Tuesday, Oct 12th, To Do: Create international network of disruptive innovators.
Time has been moving steadily on and
now it seems I am two months into a life in India.
The walls between the worlds of MUWCI
and the rest of India are becoming increasingly permeable as my trips off
campus become more frequent and less superficial.
This past week has been one of exploration and wonder.
In the forefront of my calendar of the last three weeks has been the Disruptive Innovation Festival (thinkdif.co): hosted by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.
This past week has been one of exploration and wonder.
In the forefront of my calendar of the last three weeks has been the Disruptive Innovation Festival (thinkdif.co): hosted by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.
Ellen herself created this foundation
after sailing solo around the world and realizing that, like her
supplies on board--drinking water, fuel, cheese--were finite resources that had to be used with great care and thought and so too is this planet we live on (Spaceship/Lifeboat Earth). In suite, global systems of creation and consumption must be inherently cyclical, and therefore sustainable, rather than linear processes. The foundation thus has as its main objective to
accelerate the transition to a global circular economy. See a simplified example contrasting two such models below.
Photo: Ellen MacArthur Foundation
Apparently Ellen herself has long had a fascination with the UWC movement and when organizing this first Disruptive Innovation Festival (DIF), she had the Foundation contact the movement with an invitation to take part in the festival.
How this invitation happened to land with Oscar Avila Akerberg--my colleague in MUWCI's Triveni Department--I still do not fully understand. But as fate would have it, we found ourselves accepting the invitation and organizing the involvement of the UWC movement in this intriguing exercise in disruption. What began a simple plan quickly evolved and soon we had a student team working daily with us. The vision grew of using this as a platform to involve the entire UWC community: a community of thousands of individuals spanning five continents, eleven time zones and countless cultural backgrounds.
As the start date drew near, Oscar and I found ourselves feverishly contacting faculty, heads of colleges and students across the map. By mid morning we would have skyped with people in Norway, Hong Kong and Armenia; by day's end, we would have planned the goal for tomorrow morning, scrawled in my planner: Create international network of disruptive innovators. And the mantra that held it all together: Hold Nothing Back.
Initially we had four UWCs on board. Overnight this turned into seven, then ten. Every day we were sculpting emails to the different leverage points throughout the movement, networking on multiple levels simultaneously with heads of colleges, faculty and student-to-student, until the day before DIF began, we were orchestrating the involvement of thirteen out of the fourteen UWCs
scattered around the world.
 |
| Testing the studio space: Boscar approve. |
The first event went off. With the Heads of two UWCs working as our on-the-ground-men, we held a Q&A sessions with the Heads of the movement, "disrupting" their meeting on Vancouver Is., Canada with probing questions from UWC students, faculty and alumni, and a live audience of MUWCI students watching the live-stream just outside our little studio. Intermitent yells of protest and approval--indistinguishable with the full thirty second delay--created a thick ambience of Consequence. As the Heads discussed the movement's ideals and curriculum with certain democratic reservation, the trickle of questions being passed under the studio door turned into a torrent, and eventually the door was flung open.
When the event came to a close, we met the students outside. A mix of exhilaration and utter frustration made for an energetic reception. Once the masses cleared out--it being well passed 11.00pm--our DIF student team remained for a dance party clean up. And then to bed. The next day was, after all, the big event, in which the students of the movement, not the Heads, would come together to disrupt and innovate.
The Student Panel brought the grit into the conversation.
While some students voiced praise for the IB (the International Baccalaureate--the once-revolutionary curriculum, co-created along with UWC in the 70s), others called for a complete overhaul of our educational model. MUWCI's own student rep, a second year student with an analysis of surgical precision, brought to question the movement as a whole, its relevance and problematically elitist nature. Students outside the studio cheered. Her mother live-chatted the DIF audience. I messaged Pelham, MUWCI's Head who was skipping Head of College meetings to follow the discussion, to ask if I could borrow his motorbike for a recki mission to a nearby lake the following morning. Thrilling all round.
Our time on the DIF clock ran out, and the panel came to an end, but the conversation rolled on outside, gathering momentum as it developed in student courtyards and common rooms. As for Oscar and I, it was the end of our big push and also happened to be my birthday. Abuzz with the energy on campus, we headed home to celebrate.
[Since then, a review of UWC @ DIF made its way into the UWC Mahindra Magazine, published across the UWC network.]
The next morning--after a modest sleep in--I met up with my Outdoor Education counterpart, his partner and we headed out on motorbikes, me on a rough and ready dirt-road hybrid, them on a Kawasaki Ninja. After so many days behind the computer, the thrill of exploration under wide open skies and warm, thick air was a welcome change of pace. Keeping up with Arvin's Ninja was also a change of pace, as we zipped between boys on bikes, women carrying brass water pots and the occasional herd of cows: too holy to move for traffic.
