X-School... Reflections on the path

' I say never be complete, I say stop being perfect, I say let... let's evolve', Tyler Durden, Fight Club

Last month John Thackara ran his first 'X-School' at West Lexham in Norfolk to continue a conversation about what a 'school' for a new design paradigm should look like. Myself and a group of design minds got together in the countryside to thrash it out over a weekend of chat and activity.


Whenever we talked about what we thought 'X-School' could be, somewhere in my head I heard 'Fight Club', as in 'the first rule of Fight Club is you do not talk about Fight Club', except of course, we were there to talk about X-school, and... nobody got hurt.  We played some games, we built a flint path, we slept under the stars and swam in the river, we drank real ale and ate pizza and we talked about X-school.  It wasn't like a 'conference', or 'workshop', or even as John put it 'a country house weekend', it was something new.


Earlier this week I took part in an 'Improv for Designers' workshop with Alex Fredera  and Jude Claybourne.  Through playing games, and celebrating errors we found the road less travelled to creativity.  It was laugh out loud fun.   I remember taking part in some similar improv exercises at an event by Greengaged as part of the London Design Festival two years ago, feeling self conscious and wondering what on earth this had to do with design.  I was only taking baby steps away from my conventional design career back then and I hadn't quite figured out where else there was to go.  Two years down the line, I still haven't figured that out, but I have moved into a space where having answers and outcomes matters less than having conversations.  X-school spoke to this part of me, that there is enormous value in doing, there is enormous value in not defining your purpose, but most of all there is enormous value in sharing that experience with others.  


In the Improv workshop we were asked to leave our current design problem to one side whilst we did something completely different and utterly pointless.  This is the way to tackle the serious problems, with your subconscious, and you can activate it with movement, play, word games and drawing and probably with golf, gardening, crochet or dance.  


X-school initially wondered how to aid designers in the transition towards a more socially useful and sustainable paradigm.  That we are faced as a species with mounting social, economic and environmental crises is self evident to the aware.  That it will take a huge leap of imagination to adapt to meet these crises is for the majority of people today, less apparent.  This is where making room in our professional lives for experimentation, abstract thinking, and kinship is necessary.  These are the spaces where change can happen, and happen fast.  Perhaps by giving ourselves and others this freedom, we will begin to take the road less travelled towards designing the bigger solutions.   


The most precious thing I took with me from the first X-school weekend was a sense of community and friendship.  Through sharing, having fun and talking through our design ideas and dreams we reinforced our sense of purpose and supported one another beyond the oasis that is West Lexham.  The other thing I took was that I finally 'got' Improv.  I stopped feeling foolish and enjoyed being foolish and the sooner more of us do that, the sooner we can all start changing things for the better.