SMALL TALK CITY BRANDING - Sustainable public relations through small talk

'SMALL TALK' CITY BRANDING SUSTAINABLE PUBLIC RELATIONS

IN THE SMALL NARRATIVE

Thuur Caris, Groningen (NL)

Thuur Caris - contribution to the conference on City Branding Creative City Challenge Groningen (NL)

Falköping 11th February 2010

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Introduction If I may I introduce my self; my name is Thuur Caris. I'm here to represent my hometown Groningen in the Netherlands, in the context of the exchange program of the Creative City Challenge project. We run out of time and there is so much we could talk about. So I have to make a choice. I could tell you about Groningen, my hometown, about the local economics and policies on innovation and creative industries. I could also introduce myself by talking about the things I do, managing our local prototyping lab and innovation environment, part of the worldwide Fablab network. I also work for the Hansa University of Applied Sciences, developing the curriculum of the Academy of Popular Culture and Arts, and helping to set up the research centre "Arts and Society". Or I could tell you about my work as a new media artist, or as an apprentice scientist studying the influences of (sub-) culture on community and public space. It might also be interesting to share my experiences setting up an incubator for creative industries in Groningen. All in all I could present a very ʻserious speechʼ. But I won't. Why? Stranger Because I think the presentations today were splendid and you don't need another expert, I'd like to introduce myself as a 'stranger'. I think a ʻstrangerʼ can play a different but also important role in the process you are in right now. So let me look at Falköping from an impartial distance and give some sort of outsider's opinion. If you would ask me "how do you do?" I won't interpret that as "what do you do?" but as "how do you feel?" Well ... I arrived yesterday, late in the evening, in Goteborg. I had a long journey, went to bed quiet early because I had to get up at 5.30 to be here on time. I don't speak the language, and I don't know anybody. I am a stranger, I'm tired, and a little bit lonely, and - to be honest - right now I don't feel like speaking ʻserious speechʼ. The truth is that I am in need of a little bit of ʻsmall talkʼ to make me feel at ease. I choose to spend my hour on the conference agenda on musings on the difference between ʻserious speechʼ and ʻsmall talkʼ, because I think it summarizes the things we've been discussing today, as well as the overall challenge every local community faces in the context of globalization; what can you do as a region to position yourself on the stage of world markets and global technological developments? About 'Serious speech' and 'Small talk' ʻSerious speechʼ might help us to deal with practical problems in a rational way, but it won't guide us through life. Therefore we need ʻsmall talkʼ. ʻSmall talkʼ is spoken by our very personal voice. It is how we speak during the 'quality time' we spent with our beloved ones. It is the way we talk to a newly born, as well as the way we talk at the moment we leave this life. It would be absurd to use the rational, emotional distant ʻserious speechʼ at those crucial intimate moments. ʻSmall talkʼ is about, letting down our defenses to open up and listen to our inner voices.



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Yesterday I had just enough time to stroll through Goteborg before going to bed. On the hotel desk I found the usual tourist map. I took it with me to prevent getting lost. Furthermore the map was not of much use, because as a stranger I was lonely but there were no people on the map. It was filled with functions, services and institutions - all rational and commercial ʻserious speechʼ. It made me feel even more lonesome. It is remarkable how every city introduces itself to their visitors through these typical hotel maps. I get around and have been to several cities and I got hotel city maps of many of them. I once ended up in Tallinn discovering I accidently took the map of Hamburg with me that I still carried in my suitcase from an earlier visit. All these maps look the same and present the city as just another local H&M - McDonalds - whatever - franchise outlet in which we can, as Atle Johansen quoted; "amuse ourselves to death". How wonderful it would be if you could get a city map filled with ʻsmall talkʼ: gossip, urban legends, local lunatics and ordinary people talking about their passions. How wonderful it would be for a stranger to go into a bar or a shop and ask for somebody (whom you don't know) called Pelle because "I understood from the city map he works here and that he is a Bonsai tree cutting champion. I'd like to show him a picture of my Bonsai back home".



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Sustainable PR ʻSerious speechʼ uses the objective language of commerce, science and technology. It is not important who is speaking but only what is said. Every person who speaks the ʻserious speechʼ, represents these institutions, passes on the logic of his institution, is not involved as a private person and - therefore - is actually socially disposable. The 'serious speaker' is suspected to take care of nothing but his own interest. I want to argue that relations based on 'serious speech' are not sustainable, neither valuable. We need a certain amount of 'small talk' to make a relation personal and consequently more sustainable and valuable. 'Small talkʼ is the subjective language of our daily, local and personal lives. In our daily lives every person is unique and no one can be substituted. Personal relations are valuable, sustainable relations. Here it is much more important that you say anything at all, as long as you talk as a genuine person to another genuine person and take time to pay mutual attention. With 'small talk' we communicate our interest in another person and our will to take care, to add value. As a community one might focus its public relations on commercial, 'tough and go', disposable contacts on a large scale. One can also choose to build more personal, sustainable public relations. To my opinion this is not 'just another' option; it's better.