Our route took us North along the neighbouring valley, out of the flatlands of fields and up the spine of a long ridge of land, overlooking expansive valleys to East and West: terraced rice paddies here, the gold-painted spires of Temples there, and everywhere the furious green of the late monsoon season. Each corner we rounded took my breath away, and as we raced across the top of the final ridge and the full panorama revealed itself, I was laughing and hooting into my pleasure, unable to contain the amazement I was feeling. Good thing we don't have helmet radios, was all I could think.
The reconnaissance mission took us off the main road and along a windy path into clusters of villages. We stopped and waited as Arvin inquired in Hindi, then continued by foot and bike until we found what we were looking for: a put-in place for our kayaks, to the beautiful waters of Pavna Lake.
As our valley's Mula river dries up post-monsoon, this is where our seasonal migration will take the MUWCI kayakers I am training. Young boys follow these curious foreigners to the water's edge--Arvin, though Indian, looks a world apart from the folks who call this village home--and ask if they can come boating with us. The fact that we have no boats with us is no damper to their excitement.
On the way back, I stop now and then to give someone a ride to the next village. One old man drops his walking stick. I circle back. He is dressed entirely in soft, white cotton garments, like many of the men here, taking the image of Gandhi and Nehru in their attire. By the time I catch up to Arvin and Marija, they are sitting at a table at a road side restaurant: a long awaited lunch. I am struck by the wealth of adventure to be had just in these surrounding valleys, let alone beyond, and my day dreams of getting wheels take on a notably more real tone...
Our time on the DIF clock ran out, and the panel came to an end, but the conversation rolled on outside, gathering momentum as it developed in student courtyards and common rooms. As for Oscar and I, it was the end of our big push and also happened to be my birthday. Abuzz with the energy on campus, we headed home to celebrate.
[Since then, a review of UWC @ DIF made its way into the UWC Mahindra Magazine, published across the UWC network.]
Reconnaissance en wheels - Morning Mountains
The next morning--after a modest sleep in--I met up with my Outdoor Education counterpart, his partner and we headed out on motorbikes, me on a rough and ready dirt-road hybrid, them on a Kawasaki Ninja. After so many days behind the computer, the thrill of exploration under wide open skies and warm, thick air was a welcome change of pace. Keeping up with Arvin's Ninja was also a change of pace, as we zipped between boys on bikes, women carrying brass water pots and the occasional herd of cows: too holy to move for traffic.
Our route took us North along the neighbouring valley, out of the flatlands of fields and up the spine of a long ridge of land, overlooking expansive valleys to East and West: terraced rice paddies here, the gold-painted spires of Temples there, and everywhere the furious green of the late monsoon season. Each corner we rounded took my breath away, and as we raced across the top of the final ridge and the full panorama revealed itself, I was laughing and hooting into my pleasure, unable to contain the amazement I was feeling. Good thing we don't have helmet radios, was all I could think.
The reconnaissance mission took us off the main road and along a windy path into clusters of villages. We stopped and waited as Arvin inquired in Hindi, then continued by foot and bike until we found what we were looking for: a put-in place for our kayaks, to the beautiful waters of Pavna Lake.
As our valley's Mula river dries up post-monsoon, this is where our seasonal migration will take the MUWCI kayakers I am training. Young boys follow these curious foreigners to the water's edge--Arvin, though Indian, looks a world apart from the folks who call this village home--and ask if they can come boating with us. The fact that we have no boats with us is no damper to their excitement.
On the way back, I stop now and then to give someone a ride to the next village. One old man drops his walking stick. I circle back. He is dressed entirely in soft, white cotton garments, like many of the men here, taking the image of Gandhi and Nehru in their attire. By the time I catch up to Arvin and Marija, they are sitting at a table at a road side restaurant: a long awaited lunch. I am struck by the wealth of adventure to be had just in these surrounding valleys, let alone beyond, and my day dreams of getting wheels take on a notably more real tone...
That night, Friday night, Oscar and I head into Pune to celebrate both DIF and my birthday. We stay at the studio space of one of MUWCI's art teachers: a lovely man who makes gorgeous figures out of stone, intriguing boxes out of copper and huge bowls out of all sorts of metals. The space smells, tastes, feels like creation, equipped with the bare essentials for an artist immersed in their work: a toilet, a sink and a single mattress for rest.
Diwali - Festival of Lights... and much food
The next day, Oscar heads home while I meet up with a former MUWCI student and College of the Atlantic (COA) alumn whom I met a world away in the small town of Bar Harbour, Maine, some nine months ago on a visit from Halifax to old Pearson friends. I spend the afternoon with her family in Pune to celebrate the penultimate day of Diwali: India's eight day Festival of Lights that makes Christmas look like an afterthought.
We drink homemade wine and eat all manner of treats. Brothers and sisters exchange gifts and I am schooled in all the Indian literature I need to read by be-speckled old men with the politics of Gandhi fresh in their minds. Stuffed and nearly ready to go home, a few of us head to a nearby Korean coffee shop, owned by the father of a MUWCI grad, where we sit cross legged on pillows and I drink a proper cup'o .
Tired, full and immensely satisfied, I meet my ride home and sleepily make my way back to the college.
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