The Cultural
Disruptor’s Manifesto
January 18, 2016
Through my education and my professional career I have been searching for a label to describe what I do. My mother clearly wanted a professional title, doctor, dentist, lawyer, architect, even builder but what she loosely got was someone who works with or for the government though he has been on TV and on the Italian radio.
So I have been searching for a label and I have found one, I am a Cultural Disruptor.
The notion of disruption is important to me. Currently the term disruptor is used interchangeably with innovator, but these terms mean very different things to me though they are connected. Innovation is about designing new ways of seeing, doing and interpreting but at its core it does not necessarily challenge what is, rather it tries to improve on it. Disruption on the other hand is more about challenging the norm, reshaping the narrative and fundamentally changing the paradigm in which things are seen, considered and reacted to. In this way disruption will be the precursor to innovation, delivering innovation that is transformative and changes lives.
Disruption presupposes that there is a situation that needs to be fixed not by adding on but by changing the core, changing the essence. So disruption is my methodology which: will involve questioning, not taking things at face value, not being sucked into the orthodoxy and the conformity; which will involve critical analysis and asking question such as why? And more importantly why not?; which will involve using the accessibility and the increasing relevance of new media to have many more conversations and delivering more insights that could ever be done from my physical soap box.
If disruption is my methodology, then culture is the context in which I want to apply it.
Culture to me is all encompassing and includes:
popular culture, especially in the way we both see and represent ourselves as Australians though our media, our information access and the stories we tell, retell and turn into cultural narratives;
mainstream culture and the myth creation that purports to deliver values, shared history, meaning and essence;
high culture and cultural capital in terms of the selection and support of artistic forms and content especially those that serve to stratify and divide rather than connect and unite;
community culture in terms of access to places and spaces at the local levels, especially those based on privilege and pre possession;
ethnic and religious cultures, especially where these are reactionary, used to subvert individual rights and excuse the inexcusable.
As with any social-political movement, such as the one defined above, there is a need to clearly state what the movement wants to achieve. What better way to do this that to write a Cultural Disruptor’s Manifesto.
I am a Cultural Disruptor because this manifesto reflects what I believe in and what I am committed to. If this manifesto speaks to you, your passion and your vision please become a Cultural Disruptor.
Manifesto for Cultural Disruption
We seek change, not for its own sake but to deliver greater rights, opportunities and happiness.
We will fight for the recognition of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders as our First Peoples and frame our national evolution through migration from this foundation.
We will not accept English culture and language as Indigenous to Australia but rather as an important cultural and institutional influence in the development of modern pluralistic Australia
We will fight the inherent reactionary tendencies to do things as they have always been done regardless of the inequity or disparity existing approaches deliver.
We will develop solutions to problems that address their causes rather than symptoms and in this we will focus on the structural rather than episodic.
We stand for design thinking in which the individual in all their diversity, focusses and frames what we develop in terms of policies and programs and how we deliver them so that accessibility is both maximised and normalised.
We affirm that real strength is forged by the combination of different elements and that equally our national culture will be strengthened by the contribution and participation of diverse cultures, languages and histories.
We recognise cultural plurality as the hallmark of our development and innovation into the future in which being Australian defines itself in our diversity which will become our new cannon.
We contest the supported hierarchy of arts and culture and affirm value and excellence across artistic and cultural practice within which arts and culture becomes democratised, and owned by the individual and their community.
We support new artistic work that culturally challenges and comes from the Australian migratory experience, interactions with First Peoples and the hybrid cultures we live in.
We contest cultural relativism especially where it acts to deny individual rights, or inhibits the sharing of culture and the development of interpersonal connections.
We will challenge the use of cultural defence where our law is broken and individuals made to suffer.
We will call out racism and sexism as unacceptable to the society we want to live in and the safety we want to ensure.
We will not be silent when we see injustice, and through our actions we will address the power imbalance in which injustice thrives.
We welcome immigration, settlement and the provision of refuge as defining characteristics of a humane and progressive country and society.