curious patterns #29
Art as reparation, forests as relaxation, post-growth as inspiration, and casting bands as revelation.
curious patterns is an online publication of curated news around arts and culture, impact and evaluation, sustainable development and regenerative futures, and where these all intersect. My name is Kai Brennert, I am based out of Cambodia 🇰🇭, and I run the evaluation, research and policy consultancy edgeandstory.
Oh my, it’s been three months since I last published curious patterns. Yes, it’s bad. But it’s also good because that means I was very busy which in turn means I can pay my rent, yay! Rest assured that my reading list is rather long and I hope to get through some of it in the next issue, including that truckload of publications that came out just before the end of 2023 (reporting deadlines anyone?) 🙈
Very happy you’re joining us here, new subscribers at IFACCA 🇦🇺, Music Archive Finland 🇫🇮, the University of Bath 🇬🇧, Queen Margaret University Edinburgh 🇬🇧, Earthen Lamp 🇬🇧, Walcott Communications 🇬🇧, Kakiseni 🇲🇾, Cultural Relations Platform 🇧🇪, University of Cape Coast 🇬🇭, Missouri Arts Council 🇺🇸, and Q42 🇳🇱
🇦🇷 Poor Argentina has dissolved its ministries for culture and education and merged their portfolios into a new Ministry of Human Capital. What could possibly go wrong?!
🌍 My buddy Sizo said it’s time to shine the light on some damn nice cultural hubs in Southern Africa. Maputo sure looks like the place to be. Right after Jozi, of course.
🎙️ If you're not already a fan of Prince Claus Fund's artists-first approach, after listening to this interview with ED Marcus Desando you absolutely will be.
🕸️ It’s possible. It really is possible for Global North funders to hand over money without being a colonial pain in the behind. Yay for arts network peer governance!
🎥 Not super recent and a pretty cringey title, but this sustainable film research wants to tackle the 2840 tonnes of CO₂ of an average production, and you should know that.
🇧🇹 Bhutan has always been a little different, right? They just unveiled a vision for a culturally responsive architectural and urban planning utopia. Solarpunk in the making!
🎤 ASEAN Secretariat boardroom conversations must be quite the hoot. Problem: how do we foster ASEAN identity? Solution: let’s copy Korea and cast an A-pop band!
🇲🇻 Maldives’ new zero-to-hero strategy for CCI development looks at the full pipeline: creative skills in schools, arts at university, and a cultural entrepreneurship fund.
🌱 Everybody is a climate change hero and we are all friends. [sarcasm off] The Emirates Declaration on Cultural-based Climate Action is a bit too lukewarm, no?
✍️ ECOWAS and WIPO put together an app for West African designers to register their intellectual property. Imagine if you could also submit artistic and literary works.
🇦🇴🇬🇼🇧🇷 Ever thought of moving for YouTube? No, not because of the ads (though, I’d understand). There’s a number of creators leaving lusophone Africa for Brazil.
🎸 Meanwhile, touring in Africa is gonna get a whole lot easier. Pan-African ticketing platform, local crews, and seamless infrastructure. That’s the plan anyways.
♻️ If you have ever wanted to hear me ramble about my idea of sustainability in arts and culture, tune in to this presentation I gave at Manila’s St Benilde University a few weeks back. Judge for yourself if fellow presenter Malaya del Rosario and I managed to bust the buzzword.
📋 A cultural evaluation solopreneur’s to-do list
Start the new project.
Get excited about evaluation design and methodology possibilities.
Realise that client budget is tiny and that the effort required would mean I’d end up working for peanuts.
Pitch it to collaborators anyway because it’s just a damn cool method and there would be so many insights.
Reluctantly accept my collaborator’s voice of reason and settle for the light version of the approach.
Sneakily plan to probably do the full analysis anyway.
Set internal deadlines for new project.
Realise that I actually have a gazillion other things to do and time management will be insane.
Distract myself from this reality by doomscrolling through LinkedIn.
Gag every time I see corporate sustainability-washing announcements.
Grumble that ‘sustainable growth’ is an oxymoron.
Remember to prep a talk on ‘busting the buzzword’, reflecting on what sustainability means in my practice.
