Emerging Futures - Volume 201: Speculating on the Histories and Futures of the Newsletter

Good morning relational becomings of an emerging belonging,

Summer is in full swing, and things are heating up everywhere.

Today is International Nelson Mandela Day, a day worth celebrating for a profoundly creative change-maker worth emulating in a world where there is still an overwhelming urgency for the creative struggles against racism, colonialism, and apartheid globally to continue.

Somehow, in writing this newsletter, we got pulled down into a wormhole of birthdays. And so we have two more we wish to mention:

• It is also the birthday of the great writer of the everyday, Margaret Laurence.
• And it is the birthday of the historian of science, Thomas Khun – who is most famous for the development of a Paradigmatic theory of change in the sciences. We have written about him and this theory in several newsletters (Volumes 53 and 54 are a good starting point).

Finally, it is also World Listening Day. A day that we love to celebrate every day (but especially this day). It is a day for active listening to the world around us. Check out the website for some great projects you can participate in and things you can try on your own. Our own small contribution to this is the type of “worldly listening” we proposed in Volume 199.

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A Listening Pivot

This week, we decided to do something different.

We are still in a reflective mood, having just passed two hundred newsletters. We wanted to give you more of an intimate behind-the-scenes look at both the history and how we write the newsletter. And as most of the newsletters begin as a conversation – really a series of conversations – it felt only fitting that we would record a conversation between the three of us on the newsletters.

This week, Jason, Andrew, and I hopped into the virtual world and talked about our individual and collective experiences of writing two hundred newsletters. It was a really exciting conversation that touched upon everything from the evolution of our approach to creativity, the importance of starting without a clear end in mind, and how our experimental practices and ongoing dialogues have shaped the newsletters. We go on to talk about the role of series in exploring complex topics, the politics of language, and the rhythms of the creative process. Then there is a fascinating digression into the topic of qualitative time (which will certainly now become a future series).

It's a longer and looser conversation than we have previously recorded, and we wanted to share with you in a lightly edited form, because in this form it gives you a sense of both how things evolved, and how we work. We hope that you enjoy it and that it gives you new insights into both the newsletter and creative processes in general.

You can listen to this podcast in any of the following ways:

1. From any webpage via this link.
2. From this link, click “Subscribe” under the play button. Then copy the provided URL into your favorite podcast player (this will be helpful for future episodes as well).
3. Or by clicking this URL, then click the three dots on the right of the player to download the podcast and play it on your favorite podcast player  

If you have any problems, hit reply and we’ll do our best to help you out.

Overview of the Podcast

• 00:00: Introduction and initial reflections on 200 Newsletters
• 2:34: The beginnings: From books to newsletters
• 3:32: Experimenting with content and format
• 8:14: The role of drawings and visuals
• 14:35: Emergent authorship and collaborative creativity
• 18:59: Feedback Loops: The importance of dialogue and reader Interaction
• 29:50: On series and the evolution of topics
• 36:43: Maintaining a trust in creativity and future directions
• 39:39: Dealing with anxiety and the emotions of creativity
• 40:37: Philosophical speculations on creativity
• 43:50: The non-transactional logic of creative practice
• 45:52: On the language of creativity and its need to change
• 54:13: Qualitative speeds and quantitative clock-time in Creative Practices
• 1:08:54: Future directions and final reflections

Enjoy!

Keep Your Difference Alive!
Jason, Andrew, and Iain
Emergent Futures Lab

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