving others with meaning in achieving and, I'd add, extending the vision. I think it's a great summary of leadership that works in the community and arts sectors as well as business.

© 2007-2008 Diversity NZ Ltd, Philip Patston. All rights reserved

Boys on Wheels

Can children healthily support disabled parents?

Recently I had a great discussion about the dangers of children assuming supportive roles with their disabled parents. As a disabled non-parent (as opposed to a non-disabled parent, hehe!), I've witnessed many disabled friends parent children who have contributed differing levels of support. I think there are a couple of issues that are important to explore.

Firstly, I think problems occur when a child feels a sense of duty to support their parent(s). This expectation limits a child's freedom to be a child and reverses the duty of care between a parent and child.

But giving a child a managed sense of responsibility may be extremely beneficial. I have seen children of disabled friends grow up with some great life skills as a result of being coached by their parents to do things other kids normally wouldn't. It seems to me that the tipping point is when kids go from feeling parented to relied upon by their parent. That emotional dynamic needs to be monitored.

As long as kids feel loved, safe and protected, I think they have huge capacity to grow up doing practical things to support themselves and others. As an uncle of four littlies, I can't wait until, in a few years, "Uncle Pip" can "borrow" his nieces and nephews in the weekends and holidays to help out!!

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Creative diversity at its best!

Quote of the Day

Peter Drucker - "The only thing we know about the future is that it will be different."

Rounding off

It's been a while since I blogged properly and those who have been following are probably wondering where I've been. Quite a bit has happened in the last three weeks –let me do a bit of a plotted history and I'll wind up with a reflective summary of my overseas learning.

31 March - 5 April: Manchester
I blogged about the Bodyworlds exhibition, but of course that wasn't my reason for being in Manchester. I spent a day with disability arts organisation Full Circle Arts, as keynote at Fayre eXchange, a networking and development day for artists. The audience ranged wider than Newcastle, both in age and experience. The day was packed with different activities - keynotes, panel discussions, workshops and networking - and could well have been relaxed over two days. I was left with a vague feeling of dissatisfaction at having not arranged to work longer with the artists I met, particularly with the younger people who were obviously enjoying and benefiting from the experience of being immersed in an environment of mutual support and inspiration. Once again I was also inspired by the experience of hanging out with artists with unique experience and my resolve to organise a network of artists in Auckland (and perhaps NZ) was strengthened.

5 - 9 April: Devon (Cullompton, Exeter)
My brief for The South West was to engage with cultural and emerging entrepreneurs as part of an "Entrepreneurs In Conversation" series sponsored by the Cultural Leadership Programme. A small group gathered at Exeter University and – catalysed by my exploration of experiential diversity – a satisfying discussion began about context, culture and identity. Once again, though, with a mere two hours, the dialogue had a chance only to germinate and I was left frustrated at having to leave the group with the conversation at such an embryonic stage.

While in Devon I had the pleasure of spending time with my friend and mentor Moya Harris, ex-Director of Equata (now Kaleido) in the beautiful Cullompton district. Sadly, however, during our stay we received word of not only the admittance to hospital of Mahinarangi Tocker, but also the death of my travelling companion Claire's aunt, to whom she was very close. Given this additional stress we decided to cut our trip short and return to NZ without visiting Hawaii to attend the Pacific Rim Conference.

We arrived back on Saturday 12 April and the last week has just been a blur of jet lag, early morning waking and grief over Mahinarangi's death (compounded by the Mangatepopo River school trip tragedy).

Summary/reflection
So, here are the gems that I have taken from the trip:

1. I am an international thought leader: The highlight of the trip was certainly the conceptual breakthrough of Constructive Experiential Diversity (CED), moving on from Constructive Functional Diversity's impairment/disability focus to a framework that reframes and explores marginalisation on all fronts. I received repeated feedback that I am leading this way of thinking internationally – it is new and cutting edge, and I need to share it more widely. I see a clear role for WISE SPECIES™ as the structure that explores the diversity of individual and group experience in more depth, transforming it into constructive and creative expression.
   
