Project
P!oneers Salons
The P!oneers Sessions were an opportunity to reflect on the nature of cities, particularly New York and Amsterdam: why is it that cities generate such extraordinary individuals, movements, innovations, ideals? Diversity has much to do with it, but not only as a demographic factor: cities foster a true plurality of behaviour and thought that spurs innovation and infuses new life into culture. A healthy, diverse society allows for the unexpected and accepts failure as a path to success. From this pool of experimentation, new ideas arise to challenge paradigms that no longer correspond (or never really did) to the changing complexities of the world. To preserve the status quo in an era as crisis-ridden as ours would be insanity; and yet institutions (and institutionalized thought) must stick to certain, time-tested parameters when devising policies or approaches to problems that require more imaginative thinking. To repeat what is already proven possible is only to limit oneself to proposals already proven inadequate.
Given the great scope of the P!oneers project and the rare opportunity it afforded, we had no choice but to found the Ministry of the Impossible: an organization that brings together people of diverse backgrounds to apply imagination and experimentation in the interdisciplinary context of Salons. The Salons are monthly events featuring both programmed and spontaneous culture, bringing together active citizens (pioneers) of every discipline to stretch their minds and encourage them to apply imaginative solutions to the problems of everyday life. The results of this unprecedented merging of action and thought, society and culture, will be published and promoted through a sophisticated combination of digital and traditional media.
We see the Salons as developing the spirit that made P!oneers a success: people of different occupations and interests, from diverse backgrounds, brought together to discuss common issues in an open-ended format. It was the balance of structure and open-endedness that made the Pioneers Sessions so stimulating and fertile.
In these Salons the extraordinary spirit of cities is articulated and given structure. The unifying force of civil society that has waned with the crumbling of social pillars is given new life for a generation that has no choice but to change the world for the good, or be swept aside by forces beyond their control. No concept, no assumption will be spared inquiry: freedom and democracy, art and expression, identity and community, politics and economics, all frameworks must be rethought if our ideas and actions are to have any impact on a world that is not what we thought it was yesterday and will not be the same tomorrow.
Jordan Bowen, P!oneer New York
P!oneers brought together a group of recognized young leaders - from Amsterdam and from New York City - for a dialogue on how social innovators from different disciplines and cultures can work together to promote active citizenship in diverse, open cities such as Amsterdam and New York City.
In April 2009, the Pioneers program successfully completed its first phase in Amsterdam, thanks to the generous sponsorship of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Directorate for Citizenship & Integration of the Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment, and the Ministry for Youth and Families of The Netherlands. The second and last Pioneers Sessions will take place in New York on 19 and 20 November.
