The UNTITLED online festival brought together hundreds of participants to imagine a better future
Anni Sinnemäki, Deputy Mayor of Helsinki for the Urban Environment, debating at the UNTITLED festival. Photo: Demos Helsinki/Emilia Pennanen
PAM is one of the founder members of the UNTITLED community set up by the think tank Demos Helsinki.
The online festival organised last week brought together hundreds of different participants from 30 countries. The festival marked the start of the ambitious goal of the UNTITLED community to imagine what direction we want to take the world in over the next 10 years. It was also the launch pad for experiments that the participants take forward in their organisations in the coming years. The community comprises, among others, artists, political decision-makers, universities, a firm of architects, a theatre and a property investor.
“Untitled is an opportunity for us to look to the future in a completely new way. The participants come from different cultures and professional backgrounds, which makes it particularly fascinating”, says PAM’s research director, Antti Veirto.
During the festival, PAM organised a workshop to reflect on the future of working life from the perspective of rewarding work. One of the participants at the workshop was Hanna Arpomaa, who has worked in the cleaning sector for twenty years and got excited by the UNTITLED festival as soon as she saw it advertised on Facebook.
“Unfortunately, due to Covid, the festival was moved from June to the autumn and was online rather than being a live event. But anyway I was surprised how well this concept worked out online. The discussions were intimate and got straight to the heart of the matter, even though the participants came from all over the globe and didn’t know each other.”
She thought it was important that PAM members were also involved in the event.
“In many of the debates on the future we were the voice of everyday life”.
Another participant in PAM’s workshop was Dominic O'Hagan, who is originally from Scotland. He is 30 years old and has had dozens of jobs, all of them insecure and short-term.
“We are living in an age of so called "entrepreneurialism" and freelancing. Many people get caught up in these against their will, whereas others appreciate the freedom they bring. It would be important to think about how to guarantee workers’ rights, for example in the gig economy, and how trade unions could support someone that freelances and doesn't have the same workers rights”, he reflects.
In O'Hagan’s opinion, trade unions have an important role, especially in creating communities.
“I worry that unions (of which I have been a member my whole life) are too invested in the old world. How do you strike or organise when there is no building or no one country the workers are based? How do you stop worker replacement or scabbing? For me unions have to move from the 'workplace' to building communities that have cultural and self meaning beyond a geographic location. I don't know how that happens but I hope Untitled will help answer that. ”, he reflects.
UNTITLED is a community coordinated by the think tank Demos Helsinki with the goal of rethinking the society of the future and creating practical solutions to construct it. There were almost 400 participants from 30 countries at the 2020 online festival. PAM is a founder member of Untitled.