Facts, emotions, policy

Facts are just one part of the complex process which leads to decisions and actions, as much in politics as everyday life. Emotions, beliefs, hopes and fears are perhaps equally as important. Artists might be considered ‘experts’ at probing such feelings…

1. Visualising evidence

Cairney (2016b) describes a flaw in academic strategies to overcome the “bounded rationality” or limited attentions of policymakers. The most common response by scientists is to focus on the supply of evidence. This involves creating a hierarchy of evidence (often privileging randomised control trials) and presenting it in the most understandable form, for example short summaries or infographics. This ignores the demand for evidence by policymakers, which paradoxically cannot be addressed by solely focusing on the evidence:

“there is no point in taking the time to make evidence-based solutions easier to understand if policymakers are no longer interested. Successful advocates recognise the value of emotional appeals and simple stories to draw attention to a problem” (Cairney 2016b).

Prominent thinkers have questioned whether this represents a threat to experts and expertise in public life. However, the artist Olafur Eliasson has a more philosophical stance:

“Facts are one part; just as guilt does not inspire initiative, people will not act on facts alone. We are inspired to act by emotional and physical experience. Knowledge can tell us what we should do to achieve our goals, but the goals and the urge to act must arise from our emotions” [see here]

The Cambridge dictionary defines ‘post-truth’ as “relating to a situation in which people are more likely to accept an argument based on their emotions and belief, rather than one based on facts alone”.

Rhetoricians since Cicero have known that decision-making will always at least partly include an emotional component. Is the Civil Service adequately equipped to address the role of emotions in public decision-making?

2. IMMERSIVE DATA INSTALLATIONS

The 20 Year Gap (below) develops these principles into an immersive installation which participants can explore and interpret in their own ways. The installation shows the number of years people can expect to live in good health across the 215 areas in the UK. The height of each amber bottle is coded to the average number of years in good health. It shows there is a 20 year gap between the top performing area - Richmond-upon-Thames - and the lowest, Blaenau Gwent in Wales.

The blue bottles in The 20 Year Gap show life expectancy, revealing another policy challenge. The gap between blue and amber bottles shows time spent in ill-health in each location. Participants can explore what they think of this. Is high life expectancy good if disability-free life expectancy is low? How might problems differ individuals, carers, and the NHS - and what might this mean for policy? Immersive, multi-component art installations allow an open exploration of these issues, rather than more didactic model of communication whereby people are told about problems. This can allow audiences to better own narratives, explored further here.

3. IS SCIENCE IMPORTANT in policy-making?

Lucy Kimbell’s Applying Design Approaches to Policy Making: Discovering Policy Lab, dynamically illustrated by Holly Macdonald, considers the perspective of the policy-maker. The illustration to the right is a powerful depiction of the life of a policy-maker - multiple, competing pressures from a policy-making ecosystem which includes Parliament, pressure groups, the third sector and business; piles of documents stacking up; and a computer screen which gives a simple message ‘HURRY UP!‘.

“SPECULATIVE DESIGN” + ART + WALTHAM FOREST

Forest of the Future? features work by Liv Bargman (an illustrator based in Leyton), SRG Bennett (a mixed media artist based in Walthamstow), Cat Drew (a designer based in Leyton) and Phoebe Ridgway (a painter based in Newham). This cross-disciplinary collective of local creatives has formed to apply the emerging discipline of speculative design to the specific local context of Waltham Forest. Speculative design is the practice of creating speculative visions of a future world, some of which may be positive, some less so. The aim is to use these speculations to help decision-makers - politicians, citizens, consumers, voters, businesses - think about what a better future can look like, and how to achieve it.

WHY THIS EXHIBITION, NOW?

There is a clear link to one of Walthamstow’s most famous, William Morris, who could be considered a proto-pioneer of Speculative Design with his utopian novel News from Nowhere.

Some of Morris’ ideas - which may have been seen as unfeasible at the time, such as a clean river Thames and physically healthy humans - have become reality over the next 100 years. What far-fetched ideas of today may become tomorrow’s reality?

Now is an amazing but also fraught time for Waltham Forest. Growth, regeneration, opportunity, knife crime, gentrification, pressure, change, immigration, Brexit, dreams and hope, all so eloquently captured in Greenaway and Greenaway’s film for the opening of the Borough of Culture.

It feels like now is a time where there is so much change, so much up for grabs, yet where the chance of being isolated and disempowered is so stark.

One of the motivations behind Speculative Design is that it is better to talk about the future than not: by speculating more, at all levels of society, and exploring alternative scenarios, reality becomes something we are more empowered to change.

We can’t predict the future, but we can think about what we do and don’t want, and that is democratising in itself. This is has additional worth when big data, global finance and politics appears to diminish choice.

There is also the link to the Borough of Culture. This amplifies the sense that now is a time to consider the Borough’s future. There’s a lot of focus on the borough, and a lot of difficult questions.

Now is a good time to think: what do we want our Waltham Forest to be in the future?

SEEING AND BUYING ARTWORK

Future of the Forest is on show at the Pictorem Gallery at 383 Hoe Street, London E17 9AP. The exhibition runs from 2-25 May 2019. Normal opening hours are Tuesday-Saturday, 9am-5:30pm. The artwork is for sale. Please either contact Avtar at the Pictorem Gallery (via email or on 02085200340), or me directly at srgbennett@gmail.com.