BMW Thought Workshop: July 2013

The first BMW Tate Live Thought Workshop took place on Saturday 27 July 2013 at Tate Modern. We began by asking the group to move around in the room, meeting for the first time, creating human scalars and vectors, positioning and repositioning their proposals in relation to each other. The group drew their ideas onto the windows of the East Room, tracing their thoughts across the city of London and beyond.

Philosopher Dr Michael Brady from the University of Glasgow talked about ‘What We Might Think About When We Think About Change’. He asked us to give our attention to the relationship between various goals – from the trivial to the important; easy to difficult; local to global; personal to impersonal; short-term to long-term.

After lunch we spent time unearthing more detail about the ideas that had arrived in the room. The group had the chance to listen to, question, support and challenge one another’s proposals, which they had written on slides and placed onto projectors alongside those of a similar theme or issue.

We also talked about what happens next. How does this group become a group? How can we continue to develop our ideas for change? Stephen Devine from Manchester Museum presented on different ways of using social technologies to build a network for the group to communicate in the gaps between face-to-face meetings.

Then to a nearby restaurant for a meal, conversations and a last reflection from our jobbing philosopher Michael. And finally – goodnight.