   
2. I need to bundle theory with application: Another clear realisation is that I need to bundle speaking about the theory of CED with its practical application through WISE SPECIES™. I left people wanting more in the UK, which is good up to a point, but I need to start negotiating a longer engagement with clients in order to deliver value for money and return on investment.
   
   
3. I want to promote all aspects of social change as innovation: It was fantastic to be able to speak to people involved in social change and draw parallels to other areas of business innovation. I think activists, artists and frontline welfare workers need to be thinking of what they are doing in terms of innovation and see the response they receive as a natural reaction to innovation. For example, disabled artists who come across market resistance to their work need to stop thinking of this as discrimination and look at how to market their innovation better. Similarly, social workers and counsellors could inject creativity and passion into their work (for themselves and their clients) by seeing their role as supporting people to innovate their lives and promoting it as such, while understanding the innate resistance to new ideas that humans have, especially about themselves.
   
   
4. I am buoyed by the belief that NZ is served and limited by scale: It is interesting, I think, that the social, environmental and resource issues we face in NZ are both compounded and alleviated by our population size. We have the same range of issues, but if that range of issues were a piece of string, our string is much shorter than most other societies. So the (negative) impact is therefore less extreme than other populations, but so also is the (positive) opportunity to make change. Given this dichotomy, the challenge is to leverage the limited impact while accommodating the limited opportunity. Inverted, this means celebrating the relative harmony of our society while innovating cost effective ways to address inequity.
   
   
5. It may sound glib, but I believe that creativity and play need to lead the way: At the risk of generalising, I think we take society's ills far to seriously. At one end of the spectrum the general public have a tendency to over-catastrophise situations, which often compounds them (eg. boy racers, challenges to religious traditions), yet there is another equal inclination towards trivialising issues (eg. social attitudes to disabled people, the impact of economic and political hypocracy). I believe that employing principles of creativity (design, organic development and lateral thinking) and play (lightness, exploration and fascination) is key to improving our social and environmental future.
   
   

The Herald explains...

On 18/04/2008, at 12:54 PM, darren.bevan@... wrote:

Good afternoon Philip
Thanks for your query.
I can assure you it was a genuine mistake in the processing area and we are sorry about it.
It was actually a technical error and I will explain how that happens. We moderate all comments and a large number of words are highlighted automatically when they come in in case the comments around them could be defamatory etc such as racist terms. The word lesbian is one of them highlighted as we have a number of comments through claiming a certain high profile person is gay and that person has warned that they would take legal action is that statement is ever published as she says it is not true.
So your use of the word lesbian was highlighted but also accidentally omitted.
Our original story on Ms Tocker which triggered the comment thread on Ms Tocker made it clear Mahinarangi was a proud member of the gay community.
I can assure you there was no intention to omit that fact and on our busiest day of the year (also handling hundreds of tribute comments on the school trip tragedy) the technical change got the better of us.
Again our apologies.
Regards
Darren Bevan
Online Content Moderator
APN Online

Homophobic Herald

I'm flabbergasted - the Herald censored my tribute to Mahinarangi Tocker.

In my original post I wrote: "...my gay, disabled, vegetarian comedian status could never beat her place as a Maori, lesbian, crazy (her words) musician."

I just reread it - they deleted "lesbian" before they published it, reducing her to a Maori, crazy musician. She so wasn't.

How homophobic. How insulting to both of us. I'm lost for words.

Farewell my minority soulmate

(Image sourced from nzherald.co.nz)
There are few people I've known who could outdo me in the minority stakes - Mahinarangi Tocker, who died today following an asthma attack that left her without oxygen for a period of minutes, never let me forget it. She trumped me well and truly - my gay, disabled, vegetarian comedian status could never beat her place as a Maori, lesbian, crazy (her words) musician. And she was a comedian as well, really - her humour knew no bounds. Though our paths crossed too few times, when they did it was always hilarious. I still laugh when I remember us discussing how the voices in our heads knew each other, and though I never quite understood her idea about iPods for wheelchairs, I knew that, somehow, they could have caught on. I will always have the upmost respect for this gorgeous woman who so staunchly supported the kaupapa of mental health, queer rights and musicianship, yet never let these labels define her. She was, is and always will be a beautiful soul who experienced life uniquely and expressed herself creatively, richly and dynamically. And though she struggled with herself at times, she could equally laugh at herself. That, in my estimation, is the quality of angels. My dear friend, colleague and minority soulmate, I'll miss the laughs. Arohanui e hoa aataahua. Rest in love.

