Considering ’emergence’ as a value
by CEO Fiona Wotton
Values are the backbone of any organisation. Recent Creative Kernow developments have chimed strongly with our own set of values, from the Krowji studio replacement project (which is excitingly underway!) to the opportunities we’ve created for many of CK’s collaborators and partners in Redruth to come together to develop a brand-new visual arts festival.
I wanted to use this opportunity to do a deep dive into one value in particular – emergence.
Often, emergence is the most difficult of our CK values to explain. And yet it is probably the closest to summing up our ethos, approach, and how we model the essential elements of a burgeoning cultural and creative ecosystem through our many dynamic parts, which we then use to support the conditions in which the creative arts and industries can thrive.
Generally speaking, emergence is – as the name suggests – the process of something emerging (picture the green springtime shoots peeking through the winter soil). In our work we aim to develop emerging creative talent and enterprise, recent graduates or creatives who are pivoting in their careers.
More scientifically, emergence is a property of complex systems when parts of a system do something together that they would not do alone. This appears in the extraordinary pattern of the starling murmuration, to take another example from nature. Each bird follows basic group rules – follow the one in front, stay close to the one next to you. Each bird also responds to the environment, predators or weather patterns. Looking at each starling’s flight path, we could not predict the emergent pattern that results when the collective takes flight. But far from a chaotic result, beautiful patterns emerge out of the throng of birds swooping in the sky.
Emergence may also be collective behaviours which are less visible. Consciousness is said to be an emergent outcome of complex neural activity that happens as we respond to our individual experiences of the world. While community can be seen as a product of the dynamic interactions both between individuals who share interests or a common geography, and the group and its environment.
When our team started to plan Flamm, all the plate-spinning you’d expect to come with delivering a professional festival were handled: planning the number of events, commissioning artists, booking venues, audience communication. For our funding proposal to the CIOS Good Growth programme, the team also worked hard to predict the footfall into Redruth town centre, the number of new events taking place and how many people would learn new skills. What was harder to predict with precision was how different participants at different times could have overlapped and met during the weekend to generate new productive conversations. Or the sense of pride developing from town residents seeing Redruth differently, or the joy that emanated from people joining together to hear new music, dance or read together.
Many of these outcomes are just the tiny green shoots emerging. We may not know the extent to which they become new self-governing systems for months – or even years to come.
Why should Creative Kernow value emergence? We wish to value an attitude that is trusting and open towards the novel and unpredictable. Knowing that ‘blink and you miss it’ moments like a collaborative conversation are vital for the survival of creativity and culture as we know it now, and that we’re prepared to embrace what we might not yet be able to imagine.
As we look ahead to our organisation’s 40th anniversary celebration next year, I feel proud that Creative Kernow continues to build our strengths in nurturing the small scale. We create the conditions for the individual artist, venue, creative business, and community to grow whilst always looking for opportunities to connect, to nudge people together and challenge networks, collaborations and movements. By appreciating and paying attention to the emergent structures which arise from within our sectors, we’re confident of being open to the future and deepening the value we deliver for our region.
