The Undaunted

The Undaunted wishes everyone in this group the very best for 2025 and we hope to see you in a space between very soon. What a year 2024 was for most if not all of us. Here is an Undaunted perspective on our year and some thoughts on what we have learnt. We will be sharing more on how we plan to move forwards in 2025 in our next musing. We are certain it will have the same heady mix of chaos, joy, some sadness and serious progress as every other year since we began all this in 2015 but we think there will be a lot more play, serious co-creation, social impact and art (everything is art) this year. Later......

Go for it.

Who is causing mischief out there, creative or otherwise? Who wants to? Who wants to but for some reason can't? It doesn't matter whether you went to art school or not, we think it is time to get rebellious and creative anyway. We have to now. #undauntedtogether

It has been another incredible year of progress and change, filled with joy, tinged with sadness, loaded with things that haven't worked and many that have beyond our wildest dreams. The dance continues and every moment, every move is exciting and important to us. The Undaunted moves to its own beat but is heavily influenced by the modes and rhythms we see and hear every day. It is daunting but then that is the point. We are building some wonderful partnerships and collaborations, being invited to speak at more events about our perspectives and principles, developing our core ideas and working on our evolving manifestation in the world. We have been bitten by the writing bug and have one book chapter in proof and about to be published. We have our first publishing agreement for THE book, our stake in the ground in this moment. Some of our ideas seem to be capturing peoples imagination and leading to fascinating opportunities to contribute in some really challenging social issues and impact environments. Central to our world are the Collectives and how these are born, gather, self organise and act. Together, The Undaunted, our ideas, the impact these have, the Collectives they lead to, the learnings from all this, how we measure impact and how we understand the patterns, contexts and conditions across them all is our play and our music. But it is the people we meet along the way that are our reason. It is the unheard, the daunted, the marginalised and misunderstood. It is the crazy ones, the biggest hearts, the thinkers and doers, the artists and crafts folk, those who are fearful but have to try anyway and it is those that are furious but want to turn fury into something constructive and of meaning. The stories and lived experiences are theirs to tell, not ours. Our story as The Undaunted is fully intertwined with our personal story and this will be told in time. Right now, it is being lived, in the spaces between. #undauntedtogether

I am fascinated by a recent post by our good friend Benjamin Freud, Ph.D. (see link in comments and read his heartfelt thoughts because I cannot do them justice here) where he discusses his thoughts on AI use and his wonderful personal perspectives and approaches. One aspect of Benjamins piece and the comments that this spurred grabbed my attention most. The use of AI in writing and, particularly, visual imagery. This prompted me to realise that I don't think I've ever shared this - I only use my own photos in my and The Undaunted's posts and articles - in black and white, straight out of camera/phone and only of things I have seen that inspire me and that I see as relevant to topic. It is the same with the graphics and words that I create. I think this is born from an early career (pre computers, graphics packages, digital imagery, the internet etc) as an art and creative director where originality and creation of concepts and ideas were mandatory and the 'craft' was everything. I'm not saying that my words and pictures are any good. Most of them are in fact shit - but they are mine and spirited from a lot of learning and patterning and my own fucked up brain. I don't know about AI. My autism/PDA makes tech a bewildering barrier to me. I can't even read about this let alone try to use it. The real point, for me, is how to best convey the concept, the idea, in ways that will capture peoples imagination and compel them to do something with the learning they have stuck around long enough to engage with. In a way, this is old skool (pre data led myopia and inertia) social marketing and brand (dirty words perhaps). But, I've long held with the view that those who are trying to change the world are going to remain a minority sport unless they/we can create the groundswell and 'mass market' resonance, understanding and action required. I think this is the most important thing now. I'm just about to post something that describes some of what we are thinking about and doing right now. It is heavily loaded with our ideas, explorations, provocations and Collectives - and our words and pictures. In the meantime, here is a little thing I put together after a walk around Glasgow, Scotland. Thank you.

Here are some things that The Undaunted is focused on right now. Don’t be phased by 42 frames. They are mostly pictures although frame 40 is a vaguely grown up attempt to describe us. As mentioned in a previous post, most of our time is split between learning exchanges with some of the most awesome people we have ever known, regretting that we don't have time for everyone we love, coming up with ideas for stuff, exploring the Collectives and wonderful relationships and partnerships that are forming around some of these and then figuring out what happens when concepts, Collectives, responses and impact all meet in the middle. We call this 'play' because our principles and approaches demand this of us and because if we considered it as work, a job, we would buckle and be swamped by the seriousness of it all. Systemic social change, ending social injustice and spreading joy as an act of resilience are our stated aims. The unheard, daunted, marginalised and isolated are our reason. 'The Spaces Between' and 'Collective Unmasking' are our foundations and an irreverent, pUNk attitude is our spirit. How we go about all this is still very much 'play in progress' and I'm pretty certain that it will never become anything other than the chaotic, handmade, evolving and exciting rollercoaster that it has been so far. This pisses off those who try to pin us down and put us in some kind of prescribed framing and I'm really sorry but we just can't play by those rules. Anyway, happy Sunday everyone and please strive to be undaunted together. It is the only way that we can all dance with monsters in the name of the great unfuck.

Yes, I am obsessed by these concepts. They inform pretty much everything I think about and try to do.

I've just been on another trawl through old stuff wot I rit. This from 2020. It is funny that at the time I was in denial and defo not talking about my own mental health. That has all changed now and I am wonderfully unmasked and liberated. Sadly, judging by things I am reading in 2024 (that could have been written 5, 10, 20 years ago), by all our work around ND activism and by the vast numbers of lived/living experiences we hear every day, organisational culture has not really changed. Systems haven't either as we, again, witness every day in our engagements with education, health, social support and service provision. Business is a whole other thing again. It really is time to bring the marginalised and excluded in from the cold and to make them feel like the invaluable contributors that they are. I remember somebody telling me once that I was 'outside the box'. I told them I didn't believe in boxes but that even if I did, I would just create a better box. Now I just live in the spaces between. Fuck boxes and tags. Neuroconvergence is beautiful. (Yes, I'm well aware that I may have just created a tag!!!!!)

Come as you are  Come for just a moment  Come just to sit and watch people Come for laughs  Come for serious discussions  Come again 📍 Zoom link: https://lnkd.in/gpnNZPDy 🔑 Meeting passcode: 296568 🗓 Wednesday, November 20th   ⏰ 11:30 EST / 16:30 GMT / 17:30 CET Join us this Wednesday in the in-between