The slow but necessary evolution of social technology

While queuing for nearly half an hour this morning to buy tickets for Bodyworlds at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester, I was looking at an old Linotype machine on display. While musing that I'd expect an institution specialising in science and industry to have devised a more efficient way of queuing for and buying tickets than traipsing through a temporary, prefabricated building hardly wide enough to allow two people to pass each other, I was also contemplating the technological advancement of humanity.

It seems incredible that, in just a hundred years or so, the industry of typesetting and printing, which used to involve such cumbersome machinery, has come to be executed with such speed, accuracy and quality within the virtually unseen mechanisms of laptops and desktop printers. In fact, the physical production function is now almost redundant. This blog, its style and distribution are evidence of the linotype of the future.

Were those ten decades a waste of time? Could we have skipped the labour- and resource-intensive age of paper printing, saved a lot of money, steel, ink, and trees, and brought the technological environment of electronic printing forward a generation or two? How would that have impacted on the environment, the economy, politics even? Would the world be a better place? Would we have missed out on anything had the literature of the past not been mass-produced on the page but on the screen instead? Could it have been? Didn't anyone envisage the screen while they tirelessly built the linotype and used it with excruciating laboriousness?

I think these kinds of questions are the source of my greatest frustration when it comes to social change. I can see the digital screens of tomorrow's humanity: knowingly accepting diversity as natural, effortlessly recognising the synergy of commonality and uniqueness (similarity and difference), playfully celebrating our dichotomous significance and insignificance. Yet everywhere I look are the human linotype machines of intolerance, discrimination, carbon waste and economic greed needlessly bashing out page upon wasteful page of poverty, marginalisation, environmental devastation and misery.

Can't we skip this age of archaic social technology?

Yes I know I'm being unrealistic and naive - I'm arguing with myself as I write. Of course the computer and desktop printer wouldn't (couldn't) have been invented without the gradual evolution of technology: the typewriter, the Gestetner Cyclostyle machine, the dot matrix printer. Individual human beings themselves evolve cell by cell, stage by stage, from fertilised egg to foetus, child to adult.

Social change, by comparison, also takes time. Note to self: allow it to take time.

Ok, ok, but meanwhile, I feel like I did leaving Bodyworlds: vaguely nauseous yet strangely fascinated and intrigued!

Skoll World Forum - see what we saw

To get a feel of the Forum as we experienced it, check out the coverage at www.socialedge.org

The most artistic music video I've seen in years

Frozen Grand Central

My great friend Julie McNamara talked about this recently; then I received an unrelated email with a link. Fantastic!

The objective light of day

After a good night's sleep I feel more able to reflect less emotively on my experience at the Skoll World Forum! Spending three days in the company of some of the most influential changemakers in the world was truly inspiring. The most impacting element for me was hearing the stories of scale and leveraging resources to make wide-reaching, global impact. This is the area in which I feel I have the most opportunity. Four months ago at a creative entrepreneur workshop I set a goal to have an international business by the end of this year. This week - and this trip - feel like a definite step towards that destination.

One of the most stimulating sessions I attended was on Cultural Branding, run by Douglas Holt from Harvard Business School. He has created a model of branding distinct from conventional branding, designed to market social issues. Where traditionally branding aims for consistency and distinction in the market, cultural branding strives for social and idealogical relevance in order to move society forward. Similar to traditional models, cultural branding relies on the building of trust, symbolism and reputation. Holt shared the notion of providing solutions for shared anxieties where, on the individual level, people's life story leads them to seek an ideal identity, which they achieve through a "life project". He stressed the need for a brand to build an "iconic myth" (myth here meaning a commonly held belief of the time, not an untruth), which will translate into value, cultural leadership, resonance and innovation.

