Dougald Hine - London's multitasking creative thinkers

London’s creative thinkers are multitasking. Academics write and produce. Policy makers don’t just preach they experiment. And artists make and manage. To find out more, I spoke to Dougald Hine - of Space Makers Agency, the School of Everything and others - on why we should look to the 1840s for inspiration.

Dougald has a background in doing things. He founded Space Makers Agency, who “create sociable spaces” like the opening up of Brixton Village (above) or the West Norwood Feast. He produced the award-winning (and engagingly simple) School of Everything.

A thinker who organises

But he’s a thinker as well. His books include the Dark Mountain manifesto, a title which gives away a love of comic books, but which he co-wrote with Paul Kingsnorth.

When I met him, he introduced himself as someone who would "start up organisations as a way to avoid finishing writing books". And he gave me a hint of the trends that he thinks will shape the next few years.

He tells me how “social landscape has been made antisocial” over the last two hundred years. Profitability is always prioritised over sociability. And with the economic crisis continuing, it’s clear that there are new ways of doing things that are less alienating.

Returning to the 1840s

This isn’t new to many, but his solution is to return to the pre-1840s for the model of our creative thinkers.

He tells me that radical thinkers “have sought to critique the world, the point however is to renarrate it". So we need to come up with a way of looking at the future in a more positive light. Before the 1840s, he tells me, public intellectuals actually did things.

This was when intellectuals like Robert Owen and Jeremy Bentham built new factories and universities, as well as pontificating. And although there might be some rose-tinted spectacles here, he’s right that this is a growing trend in London.

Thinking about social innovation in particular is now dominated by people with a track record in achieving things, from Lord Nat Wei (founder of Teach First), Martha Lane-Fox (Lastminute.co.uk founder) to Geoff Mulgan (formerly of the Young Foundation, now leading NESTA).

So why should we take any notice of Dougald? Partly because the organisations he’s started have been so successful - the School of Everything was described by Boing Boing as “one of those great, simple, smart ideas that make you want to smack your head and say “why didn’t I think of that?”.

But also because he’s been right before. In 2009 he pitched the idea of a research project looking at the implication of 20% cuts across public services. The potential funders didn’t believe it would happen, but he was proved right.

So Dougald - and other thinkers like him - are leading from the front and this should be a call for others to follow. His final words to me, "It's not how big your society is, it's what you do with it".