Sustainable Enterprise London Festival (SELF) was a cross-disciplinary investigation built on existing research by Adrian De La Court and Siân Prime. The outcomes were an online three week Festival, a short film made available on gold.ac.uk with foundations created for this to become an annual event and a new tool for working with individuals and enterprise.
SELF was designed, developed and curated to understand how to build and support the capacity of the creative, social and cultural sectors to withstand the impact of a global pandemic and likely economic downturn. It built on Adrian De La Court and Siân Prime’s expertise and existing research, participatory methods, workshops and other enquiries into sustainability and resilience in cultural entrepreneurship. It interrogated issues of equity and inclusion as well wellbeing and financial sustainability.
Using a participatory design research approach, SELF consisted of workshops, talks, structured conversations and creative offers. The intention was to create a space for people to come together and be open about the difficulties, honesty and potential that is there. In so doing the project engaged participants from Lewisham, across the UK and East Africa as well as other regions and cities. We were able to reflect together through the creative lenses provided and input equally into the re-creation of a new tool. The skill of improvisation became consistently referenced. The final tool is inspired by Taleb, Eno as well as Cage and Cunningham. Bringing artistic improvisation to notions of enterprise.
SELF was online from 13 July 2020 – 31 July 2020, the programme included 39 creative and cultural sector presenters and the final documentation of the project is here.
SELF used a participatory design research approach to the development of a new framework for “antifragility” for cultural entrepreneurs and a sustainable enterprise ecosystem