This was heady and inspiring stuff, speaking strongly to the work I've been doing recently on my own, personal brand, but also sparking ideas for me about future projects that could be more purposefully branded in this way. Holt had some interesting things to say about fundraising and dual marketing strategies to wealthy and less wealthy audiences, which has sparked a string of ideas in my head. I'm purposely not divulging more as these ideas are but seeds in my mind needing germination and protection from the scrutiny of outsiders for now!

Another fascinating idea I saw presented was by Dr. Thomas S. Clark, Founder and Executive Director, of Grassroot Soccer, Inc, in a session on the Cultural Arts Industry. Now, you know I'm not one for sport, but Clark's programme to use soccer as the catalyst for education on HIV/AIDS in Zimbabwe was true genius. Using children and young people's passion for a national pastime to engage them in preventing a pandemic social issue worked and is, in my estimation, truly entrepreneurial. If anyone reading this is involved in Diversityworks and CCS Disability Action's Diversity Challenge project, I am affirmed that we are on the right track!

Finally, I think the highlight for me has to be the masterclass held with Said Business School students on the first morning of the Forum. This was run like a speed dating session where students circulated between groups of social entrepreneurs. While a little chaotic (it may have worked better one-on-one than in groups), it stands out as the most engaging session of the Forum in some ways and I was buoyed by the calibre of the world's young up-and-coming social innovators.

Thirteen questions

I took time out from my UK tour to answer some probing questions from BBC Ouch...

Changing the past - Part 2

I've been asked for more information about the result of my meeting with Skoll management about wheelchair access: "What action has been taken and is everybody at the conference now educated from that moment of opportunity and enlightenment? Or was it a one to one hushed apology on the sidelines and we’re now all buddy buddy?"

Well no, a public announcement was not made and in the circumstances I personally would not have wanted that to happen. The issue was one of communication more than lack of access. In both venues there was access provision made - the problem was lack of communication among staff that this existed and a lack of "logistics training" should it be needed. Management acknowledged this oversight and have undertaken to create a process to address this next year. I think further public humiliation (over and above ours that evening) would not have been constructive.

The action taken in the short term was a concerted effort to ensure ease of access into and around the offending environments. This was done professionally and courteously. I have trust that I've built a relationship with management that is appropriate to revisit the extreme access issues as well as raise other issues of ease and comfort not yet canvassed.

So there, I'm getting moderate and conciliatory in my old age!

Depressed, hopeless, purposeless...but it's ok, I've been here before.

Having just emerged from the Closing Plenary of the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship, I feel a sense of depression and hopelessness that I've not felt for many years. I'm left questioning my own purpose and motivation, even the value of the work I do. I'm struck with an incredible sense of irony and, despite all this, I have an overwhelming trust that everything will be ok - for me at least; after Al Gore's rousing address at the plenary, I can't vouch for the planet.

Where to start? Purpose is something Gore angled towards in his tale of doom and gloom about global warming and environmental sustainability. He urged all social entrepreneurs not to see the green lobby as competing for airspace. Rather he asked that all efforts to alleviate social injustice - whether poverty, disease or cultural stigma - be reframed as an act of purpose towards saving the planet. Although I can see the merit of his argument, I fear he may be slightly missing the point.

Dr Paul Farmer, who spoke before Gore, came closer to my own beliefs on the issue. In a warning against becoming too self important, he posed the classic conference challenge to our group of socially moral heroes sitting among the hallowed halls of Oxford: Where are all the poor people? Where are all the people with AIDS? Where are all the people that this stuff is actually about. I and others certainly resonated with this - from my own perspective, the last three days has confirmed my silent doubt that high level social entrepreneurs would be any more comfortable than anyone else with the evidence of disability so obviously within their midsts; it's been a long time since I've elicited so many averted gazes.

So, Farmer said bring it home, make it about you, not them. Begin your quest to change the world's terrain with a damn good look at your own back yard before you start messing with gardens across the street. A claim that, perhaps, he could justify more strongly than Gore as he let it drop that he was heading back to Rwanda in the morning (Gore was swanning off to France).