Glance at the single-use takeaway coffee cup next to me on my desk.
Wonder how much of a hypocrite I am.
Distract myself from this distraction by listening to India-mapiano a friend shared with me to calm myself down.
Marvel at how music trends travel these days seamlessly from South Africa to India.
Wonder what Cambo-mapiano might sound like.
Inevitably get lost in a YouTube rabbit hole.
Shame myself to do some more work.
Check focus group registrations.
Try to log into video call platform.
Get frustrated over a forgotten password and go through forgotten password procedure.
Decide on new password.
Yell at screen because apparently my old password can’t be my new password. WTF?!
Make up a new password.
Immediately forget new password and very likely start process all over again next time.
Wish my password manager would still work as well as it used to.
Sigh at the lack of registrations for the scheduled evaluation focus groups.
Note down product idea I had while showering.
Open Notion to add idea to my endless ideas parking lot Notion page I will probably not come back to in the next three years.
Still invite some friends to the Notion pages in the hope somebody will find one of these ideas so exciting as to take the lead and just happily drag me along.
Remember time management.
Refocus and do some admin because it’s the afternoon and my deep work period has absolutely definitely already passed.
Determine that it’s finally time to deal with my bank.
Get mad at my bank for deciding that their credit cards suck and forcing you to order a new one with only two months notice, making it incredibly hard to coordinate this from Cambodia when they only ship to European countries.
Get creative and enlist a friend in the process.
Decide to sneakily order a rashguard and a pair of BJJ shorts to my friend’s address if he’s going to ship my credit card anyways.
Start researching other banks that don’t mind me being in Cambodia and don’t charge an absolute fortune for the most basic of services.
Spend way too much time to find bloody nothing.
Move to hotel bookings for upcoming trip to Vietnam.
Realise that without a credit card I won’t be able to pay hotel on site.
Reach out to hotel to prepay with virtual credit card.
Feel smug that I get to go to Vietnam for a conference.
Plan how to show off this trip to my friends by caveating that I’ll mostly just be in conference settings instead of sitting on tiny chairs sipping watery beer watching an endless stream of motorbikes zooming past whilst enjoying some amazing food.
Think to myself that I’ll still most probably do all of that and continue to humble-brag the heck out of this trip.
Finish work day.
Turn off the laptop on a high note and get comfy on the sofa.
React to my phone notification half an hour later and frantically sprint back to the laptop to join the focus group that nobody signed up for but perhaps someone still miraculously makes an appearance for.
Be super grateful to the one person who took the time.
Ponder how to adapt a focus group design to an interview design on the fly.
End up having a fantastic conversation because in the end we are all in culture for right reasons.
Format inspired by Jenny Blake who was inspired by other folks.
IMPACT
📊 It’s already March, but this is a 2023 review I can still get behind. The folks at Datawrapper compiled their dataviz highlights of the past year. We’re talking rivers, air quality, loneliness, neighbourhood border perceptions, and – most importantly – sweaty Singaporeans. Great inspiration for all your future data visualisation projects.
🚛 Trying to make monitoring and evaluation less extractive is something I grapple with every day. Even though I might be methodologically aware, the context or structure of an evaluation gig might not always allow for co-design, deep participation or storytelling approaches. There is lots to learn from this conversation with Serge Eric Yakeu Djiam, Florence Etta, and Solomon Gitau on decolonising evaluation, including reclaiming M&E.
🇺🇸 I know you’ve been dreaming about cultural diplomacy evaluation. And you’re in luck because now you can relive your dreams during working hours. The U.S. Department of State has its Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA), and they have their very own evaluation office called MELI, and they have a whole M&E course and a bunch of webinars on Youtube for you to explore. Sweet day dreams!
DID YOU KNOW
… that reparations don’t always come in the form of cold hard cash?
Reading about the COP Loss and Damage Fund and what countries would like to use it for reminded me of the probably little known reparation projects here in Cambodia that might even serve as an inspiration for other situations where direct or bilateral reparations are not feasible. Here is how the Khmer Rouge Tribunal (ECCC) explains it:
Civil Parties who are recognised before the ECCC participate in criminal proceedings by supporting the prosecution and by pursuing a parallel civil action for collective and moral reparations against an Accused for harm that is directly attributable to the crimes for which the Accused is convicted. The term “collective” is interpreted as confirming the ECCC’s inability to provide individual financial or monetary awards to victims of crimes under its jurisdiction, while “moral” refers to the redress of moral damages rather than material ones.
