The virus is driving adaptation and the priorities are quickly becoming apparent. Three pieces published in the past 24 hours provide an insight into the issues.
On the one hand Nesta’s blog There will be no ‘back to normal’ which highlights aspects of normal which may be ‘gone’. One of the recurring themes is the tension between the emergence of positive community-led responses and the imposition of structural responses. It doesn’t tell us the answers, but it certainly highlights some of the big alternatives.
And on the other a letter to cultural leaders signed by over 200 professionals and academics expressing ‘grave concern’ and ‘imploring’ them to not lay off education teams, asking,
At a moment when museums and galleries claim an interest in their diversification, why do they de-fund the very people and communities made most vulnerable by the current crisis?
What we are learning is that adaptation clearly has phases, including:
- the ‘immediate reaction’ (throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks)
- the working out what the ‘new normal’ looks like – the shifted Overton Window of testing and surveillance, social distancing, new austerity, etc.
- the massive uncertainty of potentially going in and out of ‘lockdown’ periodically.
Finally the Dark Mountain project, who have been arguing for 10 years that the form of our civilisation is the shape of the problem, announce their latest publication, developed before the pandemic, and arriving in the middle of it.
Their opening line is,
What is there left to say?