Despite some witty, self-effacing repartee between the two journeying heroes, I felt uncomfortable and am now searching for answers to questions in which even I am implicated:

- How big is Al Gore's carbon footprint as he flies around the world promoting his agenda of global warming? How much have I added to the demise of the planet with my own self-important journey of social enterprise?

- At a world forum at which environmental issues and poverty are identified as the leading concerns, why was not more effort put in to using technology to bring presenters and delegates together by video/satellite conferencing? Could I have done what I've done via webcam from my desk in NZ? Indeed, what kind of viable conferencing system could I have invested in with the thousands I have poured into travel and currency conversions?

- Why are philanthropists and entrepreneurs more interested in engineering acclaimed systems for fighting social issues than in just sharing wealth with those in need? If enough of the world's wealthiest people (some of whom, perhaps, were involved in putting this Forum together) collectively agreed to pool their resources, how much change could they effect through a simple philanthropic act as opposed to a complex enterprise? But then, what are my own (sub)conscious, empire-building motivations for the work I do?

These are the questions I left the Forum asking myself (and others). They may sound like the scathing skepticism of a cynic (and maybe they are in part), but I prefer to think of them as "honesty propositions" - I need to constantly question myself to ensure my integrity and I encourage others to do the same.

But back to global warming and, hell, all social issues for that matter. To cut to the chase, I think the current environmental crisis has far more to do with human beings than the planet. I think the issue we need to grasp is our relationship with ourselves and each other, not our relationship with the Earth. Until we value, respect, and love ourselves and each other so much that we would never do anything, either in the short- or long-term that would hurt anyone, I fear we will never eradicate environmental harm. I suspect that only when we recognise and truly believe that we are completely and utterly connected to every living thing on, of and around this planet, will social, environmental and economic change really happen.

If social innovation were a Hollywood movie, here's how I might describe it: Reversing global warming is fashionable. Fighting poverty is romantic. Combating HIV and AIDS is, dare I say, kind of sexy. Alleviating famine and disease is downright cool. These issues get funding, media, notoriety, even status. But other issues aren't as groovy. Disability isn't sexy (other than my Orange Programme session I'm not sure it got a mention, other than in the context of impairment prevention, as mentioned by Jimmy Carter). Truly challenging the accumulation of individual wealth is not hip (what if, instead of rhetoric about the gap between rich and poor, we began proposing that governments outlaw the accumulation of individual fortunes beyond a certain percentage of the global GDP?). Certainly exploring notions of self-love, self-acceptance and the love and acceptance of others' experience is not, how you say, de rigeur.

Why not? In the pursuit of a short script, I'll summarise a complex storyline: the fashionable/sexy/cool issues are external, out there, separate from ourselves. The others require a more intimate examination of self. The former is far safer, emotionally and existentially, than the latter.

My work on Constructive Experiential Diversity challenges notions of empathy and understanding of others, replacing it with the exploration and awareness of self. Also required is the complete acceptance of others in an environment where everyone has not only self knowledge, but the knowledge that harmful thoughts, words and especially actions harm other life as well as our own, because of our connection.

This is the simple yet intriguingly complex plot facing humanity at the moment, by my reckoning.

Yet this screenplay (ok, enough of the metaphor) is the source of my angst. Up against the glamour of global warming, the romance of the rich divorcing the poor, the outrage of AIDS, famine, terrorism and disease, not to mention the woes of water supply, my humble thesis seems trivial, perhaps even as pathetic as I suspect some of my more lofty colleagues considered me (as a disabled person) in the last three days.

Perhaps I'm getting above my station - I'm no former vice-President. Perhaps these are the ravings of a lunatic. Or perhaps I'm as right as Al Gore was when officials laughed at his early writings on the environment. If so, how do I promote my treacherous, unchartered terrain next to the secure, established landscape of the mainstream?

The only way I know how - the same way I always have.

"When we are no longer able to change a situation... we are challenged to change ourselves.”