26 projects were approved, all funded or implemented by different national and international actors. Quite a few are exhibitions, memorials, and education projects. Some, however, are art projects, including these two performing arts productions:
💃 Phka Sla Kroam Angkar – a classical Cambodian dance production inspired by the testimonies of women who suffered from forced marriages under the Khmer Rouge.
🐢 The Courageous Turtle – a theatre production for school children promoting peace, reconciliation, and intergenerational dialogue.
If you want to browse through the other reparations, this document lists all of them, starting on page 243. I think it’s a beautiful idea to think the idea of reparations a bit broader.
RESEARCH | REPORTS | TOOLKITS
🇬🇪 It’s hard to be a fanboy sometimes. My friends know that I can’t shut up about Georgian food, Georgian wine, Georgian hospitality, and Georgian music. Seriously, most underrated tourism destination EVER! However, during my last visit to the Caucasus I already heard some whispers about the role of the infamous and rather powerful Minister of Culture, Sport, and Youth Affairs and the current state of freedom of expression. Reading this detailed report by PEN on how the current government is systematically transforming the cultural space – and certainly not for the better I might add – is heartbreaking.
The Georgian government, in its efforts to repress, manipulate and control the independence and vibrancy of Georgian culture, clearly recognizes that power and is afraid of it. As cultural workers increasingly find themselves on the front line of challenging the growing authoritarianism in Georgia, the world should support their struggle and help them uphold human rights.
🧰 Is CIaaS the next big thing? Creative-Insight-as-a-Service, that is. This approach of cross-innovation was trialled by Subtopia and others, and I find to be one of the most exciting prospects of our times: infusing the power of art and culture into other sectors, learning from each other (methods but also insights), and hopefully collaborating to make things better. The toolkit / report has a couple of stories and learnings from the pilot projects. Hopefully there’ll be more companies and public entities experimenting with artists in their midst soon.
🧑🎨 Foundational reading alert! UNESCO and TFCC give us a rich publication to stay up to date with cultural policies around the globe, most fundamentally on the status of the artist. It’s an analysis of the fifth global consultation and has both government and civil society responses. No surprise, perceptions tend to differ occasionally. My personal fav are the policy highlights, some of which I want to share with you:
🇸🇳 Senegal has a new law that allows collective bargaining by associations of artists and cultural professionals.
🌎 The Intergovernmental Organization for Central America (CECC-SICA) is working on a regional policy on the status of the artist with an artist advisory body.
🇧🇫🇩🇿 Burkina Faso and Algeria merge the functions of royalty collection/distribution and welfare provision under one institutional roof.
Cool stuff for sure. But there is also a lot of work to be done, so let’s f* go!
ART IN BETWEEN
🌳 Remember forests? … is a brilliant tag line for this thing. It’s a discovery platform, it takes you around the world, it relaxes you, and it gives you a glimpse into our natural heritage. Very 21st century? Absolutely! Needed? Sadly, yes, probably. See you later, I’m gonna do some virtual forest bathing in Malaysia’s Taman Negara National Park. See you there?
WHAT ELSE?
📉 A little inspiration can go a long way. Welcome to the Post Growth Social Innovation glossary, your one-stop-shop for transformative concepts, theories, and mental models. If you’ve always wanted to learn more about time inequality, frugal social innovation, data feminism, deep adaptation or radicle civics, this is a great place to start digging through some of these ideas.
⚖️ What if we were to innovate intellectual property? The World Economic Forum (I know, I know…) wants us to think about what IP legislation should look like in our current times, promoting a shift from pure individualist IP ownership to community recognition and benefit. And before you think neoliberalists are hard at work here, the author also mentions the need to adapt to protect multi-generational and collective knowledge. Nice little op-ed that also questions IP protection for AI.
Please forward this newsletter to a friend, and do reach out: kai@edgeandstory.com