We are the government. Us Now.
By Dominic Campbell • Dec 22nd, 2008 • Category: Features, VideosA bit of a delayed post this one, but a couple of Wednesdays ago I was lucky enough to go along to a screening of Ivo Gormley’s new film Us Now (you can catch the audience generated feedback from the screening on the NESTA Connect site).
Pitched as “a film project about the power of mass collaboration, government and the internet”, Us Now focuses on the changing relationship between citizens and the state enabled by developments in technology and the expansion of the Internet. The film charts the views and opinions of leading thinkers and practitioners in the field as well as documenting some of the better known examples of how people power is being super charged by the web. At the end of the ninety minutes, you are left with a palpable sense of how social movements are forming, mobilising and tackling social need at an ever quicker pace, many of which side stepping the need for government involvement and certainly without asking for ‘permission’ to act.
There have been a hat full of interesting reviews already so I’ll leave you to read those at your leisure. But there’s no doubting Us Now gets you thinking - so here’s some of mine:
- What is public value in our hyper networked world and where is it created? The traditional view of ‘public sector good, private sector bad’ stands out as shakier than ever, with a whole host of individuals and organisations generating public good. Consider for a minute who has added more value to your life in recent years - the Government, Google or your local community group? While this may have always been a poignant question, the boundaries are now more blurry than ever before and the role of state ever more contested and up for grabs.
- Politicians are an interesting bunch. Linked to the last point, the clips from the film highlight the tricky place where politicians find themselves right now, fighting the fight for representative democracy in the face of a once in a lifetime major paradigmatic shift away from top down ‘we know best’ politics to one where government is just one player in a complex set of social, political and institutional relationships. Whether right or left, liberal or conservative, the issue remains the same. How can politicians learn to let go, to empower not instruct, to work with people and embrace complexity? How do we create a new role for the elected member that is more modest, collaborative and far more akin to a ‘social bridgebuilder’ rather than commander in chief? I’m with Alice Casey on this one. Politicians aren’t stupid nor are they only in it for one big ego trip. Collectively we need to move the debate on the role of politicians onto a more mature footing if we are going to work together to build a far more fit for purpose politics.
- But if politicians are interesting, people are amazing. Whether its mumsnet or Ebbsfleet United (the football manager was a personal highlight of mine), there are significant social movements out there (many of them still under the radar) being self-organised and making a big impact on the world through building communities and enabling new and interesting ways for people to come together and change their world.
- We still need to crack the clique. As I said at the screening itself, the group of people talking about this stuff remains pretty limited and has yet to truly impact on the halls of power (I count myself in this by the way). And while the examples used were solid and will act as a great sales pitch to encourage anyone watching to go out and give it a go themselves, they remain the same relatively limited and oft cited projects that many of us rehearse on a regular basis. Perhaps an on-going role for the film’s website might be some way of capturing and publishing other examples to add to this list.
- Last but not least, the approach taken to publishing Us Now is an interesting one. Many of the rushes for the film are published relatively unedited on Us Now’s YouTube channel, very much in the ethos of the world it looks to represent providing unusual transparency and openness to the production process (although it has to be said this only serves to highlight the slightly unfair treatment of Ed Milliband in the film itself with the clips on YouTube painting a far more true picture of the man I have come across compared to the more critical clips in the film itself).
Us Now is a great watch, laying down a marker for where the world is at and where its going, and evangelising the power of the web as a force for social change. Us Now can only help to tip and nudge the subject up the agenda and into the mainstream. I intend to do everything I can to help get the film into the hands of some of the movers and shakers in government as I am certain that the film can be used to turbo boost institutional change and with it wider social good.
Dominic Campbell is
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I very much enjoyed the UsNow documentary but couldn’t help thinking that Ed Miliband was treated harshly in the edit.
In his lecture to the RSA, Ivo said that he’d put the rushes of the interviews online in their entirety. I thought that this was a good idea. You can look at what both politicians - Ed Miliband and George Osborne have to say, and make up your own mind about their understanding and commitment to collaborative working in government.
When I went to the YouTube Channel I could only find a 14 second clip of Ed and a heavily cut interview with George. Are they located somewhere else do you know?
Tom - there are 3 clips totally around 5 minutes of Ed and a couple at around 6 minutes of George on the YouTube channel, but it seems that these are not the full videos either. Will see if I can get an ‘official’ response from Ivo as I’m sure he’d be happy to share the fuller versions of the interviews with you.