Victor Frankl
Man's Search for Meaning

Changing the past

I've always thought it's possible to change the past. This morning I've had evidence of that.

I used my experience of last night to introduce a workshop on Experiential Diversity - it set the scene perfectly. Then I had a very constructive conversation with Liz Nelson, Development Manager of the Skoll Center at Oxford, about access at this and future World Forums. In the space of two hours, last night seems more like an experience of exploration and opportunity than of disrespect and disempowerment. Using the past constructively myself as an example of the need for change and the prompt and positive response of Forum management have effectively changed my experience of last night.

I think it is useful to remember this phenomenon - we can't change the events of the past, but we can change our experience of it and its impact on the future, by acting constructively in the present and future. We also create a better past by intentionally constructing the present and future.

Thanks to Liz, vivian and others for their supportive responses.

Here's an innovative idea...NOT

You bring around 800 of the world's leading social entrepreneurs together to celebrate five years of excellence in social innovation. You call it the 2008 Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship. You hold it at the prestigious Saîd Business School at Oxford University.

You hold the opening plenary at the Sheldonian Theatre on a cold, wet, spring day in March. You forget to open the only wheelchair accessible entrance (at the back). You spend ten minutes trying to work out how to open it, to let the guy in the wheelchair and his PA from New Zealand in. You don't care that they get soaked waiting.

You spend the next two hours celebrating social entrepreneurship around the world. You talk about respect, dignity, empowerment, culture, context and social change. Then, you hold the opening reception at Trinity College in a tent - there are five steps to negotiate in the rain, a long path and then a trek over grass.

The guy in the wheelchair and his PA from New Zealand give up and go home, cold, wet and disillusioned. You wonder why (or maybe you don't notice).

*****

This has been my experience of the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship this evening. I feel disrespected, undignified, disempowered. My culture has been robbed, I have been denied context and the social change I have been working for in the last 20 years seems completely invisible.

This is a dark moment for me. Obviously "social entrepreneur" is not synonymous with "social graces".

In the Forum documentation, "discussion, debate and critical questioning" is welcomed. The question is asked: "What are the cultural and contextual barriers that social entrepreneurs need to overcome to create sustainable change?"

If I am the first social entrepreneur who uses a wheelchair to attend the Forum, then I think discussion, debate and critical questioning is needed. If social entrepreneurs are asking about the cultural and contextual barriers they need to overcome to create sustainable change, then I suggest they need to look a little closer to home. They need to examine the cultural and contextual barriers they are creating for their own.

I feel betrayed, angry and disillusioned. In 2008, I think I have a right to be.

Philip Patston
www.philippatston.com
philip@diversityworks.co.nz
Mobile/text +64 21 76 48 37

On the road: a photo essay...

I've not much to say and we're about to check out the local gay pubs of Oxford - three within walking distance (who'd have thought?). So here are a few photos of our trip from Newcastle:

Me, cold again, on one of the nine bridges that cross the river Tyne in Newcastle.

Claire, asleep at the wheel, somewhere on the M4.

Chernobyl?

My mate Tim, the SatNav (GPS) - a wonderful relationship, short but sweet.

Approaching heaven (Oxford, the land of gay pubs).

Thinking on the hop

So much for regular blogging - my three days of working and hanging out with the folk at arcadea was so intense that writing about it was really out of the question. Even now it's hard to know how to do the experience justice without giving myself an overuse injury. I'll start with a really brief synopsis and then add the contents of an email I've just sent to Vici, arcadea's director.

On Tuesday I spent the morning with Vici in what we tried to make a structured mentoring meeting. It ended up as the beginning of a three day tangented, organic and, at times (testament to an instant and strong mutual rapport) hilarious, discussion on cultural equality, the state of disability arts in the UK and our shared passion to inject renewed vitality into individuals and a movement experiencing changes in arts funding policies, apathy, identity confusion and what I might term loosely social fracture (difficulty in meeting together, organising, agreeing on focus etc). These discussions threaded through into a meeting with arcadea's board (only three of whom were able to attend) on Tuesday evening, a full day seminar with artists on Wednesday, and a seminar with council and arts facilities staff on Thursday morning followed by a concluding dynamic brainstorm about the future on Thursday morning. The energy created by about a dozen people who came to all or most events was palpable, of which I was honoured to be a part. I left inspired by the generation of ideas and vision that sprung from my visit.