The great challenge of these times - to politics, urban planning, advertising, business, education, but also to everybody in their private lives - is to bridge the late modern disjunctions between the logic of ʻserious speechʼ and the logic of ʻsmall talkʼ. We need to harmonize the global with the local. We need to create space within the abstract and general to let the specific and genuine flourish, and make social and public relations within and around our community more personal - ergo - sustainable and valuable. 'Serious speech' can be seen as the practice of the 'grand narratives', the 'great' ideologies of modern times. In these late - or post - modern days, all these 'grand narratives' have known flaws and saw their failures exposed for all to see: crumbling walls, crashing markets, political scandals. The public 'lost its religion' and its naïveté. One may argue that in the age of postmodernism nothing is left but 'big lies', 'slogans', 'chit-chat' and 'populism'. To move beyond this defeatist moment in history we must get rid of the arrogant modernist idea that there is a dichotomous hierarchy in our scale of talk and thinking; that 'bigger is better'. We must transcript the 'grand human projects' into 'small talk' before 'small talk' is turned into an ideology; think global, act local and vv. City Branding, along this line of thinking means discovering your own unique irreplaceable local identity on one hand, while on the other hand strategically positioning that identity within the global context. When you manage to align the local with the global, the power of such an identity is tremendous. It will be based not only on the facts and figures of institutional logic ("lies, big lies and statistics"), but it will also be supported by word of mouth, 'real life' verification, personal dedication and social caretaking.



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The local and the global Lars Lindström explained to us this morning how his company managed to 'tap into' a local cultural custom and how this helped the company to show their human face, generating public good will, as well as pride and motivation among its workers, resulting in a spectacular increase of productivity. I think he gave us a very good example of the way art and community development can go hand in hand with profit and economic growth. Johan Belin on his turn demonstrated the power of ʻsmall talkʼ through social media, how a simple witness from a personal everyday experience can overrule a billion dollar corporate image. Evelina Wahlqvist explained that the economy of the future is not made of machines and real estate but of people and ideas. Conny Svenson and Eleonor Björnfot pleaded not to go with the flow of the fast paced metropolis but to oppose this trend with the slow quality of country life. I want to argue that the theme running through all of these presentations is the challenge to our communities and companies to bridge the gap between the 'large, corporative and rational' and the 'small, personal and intuitive'. The main question of the day is "how to make these separate worlds - one could summarize as 'the local and the global' - meet?" If we don't manage to turn this duality into a reciprocal learning process, it will turn out to become a deadlock or stranglehold leading to indifference and carelessness. Creativity Calculation and rhetoric are not helping us to solve this puzzle. We suspect creativity might do so, and I think that is true, BUT we need to make clear what we are talking about when we use the word "creativity". What does it mean? First of all the words: 'to create', means: 'to make something'. But not every form of production is creative. When we use the word 'creative' we mean that something special is made. And when we talk about 'creative industries' or 'creative cities' we're focusing on creativity as a competence that adds authentic value to our products, services, organizations and to our society. 'Being creative' means 'making an authentic valuable difference'. Whenever something or somebody makes 'an authentic valuable difference', in the way we work, think, or live, we say: "that's creative!" So I would like to get rid of the misunderstandings around creativity. First: 'being creative' does not mean being flamboyant, entertaining or artistic. Building an opera house is not a creative deed in it self. The architecture can make an authentic valuable difference, or the performances, but it might as well be "just another opera house" staging "just another performance", not making an authentic valuable difference. Second: 'Being creative' is not a privilege for artists or cosmopolitans. Everybody can be creative in whatever they do and it can happen anywhere, even in the smallest, remotest, places. One could be a creative peasant in a creative village by making an authentic valuable difference as a peasant in a village. But - and that is the third misunderstanding - although we must recognize creativity as an important human competence, we don't have to expect that in industries or communities everybody has to be 'so creative'. It is good enough to appreciate it and value the possibilities it generates. In the end we still need robust reliable foundations to safeguard our 'creative experiments'. It is a matter of combining competences.