Agree that: “the clips from the film highlight the tricky place where politicians find themselves right now.”
The tension between representative and participative democracy is so important and is not being satisfactorily addressed in practice… It will require work on changing structures and values from the inside as well as through pressure or public mandate from external sources, and to enable a more open and inclusive, even participative politics where there is room for something other than the party line, or the defensive soundbyte.
Without that change , genuine participation in political decision making won´t be possible at any level. Also agree with Tomºs comment above- be interested to see more on that - and also the point about ´´cracking the clique´´ - I think that to acheive this, those who are involved in thinking and talking about these ideas need to actually DO instead of talk- to look outside London, outside the existing circles, and to address the tough and less ´sexy´ issues mentioned above.
Alice - thanks for that, completely agree. There has to be more risk taking and taking ourselves out of our comfort zones all round, with the help of the odd burning platform here and there such as the impending recession driving change and forcing new ways of working in all likelihood.
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Sorry for joining this so late on… Regarding the clips online: we have not fully released all the rushes yet but we do intend to put as much as possible online and this will be available in the ‘rushes’ section of the website- at the moment this only features 3 full interviews as MP4 files. I am interested in making the process of constructing the film as transparent as possible so that people can understand the decisions that were made during the edit. I hope that this will lead to more interesting debate and perhaps people wanting to re-use the footage to make different, or even opposing, points. We’ve had a few universities contact us about using the material for course material and we’re very open to any other possible uses of the footage.
Alice I think you’re right in some ways about doing rather than talking, but what I hope the film shows is that there is already a lot of ‘doing’ going on all around the country. Adrian Lowes from North Yorkshire, a part-time mobile disc-jockey and member of the banking website Zopa, wrote on his feedback form after seeing the film “I am part of a revolution”. Through participating in this website and understanding how the organisation runs he has ideas about how he could contribute to government in the same way. I think that there is a growing appetite and understanding of participative organisations being developed which government is yet to tap into and that this opportunity is continuing to grow. So I think you’re right that “It will require work on changing structures and values from the inside as well as through pressure or public mandate”. I hope that this project causes debate about what these structural changes would be and how they could be made.
Thanks Ivo,
Just to clarify, does that mean you are publishing the rushes to both interviews - Miliband and Osborne?
From our point of view we’d like to publish everything. However, some interviewees have not given full permission for the unedited footage to be released, so some may not appear in full. We’ll be going through everything in January when the production company is back at work and I’ll let you know then what the plan is for these two interviews.
Are you saying that you gave editorial control of content to George Osborne?
Great post Dominic, I was also at the screening you went to and thought UsNow was an inspiring & well made film, which highlighted the power of mass (or at least group) collaboration & how our connectedness through being online is making this easier than ever. Really good they spoke to Clay Shirky in there as he’s one of the prominent thinkers in this.
I’m glad you posted the longer piece from Ed Milliband and that’s the great thing about the net in that it allows anyone to dive much deeper into interesting areas, or niggly ones they want clarification on.
However, I don’t think he was treated that unfairly (basically to those who didn’t see it - there was a comedy moment where he quite humanly said “Ah how can I say this without it sounding bad” and put his head in his hands - which made everything think - “typical politician looking for a way to spin himself out of a problem” - All it did was expose him as being human & not just someone who is always paid to say the right things. When people open themselves in public (not just on the internet), they’re going to make mistakes. But the more politicians, world leaders & owners of companies engage with real people, in the places they hang out & not just from TV studios or in newspapers, the more we might come to sympathise with them.
When you can see how a community is run (but actively taking part in it) you realise it’s not plain sailing and you make allowances & help each other to run things. That’s what collaboration is about. People are amazing - but they’re also annoying, selfish, egotistic, argumentative and often wrong - I’ve been known to be wrong myself
. But that’s what makes them amazing!
Sorry for getting on my soap box (like the man in the audience at the end) & thanks for keeping the discussion going.
I thought people might find this article by Matthew Taylor of the RSA an interesting read in relation to this conversation.
George Osborne had no editorial control. Some interviewees requested after the interview that certain parts or the interview, which were off the point of the film, were not published. We have agreed to these requests because we thought that none of the requests conflicted with the interest of the film. This only happened a handful of times and we will be able to publish everything else, its about 80 hours worth. I’ll be surprised if anyone watches it all but hopefully each part will be useful to someone.
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