If I were to summarise my input by way of justifying my presence, it was:

• Presenting my story as inspiiration and testament to creating internal and external change in unison.
• Introducing the idea of functional diversity as a reframing tool for the experience of disability. This generated intense discussion about language and identity, including the nature of the word 'function', which I agreed has limits due to clinical connotation, as well as a pragmatic and width of meaning. This debate has already inspired an evolution in my thinking described below.
• Reframing 'disability arts' as part of the realm of creative and social entrepreneurship, attributing barriers and resistant attitudes to the innovative aspect of the work and landscape, rather than the content of the issue. I was also able offer social entrepreneurship theory - standing still, resiliency cycles and the call to engage repetitively in complex rather than simple pursuits - to make sense of the challenges the group was facing as individuals and as a movement.
• Observing the connection between individual, internal reality and collective, external reality and using deliberate creation of the former to influence change in the latter.
• Consciously combating fatigue and weariness by observing and changing negative and patterned beliefs into useful, constructive ones.
• Capitalising on relationship building, persuasion and constructive thinking to build future direction, balancing without devaluing activism, cynicism and victim-based approaches.

Thursday's final brainstorm was testimony to the success of the three day Inspiring Internationalists event. I witnessed individual changes Vici and her three executive colleagues that bouy me in my outlook for the future for arcadea and the movement in the North East region.

The rest is taken from the email sent to Vici this morning, focusing on my thinking on functional diversity and the future:

I had a very relaxing day yesterday, barely got out of bed, and woke this morning at 5:30 with "the answer" to the functional diversity dilemma - a better term I think is EXPERIENTIAL DIVERSITY, where the enquiry is into the VALUE of UNIQUE EXPERIENCE (physical, social, emotional etc) vs COMMON EXPERIENCE - but also the EXPRESSION of Unique Experience vs Common Experience. This allows for disablement and therefore the "disabled" identity to be simply one facet of Unique Experience and Expression. I think the idea of experience also lends itself well to the idea of internal and external experience - the difference between how I experience myself and how others experience me - and using expression as the bridge.

All this makes the WISE SPECIES™ model (which just didn't have time to emerge in the 3 days) more coherent. I'm really quite excited about this conceptual development because it speaks so perfectly to my wider interest in social change. It allows a language and enquiry into the Experiential/Expressive Diversity of all social groups, creating an equal space to explore a constructive/ creative perspective on experience and craft it into useful expression, without overlooking marginalisation and discrimination, powerlessness and oppression. By definition it must also include privilege, power and even criminal deviation and anti-social roles.

So, going back to the disability arts aspect and our discussion about the future on Thursday night, it seems to me this could form the basis of some more focused professional development work I could offer to artists with unique experience (informed by impairment and disability). It would be great to work with a group of artists wanting to explore their unique experience in the context of their creative/expressive work, over a longer period, perhaps a week or more, and maybe have it culminate in a public showing.

ARTS COUNCIL SYNERGY
This article came through on an IFACCA newsletter. Maybe there is a chance to strike while the iron is hot and offer dialogue for new ACE CEO in terms of his "mission to see “excellent” arts and culture made accessible to all" - I note he also mentions Newcastle/Gateshead as doing things differently - so he'll be expecting a different take from you!?!?
New arts chief on a mission to change people’s lives for better - nebusiness.co.uk