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Making an authentic valuable difference Now how do we 'make an authentic valuable difference'? What kind of competences do we need to be creative? I think this is a typical example of tacit knowledge: everybody recognizes creativity when it occurs, but it is very hard to put the process into words. Let me give it a try; to be 'creative' - or in this case - 'to make an authentic valuable difference' we need to be receptive, sensitive, experimental, playful, clever and resourceful while focusing on the different, the other, the unattended and the unexpected, in order to be able to reach our goals by thinking sideways, discovering detours, reversing routines and avoiding drags. This brings me to the last statement I wanted to make about creativity. Since we were born in an age of rationality, of mechanics and calculation, we might tend to seek rational, mechanic and calculative understanding of creativity. I think this will not work. We should understand creativity in it's own terms and consider it a very useful addition to the rational, analytical approach. We are born artists. As children we observe and experiment by nature. And we enjoy what this fooling around does to our senses. This is the way we learn and develop our identity. Still I don't understand why we stop being creative at a certain age. If you would pick up a camera, right now, get rid of your scruples and start observing on the spot, by looking thru the lens, asking yourself "what is it that I really see?" you will find out there is so much more than you could think of just one minute ago. TrackingI like to wander around like a tracker and focus on details that might go unnoticed at first sight. I try to find tracks and fantasize about their meaning. These are some pictures I took when wandering through Groningen, and these are some pictures I took this morning outside of the conference room. I found these tracks in the snow and started to think about the animals here in Falköping. Then I noticed the statue of the fox at the entrance gate and I thought: "the fox would be a great mascot for the 'creative villages' of Falköping!" The fox is a good observer. It does not only see the conditions of the terrain but also understands the fear of it's pray (for instance a chicken) and the character of it's opponent (I imagine a stubborn farmer). Foxes don't practice geometry or statistics. They rely on their tacit knowledge and situational wisdom. A fox does not only overview its situation but also is capable of imagining its possibilities. The fox is a very creative entrepreneur!



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After hearing the presentation of Citta Slow, the image of the fox came back to me. In my imagination I pictured a poster with a fox sneaking up on a chicken with the text: "Take it slow, because anything worth having is worth waiting for." I assembled it for you with some material I stole from the web, just to present the idea. This is how creativity works for me: open up and observe, listen, receive, retrieve, combine and remix.

Remapping Falköping So who am I? (I'm still introducing myself) Well if you're looking for "the bohemian intellectual who made himself useful to his local community", here I am. And I am here as a professional outsider to tell you about the way creativity might work for your community when based on the 'small narrative'. Now if you would ask me: "what can I do for you stranger?" I will answer: "draw me a map of your community, not filled with 'serious speech' about functions and commerce, but filled with ʻsmall talkʼ - the 'small narrative' of the local people".Such a map will help me to relate to you and make me feel at home. And if I feel at home in this community, I will automatically start taking care of it and add value to it, just like anybody else.Now drawing a map of ʻsmall talkʼ means you have to gather stories. Here are some pictures of story collecting experiments I did in Groningen and in other cities. I got some tips for you: Tip 1 - Do not follow the ordinary routes. These are some pictures of an urban safari we organized traversing the city trough windows and backdoors, avoiding the public road while listening to the local radio, broadcasting phone taps and live coverage of the event by the participants.



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Tip 2 - Use conversation pieces. This is somewhere in east London where we went out on the street wearing hats symbolizing our personal identity. Whenever we ran into someone else wearing a hat, we started a conversation suggesting swapping our hats to swap points of view.

Tip 3 - Show personal interest. By wandering through the neighborhood, making drawings, taking pictures or notes, you will draw attention and people will come up to you to ask what you are doing. When you sincerely show interest in them and their community, you'll be amazed by their hospitality and open heartedness. The NIMBY attitude is an allergy to 'serious speech'; if you approach people with 'small talk' you will be welcome in 'their backyard'.

Tip 4 - Intervene in dragging routines. Disrupt public boredom with a playful gesture. It will make people happy and open up for imagination. Here is an example of an 'artistic intervention'. We staged 50 beds in front of the city hall in Groningen on a Monday morning turning the central market square into a giant dormitory. We invited people to lie down and dream about the future of their community. We collected the dreams and delivered them at the city hall.



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There is no universal recipe for a successful story harvest. If you would be so kind to gather some stories for me to make this map, you must think of your own strategies to do so. I would be very curious about the strategies you might think of. And if you would send me this map, I promise I will come back and use it to find my way through this beautiful region. Now I would like to invite you to start collecting stories right away. There's not too much time so you could also now sit together in small groups and share your personal stories about the region. I hope it will inspire you to build a personal, human image of Falköping; an image that will generate sympathy and support sustainable public relations. I hope you appreciated my contribution on behalf of my hometown Groningen in this Creative City Challenge exchange project. To me it has been very inspiring to share your visions and experiences. We should do so more often. Now lets get busy. Thank you.



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SMALL TALK CITY BRANDING - Sustainable public relations through small talk

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