Council for USA and Italy.

In October 2014 I was lucky enough to be invited to be one of the two UK delegates for Consiusa (The Council for USA and Italy) Young World Leaders Programme. The theme this year was Creativity Culture and Technology and how they are shifting our social and democratic paradigms. Right up my street.

In amongst the Big Business CEOs and Politicians, I was definitely a wild card. I’d intended to keep quiet: Watch and listen. But I soon felt that deep agitation that I recognised as something vital that needs to be voiced and found myself on 4 or 5 occasions putting my neck above the parapet. On the final day: I ended up talking to the group about this stunning piece of art by Fischler and Weiss, that was commission for the opening of the Tate Modern. I adore it, and have often used it as a personal reference point.

Culture is our sense of self, our history, our society.
Creativity is the manner in which we investigate our place and understanding of culture.
and Technology is simple the tools we use to do this.

There has to be a manner in which we can coerce our governance systems back into a place of agility:

I continuously strive to hone my skills as a mediator, motivator, enabler and challenger. I aspire to be able to champion our humanity with similar grace and dignity as Ban Ki Moon: a powerful role model for me.

For truly embedded and resonant cooperation globally, we must do everything within our means to Build Trust. It is trust that fuels friendship, empathy and respect. We have an incredible level of trust at a social level, but an increasing distrust of our institutions and corporations, which is finally being noticed by multiple international think tanks including Chatham House and Interpeace. Trust has to be earned again. The real stakeholders of our countries are the citizens.

It is these citizens can provide tangible real-world opportunities that promote change at a human, personal level, helping institutions find routes through which to adjust their positions. Let us use real world examples of ethical, economic, ecological, technological and social advances that are mutually beneficial and through them show the trust and respect that can already be seen radiating in both directions. For this is the power of the 21st Century – societies connecting at a human level, peer to peer.

The ‘Millennial’s’ (or Generation Y) understand all this. They see themselves as global citizens: they use solidarity, care and transparency to share learning beyond international boundaries. Winston Churchill’s lasting legacy was to realise that any structure or governance we built should have humanity at its heart and unless we continue to believe in the everyman, the everyman cannot stand tall.

My responsibility is to look at how I can use my skills as a facilitator, an influencer of change, and leader within the bridging generation to create a more humanity focussed, world conscious system. I am independent of the indoctrination of political training. Time and time again it has been fed back to me that one of my greatest strengths is my wider, well founded worldview, built from tangible real-world examples. I know I am not going to change political, economic or social systems, but getting people talking in person on concrete issues that matter is possible. By engaging in this way, individuals’ minds can be changed and that can have any number of positive consequences regarding larger social, cultural, and political structures long-term. I look forward to us drawing closer together. Not apart.