Jet lag and the Japanese leg

Newcastle, 7:00pm Sunday
It's funny how the brain condenses memory. About 36 hours ago (it's hard to be sure after traveling through 12 time zones) we were in Osaka, Japan for 18 hours, marveling at the culture, the people and the orderly way airports and hotels work. Now it seems just a blip in an ever growing landscape of travel stories.
To add perspective, we were only in the Hotel Nikko, about 5 minutes walk from Kansai Airport, so we could hardly say we were immersed in Japanese culture. But compared to its western counterparts, the experience was one of if not the best I've had in my travel history. We were escorted from airport to hotel and back again by airport and hotel staff - and such was the respect and dignity afforded us, we wanted to cancel the rest of the trip and stay. Well, nearly. The only drawback was that only single rooms were accessible and, at ¥25,000, we only wanted one. But wait, there's more! Even though they assume disabled people have no friends, partners, etc, when they found one who did, they went the extra mile - check out these funky bath adaptations:


Air NZ's new premium economy class seems to be code for: "the place you pay a bit more to sit and watch people in business class, wishing you had enough to pay for it." That said, it didn't take us long to get used to being watched. The new business layout takes a bit more getting used to - particularly sitting across the aisle from ones traveling companion but having the reclined feet of the stranger sitting behind you at your fingertips - but again, once that became five minutes old, we were free to sit back and enjoy the luxury we paid for.
And finally, before I pass out at 8:45pm after one glass of wine and a car ride from Manchester (our one night stopover opposite the United football grounds), we are now in Newcastle, our first official stop. For me, work starts Tuesday. More then.

Claire in Manchester hotel lobby

The road to everywhere

It's now 10 hours until I leave for 5 weeks' work in the UK and Hawaii. For the next 35 nights my friend Claire and I will be sleeping on planes, in hotels and on friends' lounge suites on a whirlwind tour of creativity, inspiration and social innovation. Check out my new website, my itinerary below and come back regularly for updates on the trip...



16-24 March | Newcastle, UK
I take up a position as one of five international arts practitioners funded by Arts Council England, North East to visit the region between November 2007 and March 2008. The Inspiring Internationalists programme is “seeking to develop seminars and events that will bring international creative practitioners to our region for dialogue, debate and inspiration”. The Arts Council has chosen “high profile practitioners, thinkers and policy-makers operating internationally to contribute to this programme.” I'll be working with Disability Arts organisation arcadea, who will host me during my one week engagement.

Activities include:

❏ 2 hour meeting with the Board of arcadea
❏ 3 hour meeting with arcadea's Director
❏ 2 x 3hr workshops with Disabled artists
❏ 3 hour seminar with the wider arts community
❏ 20 minute performance to launch the Mimosa Lecture 2008.
❏ TBC 1-2 days one to one mentoring with arcadea's director

24-31 March | Oxford, UK
I'll be attending and presenting in the “Orange Programme” at the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship – an international event attracting nearly 700 social entrepreneurs, thought leaders, policy makers, corporate representatives, financiers, philanthropists and students from more than forty countries. For three days, we will attend a series of plenaries, panel discussions, workshops and academic presentations designed for learning, problem solving and community building.

31 March-4 April | Manchester, UK
I'll be the keynote speaker at Fayre Exchange Artist Development and Networking Event 2. Their publicity says, “Fayre Exchange is committed to the individual professional development of disabled artists at any stage of their career. We recognise how ‘effective networking’ can play a key part during events and will provide a platform for individuals to share information around individual experiences, training, funding and professional development opportunities. It will encourage open dialogue, paying particular attention to professional development needs. Solution focused and action orientated, our aim is for everyone to go away with something that will contribute to their own individual professional development.”

5-8 April | Devon, UK
In-conversation with Philip Patston, part of the Entrepreneur ‘in-conversations’ – This is part of a programme of events bringing together inspirational entrepreneurs in dialogue with an invited audience, putting a spotlight on cultural entrepreneurialism and inspiring emerging entrepreneurs. The event is hosted by the Cultural Leadership Programme work-based learning networks.

12 April | Honolulu, Hawai’i
And last but not least I'll be making two presentations at the Pacific Rim Conference on Disabilities at Hawai’i University, Honolulu. With its beginnings dating back to 1985, the Pacific Rim Conference has evolved into one of the top rated international educational offerings for and from persons with disabilities, family members, researchers, service providers, policymakers, community leaders, advocates, and nationally recognized professionals in the various disciplines in the diverse field of disabilities.