Linda Rocco
Re-Envisioning the Think Tank
Summary
THURSDAY 25.02.2021 From 4 to 6pm
An Open Forum for artists, performers, curators, designers and arts practitioners, who have a contribution to make to society beyond the production of an object, and are keen to proactively discuss how to be valued in relation to matters concerning our civilisation.
The meeting will take place over Zoom and is deliberately an open forum for conversation to flow freely.
You do not need to know what values you contribute with, it’s enough that you have the curiosity, humbleness and an open mind to join the conversation.
Click HERE to book your free place and be part of the conversation
If you can't join the session but still want to contribute to the research process, please consider filling in this questionnaire
My research focuses on the values that we bring as creative practitioners into the larger world, particularly looking at present conditions for change and innovation. I'm interested in appropriating the format of the Think Tank from our perspective, to explore how an arts-led, non-elitist, decentralised and decolonised Think Tank would look like and what types of influence it could exert through strategic forms of collectivity.
The insurgence of Think Tanks over the 1990s and 2000s was a primarily Western phenomenon, born with the aim to ‘bridge’ the political, economic, and the media, with an academic elite. While debates on the definition of what actually constitutes a Think-Tank still unfolds, the institutional and ideological bases of the format are married with an objective of influencing policies. By disseminating research as state-external agents, they navigate power structures, interfering with universities to advocate for ideas, develop and maintain policy networks.
At a time when trust in institutions has eroded and the blind faith in scientific expertise is questioned, the association of specialised groups of interest to analyse and advocate for “society at large” feels ever more contentious. Meanwhile, governments are increasingly seeking out intellectual and expert support to validate their evidence-based narratives.
Considering the potential of progressive forms of decentralised governance, the value of transdisciplinary networks and the importance of interchanging experts with less specialist social actors, re-envisioning the Think Tank is an attempt at adding fresh priorities and values to the format.
