Home Grown #1: Leadership Blindspots
This blog is from our new series of monthly short talks in association with Festival of Ideas called Home Grown, where we'll be opening selected Festival of Ideas events throughout 2020 - highlighting important voices from a diverse community of young leaders situated across the city. The first of the series was by Rising's Engagement Producer, Euella, who explored the role of young people as the key to innovative decision-making.
I want you to take a moment and think about a leader, someone who inspires you - it could be a celebrity, a public figure - the Beyonce’s of the world. Or it could be your parents, you friends, your peers. Picture that person. What is it about them or the work they do that inspires you?
I bet if we stopped and asked everyone, who their person was and why they chose them - I can guarantee three things:
1) Everyone would pick someone different
2) Your reasons for picking them would all be different.
3) Very few of you thought of a young person.
We often don't think of young people as leaders because as a society, we have certain preconceptions about what a leader is and generally, young people don’t fit into that. Young leaders are generally met with conversations around 'lack of experience', the 'burden of responsibility' or 'lack of knowledge to lead'. These ideas work off of the assumption that young people are somehow separate from the realities of the world and have nothing to contribute to making it better.
3 young people are sat a table, writing.
One of the frustrating things about these assumptions, is that many people believe that young people can’t make decisions on anything bigger than what colour we should paint the swing set in the local parks or what new flavour Walkers crisps should bring out next. Anything bigger than that is too big and too risky - unachievable even. Well how about I give you an example of something bigger, an organisation, Rising Arts Agency.
Rising was born in 2015 by Rising’s Director Kamina Walton out of her conversations and work with young people. Hearing about their anxieties and doubts about getting work, being taken seriously as artists and their stories of exploitation in the sector, Kamina recognised there was a need for support in these areas and Rising was born collaboratively out of that.
We are more than a creative agency for 16 - 30 year olds, we are a community of young creatives who want to create social change, and we do this through a number of ways:
1) Our Radical Leadership Programme, BE IT
2) Our Young Trustee Recruitment and Training Programme, ONBOARD
3) Our Youth Consultancy Service, OPEN UP
4) Our Artistic and Creative Commissions, like REIMAGINE
The young people that Rising works with, including myself, are not only participants or artists but co-leaders and facilitators in everything we do - from everything from our rebrand and partnerships to our finances and fundraising.
Rising's Non-Executive Directors are Under 25
All of Rising's Advisory Board are Under 26
Rising's Core Team are Under 29.
We believe that young people are leaders NOW, not in the future, and that we have the potential to radically shift our cities, economies and industries towards true cooperation and inclusion. Our work is political. Fundamentally it’s about youth leadership - centring young people in conversations that concern them - changing the way we see, think and talk about young people and decision-making.
Generally, when we think about young leaders, the default is exceptional, entrepreneurial, (white) men. Bill Gates was only 20 when he founded Microsoft. Steve Jobs was 25 when Apple went public. Even in terms of social movements, 17 year old Greta Thunberg – has grown in popularity and attention, not solely for her message, but her age. She is seen as exceptional.
An audience of young people sit in a library watching a young poet perform.
I’d like to argue, and I think she’d agree, that there’s nothing particularly exceptional about Greta Thunberg.
We have so many young leaders in our midsts but they rarely get the opportunities or fit established ideas of what a leader looks and acts like. Part of my role is less about making young people ready for the world but more about making the world ready for them.
Rising are on a mission to broaden what we mean by 'leader' and create a space where young people are not seen as the exception but part the rule - putting a question to the city. That is partially why we started this Home Grown series, we wanted to show that the exceptional is on our doorsteps.
I was a reading an article about leadership myths and this myth really struck me;
Leadership Myth: leadership and management are synonymous.
The difference between the two? Management is about maintaining the status quo, whereas leadership is about being an agent of change. I can’t think of group best placed to be leading the change than young people.
Leaders are essentially storytellers. They communicate a vision of how the world should be and then make space to make that a reality. There are many ways to tell a story, just like there are many ways to lead. In relation to Ziya's Tong's book, The Reality Bubble, What Are We Not Seeing? - Young people as leaders is definitely a good place to start!
Thank you!
LISTEN TO THE FULL TALK:
https://soundcloud.com/bristol-festival-of-ideas/ziya-tong-6-february-2020