At the 2013 SLOW LIFE Symposium, Symposium Chair Jonathon Porritt repeatedly asked delegates, how can we tell a different sustainability story? Here Symposium participant Peggy Liu responds.
The sustainability movement is stuck in the 10%. We need to start telling a different story to engage the masses. The polarizing, elitist sustainability movement needs to shift into a broader, more inclusive prosperity movement. Fearmongering language needs to change to aspirational language. Ironically, we need to eliminate the jargon of sustainability when talking to people on the ground. We need to speak to people’s hearts, not just to their heads. We need to stop impelling people to change, and start compelling them to change…by reimagining prosperity, reframing the language of sustainability and transforming consumer desire.
The sustainability movement also needs to learn from the media and communication arts who are behind conspicuous consumption. Creating visuals make people covet a new vision of prosperity that can help transform desire. Instead of product placement, we need to do social norms placement inside TV shows and ad designs.
This is the thesis behind the movement “China Dream”. These learnings and process of co-creating and co-activating new social norms around desire are captured in a paper on www.juccce.org/chinadream. They have now been open-sourced into a universal “Dream in a Box” process, run by Julian Borra out of London (former global creative director of Saatchi S). This has seeded UK Dream conversations in 2013 and a TEDx in 2014 “Reinventing the American Dream”.
Watch Peggy’s speech at Ensia on China Dream.
By: Peggy Liu