On Creativity at Universities: Thinking Locally, Operating Globally, Caring Humanely

Universities are systems, not marketplaces. They are also part of bigger systems.

The now media-highlighted declining part-time student situation of the UK Open University, and the proposed bill for colleges of the University of London to become universities on their own, seem to go contrary to their systemic nature.

Letting universities to operate in global markets without considering that not every type of student can afford attending a course or a programme, could continue creating unexpected ripple effects in universities and their communities. It could result in less local, part-time or single-courses students attending as the Open University knows it too well.

Many universities in the UK and elsewhere have heavily invested in revamping their facilities to attract more students. The communities around them could be better involved in using them. New libraries, theatres or medical schools could also be put to the service of the elderly, the mentally and physically disabled and the unemployed.

University technology parks could be also directed to host social enterprises. And university students could be encouraged to work in community projects as part of their courses or their final dissertations.

Many other universities around the world have to cope with the pressure of getting accredited nationally and internationally whilst operating in very unique environments. For them, there might not be a need to build big infrastructure projects just to ‘catch-up’. The evidence could come from the small or only slight increases in student satisfaction obtained by those that have embarked in such types of projects.

With this evidence, and the worrying situation of staff and students in relation to our mental health, universities could then focus their attention in caring for people. An impressive building or laboratory is only as good as the people who work in them. Investing in people has never been a bad idea neither for universities nor for any other type of organisation. Perhaps the returns on this sort of investment cannot be clearly identified. I wonder, can those investments in infrastructure be?

We have now learned lessons from having priorities about globalisation, localisation and caring in the wrong order.

What else do we need to be convinced that universities are systems?

Creative Recycling: Our relationship to waste and to ourselves

On the 10th of August 2018, I was interviewed on the BBC radio as a recycling 'expert' (you can listen to the last ten minutes of the 3 hour programme on the link).

To prepare for this, I read and thought what could be the best piece of advice to give to people who are unsure of what to recycle from the waste of their households.  

This, in the wake of recent claims from different organisations about the futile efforts of some recycling (saying that not everything that can be recycled becomes recycled), and of some local council proposals to reduce the number of times that waste is collected from households.

So I wanted to raise the issue of our relationship to waste.  My reading took me to consider how waste has become something of value to many organisations, and how social enterprises help them to improve their recycling as well as the design of products to make them easier to recycle or to dispose.  

After my reading, and also getting an email from my thoughtful friend Andy Hix, I started thinking like that as individuals, we often conceive of waste as something that becomes foreign to our homes, to our lives.

With a better and more inclusive view of waste, one in which we establish a kind of acceptance relationship with it, we could start thinking that it is not waste but ourselves with whom we would need to become better friends with. Friends that knowing the good and not so good about each other, work to make their relationship work.  

For myself, in the last few years recycling has become a way of accepting that there are times when I feel anxious and in need of clearing out my mind. Managing waste allows me to get back to what is important for me, to spend time organising my thoughts and my lifestyle.  When anxious, I do lot of recycling.   When not, I let waste sit for a while, so that I also enjoy its company (bit weird I know, but then I can think of what to do for the benefit of both of us). Waste also allows me to have a conversation with my wife about future plans.  

Recycling (which involves classifying waste, taking some of it to recycling centres, and making sure the waste bins are ready for collection) makes me feel in harmony with myself, my loved ones and the rest of the world around me. 

Prior to and after the interview, I have started to become more interested in recycling information and have become a bit more aware of knowledge about it.  It is interesting to see that many products from the supermarket have recycling information, and that this information suggests consulting further with local recycling centres about their capabilities to recycle different parts of products.  

At the interview I was asked what could be recycled. I think I gave a couple of suggestions. I felt though that I couldn't get my views across too much.  Maybe I was not the sort of expert they were expecting.   Or maybe there was little time.  

Anyway,  I finished by saying that anything we can do to help a bigger recycling system in our society could help.t

For me, it is time to continue thinking if and improving my relationship with myself and waste through recycling.  

What about you?  Are you too busy to even taking the waste bins outside?  That might signal you do not have a good relationship with yourself.  Time to review it my friend :)