New Spectacles for Juliette: Values and Ethics for Creative Business BY JIM SHORTHOSE AND NEIL MAYCROFT New Spectacles for Juliette: Values and Ethics for Creative Business BY JIM SHORTHOSE AND NEIL MAYCROFT New Spectacles for Juliette: DEDICATION Values and Ethics for Creative Business You and I… Published by Nottingham Creative Network. Nottingham 2010 The Authors We meet as strangers, each carrying a mystery within us. I cannot say who you ISBN: ??????????? Jim Shorthose co-developed the Nottingham Creative Network, and before are: I may never know you completely. But I trust that you are a person in your that Creative Collaborations, in a space half way between Broadway Media own right, possessed of a beauty and value that are the Earth’s richest treasures. Copyright © Jim Shorthose and Neil Maycroft 2010 Centre in Nottingham and Nottingham Trent University. He combines works on So I make this promise to you: The rights of Jim Shorthose and Neil Maycroft to be identified as the author of various creative industry projects with University lecturing. His address is james. I will impose no identities upon you, but will invite you to become yourself this work have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Design [email protected] without shame or fear. and Patents Act 1988. Neil Maycroft is Senior Lecturer at The Lincoln University, where he focuses upon I will hold open a space for you in the world and defend your right to fill it with Copyright © Ali Hazeldene. Ali Hazeldene retains copyright on works where they the Design M.A. Programme and supervising Ph.D projects. His other research an authentic vocation. are identified as original art works. and publications focus upon material culture and a critique of consumerism. His For as long as your search takes, you have my loyalty To find out more about Ali’s work you can contact him at address is [email protected] [email protected] (from Person/Planet: The Creative Disintegration of Industrial Society, by T. Rosazk) Graphic Design Graphics by Stephen O’Brien, 1512design, www1512design.com, This book is dedicated to Joanne Naylor, who taught me to think this. And for that, e: [email protected] as well as many other things, I will always love her. It is also dedicated to King Gribble, who laughed along with us more than any Disclaimer man we ever knew. We have made every effort to ensure the information in this book is accurate And finally it is, as always dedicated to our kids, Ella, George, Raya and Rose. and useful at the time of publication. Readers are advised that the information They make us better than we once were. contained in this book is of a general nature and the authors and publishers do not All these people remind us everyday that time is short, so we need to take care accept any liability for its use in conjunction with a commercial or other decision, of each other. nor for errors or omissions. CONTENTS FOREWORD Foreword Preface Chapter 1 Why Spectacles and Who is Juliette Chapter 2 Why Bother? The Expansion of Care Chapter 3 Taking Part in the Existence of Things: An Ecological Lens Chapter 4 Being Good and Doing Right: A Philosophical Lens Chapter 5 Everyday Skills in Care: Contact Lens Chapter 6 A Transformative Moment: A Business Lens A Glossary of Ethical Sayings References and Further Reading PREFACE STORY ‘Why’ and ‘If’? Creative Network which was established in 2006 as a re-incarnation of Creative We will try to avoid the second of the above difficulties by simply offering ideas, So our book is motivated by, Collaborations which was established in 2003. Both incarnations offer(ed) case studies and examples for your consideration without any heavy-duty finger • The need to translate some of the difficult scientific, philosophical and theoretical Just after the Cuban Missile Crisis, the days in 1962 when the world was on the professional and business development advice, support, training and networking pointing. debates about values and ethics into something ‘friendly’ to read and directly brink of atomic war, I ran into my teacher Hannah Arendt on the street. The missile opportunities made relevant for the specific and sometimes non-standard ways Dealing with the first difficulty entails providing a balanced view of competing useful for creative business crisis had shaken her, like everyone else, but it had also confirmed her deepest that creative businesses operate and exchange. This series of books occupies a ethical ideas. But we have to write about something if we are to write this book! • Exploration of relationship-based spaces between creative producers, audiences, conviction. In ‘The Human Condition’, she had argued a few years previously that cross-over space between broad conceptual debates, creativity itself, ideas for Inevitably this will involve us choosing to write about some things and, therefore, users and organisations that might lead to expanded mutual ‘careful-ness’ within the engineer, or any maker of material things, is not master of his own house; creative business and concrete advice for professional development. not others. Ultimately there is not an awful lot we can do about this. All books creative business acts politics, standing above the physical labour, has to provide the guidance. She had The first in this series is entitled Fish, Horses and Other Animals; Professional suffer from the same problem. We hope you find looking through the particular • A consideration of how creative practice can be, and often is, about the practical come to this conviction by the time the Los Alamos project created the first atomic and Business Development for the Creative Ecology and tries to offer some ideas spectacles we have chosen useful. If you do not you can always read something building of a better future through concrete processes within the public realm bomb in 1945. Now the missile crisis, Americans too young for the Second World about understanding and engaging with informal creative business networks. else! beyond business considered in isolation War had also felt real fear. It was freezing cold on the New York street, but Arendt The second, Soul Food, and Music: Research and Innovation for Creative Business We do not mean that to sound grumpy! was oblivious. She wanted me to draw the right lesson: people who make things explores ways to consolidate research for creative business and use it for thinking As we finish writing in late 2010 lots of things are being said about ethics and We believe that writing within this cross-over space is a good place from which to usually don’t understand what they are doing…culture founded on man-made about innovation. As you will see, this third book continues the theme of the lack of them within ‘Big Business’ and ‘Big Politics’ – the continued ethical explore questions including, things risks continual harm. professional and business development for the specifics of creative business by bankrupcy of bankers and ‘fat cat’ Chief Executives; the need for ‘corporate social • Why is my creativity as it is? (from The Craftsman, by Richard Sennett) introducing questions of values and ethics into our broader on-going discussion. responsibility’, the ethics of environmentalism and ‘sustainability’, the current • Can I make it better by asking what it is for, rather than simply what is it? But before we go any further, obsession of professional politicians with ‘fairness’ as they cut the public services • What broad social values motivate it? Whilst the verdict that ‘people who make things usually don’t understand what that the poorest in society rely upon. A lot of these pronouncements are pretty • Are there better ones? they are doing’ may seem a bit harsh, this story does suggest that the ‘why’ and flimsy and seem to lack any real grounding in what such concepts might mean • How do I turn values and ethical beliefs into regular business attitudes and ‘if’ questions are sometimes much more important than the ‘what’ and ‘how’ THREE DIFFICULTIES and how they might be really put into practice – creative or business practice. In concrete creative actions? questions. this book we will try to say things about what could make us and our concrete • How can I expand my capacity for care towards the World through my creative But what should we make of the word ‘politics’ within Arendt’s worries? Can The two people writing this book cannot claim to be offering a complete basis for creative business practices less flimsy when it comes to ethical considerations. We practice? the public ever be the best judge of ‘why’ and ‘if’ questions? If the experts cannot any choice about values and ethics within creative business. We have inevitably will try to present some conceptual and practical ideas for developing expanding sufficiently understand what they are doing and why, and there has been plenty of made choices about our values and ethics, the ones that motivate us to say what care towards ourselves, other people, other beings and Nature in a way that is evidence over the past couple of years that they often do not, can such matters be we say. Given this, there will always be some immediate, potential difficulties as immediately useful for as many people as possible. We feel this is a necessary left to the public acting within the mainstream democratic process? and timely theme given the recent lack of ethics within the ‘Big Economy’, ‘Big Is it necessary that the creators themselves be far more engaged in the ‘why’ • There will never be agreement about ethical ideas, moral