Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Miscellenous Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Behold, the social entrepreneur
- 1 The man who invented a chicken: Introducing a global generation of entrepreneurial social activists
- 2 Raising the voices of girl-children: Pyramids, incubators and the fight for equality
- 3 The incredible rise of co-operatives: Conscious consumption… slow fashion… ethical exploration… and more…
- 4 How do you know you are making a difference? The metrics and measures that keep the social entrepreneuron-mission
- 5 A trip to the favela: The death and life of traditional charity
- 6 Inside the social enterprise city: How change happens, locally and globally
- 7 The bull market of the greater good: Fact, fiction and the rise of big-money activism
- 8 The digital device in the wall: #peoplepower meets the block-chain
- 9 Reclaiming the heart of government: Power in the age of the moral marketplace
- Conclusion: Creating a new kind of capitalism
- Notes and references
- Index
3 - The incredible rise of co-operatives: Conscious consumption… slow fashion… ethical exploration… and more…
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 April 2023
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Miscellenous Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Behold, the social entrepreneur
- 1 The man who invented a chicken: Introducing a global generation of entrepreneurial social activists
- 2 Raising the voices of girl-children: Pyramids, incubators and the fight for equality
- 3 The incredible rise of co-operatives: Conscious consumption… slow fashion… ethical exploration… and more…
- 4 How do you know you are making a difference? The metrics and measures that keep the social entrepreneuron-mission
- 5 A trip to the favela: The death and life of traditional charity
- 6 Inside the social enterprise city: How change happens, locally and globally
- 7 The bull market of the greater good: Fact, fiction and the rise of big-money activism
- 8 The digital device in the wall: #peoplepower meets the block-chain
- 9 Reclaiming the heart of government: Power in the age of the moral marketplace
- Conclusion: Creating a new kind of capitalism
- Notes and references
- Index
Summary
Money makers are tiresome company, for they have no standard but cash. (Plato, The Republic)
The community of makers
Stephen Burks is an icon of industrial design. He leads Readymade Projects, a studio with offices in Brooklyn and Barcelona. He is in the business of creating beautiful things and winning awards for his endeavours. His partners and commissioners read like a who’s who of design: Missoni, B&B Italia, Cappellini. You get the idea.
But Burks has another string to his bow. As he says in his mission statement, available online:
“I make no distinction between [Readymade Projects’] product design for the Cappellinis or Missonis of the luxury design world and my collaborations with socially conscious non-profit organisations like Aid to Artisans and the Nature Conservancy in places like South Africa, Peru and India. In fact, I consider community, generosity and authenticity to be the new watchwords of the future.”
There is a lot to consider in that small statement, so let’s take it step by step.
The Aid to Artisans of which he speaks is a social movement that has been around for decades. In that time it has helped manufacturers and designers build relationships with workers from Africa to Asia, helped to reframe the marketplace for their wares and elevate their livelihoods thereby.
Burks has been one of their best-known supporters. He had been serving a long apprenticeship in design, in the US and in Europe, when he and Aid to Artisans crossed paths. At the time he was well on his way to becoming one of the premiere US industrial designers at the time, and then a piece came out about him and his art titled ‘Puff Dada’.
“They were referring to me, I was Puff Dada,” he said, suppressing a grimace during a talk in 2016, which he shared with me. Burks is of African-American descent. When he gave that talk he cut a languid, lean figure with a buzz cut, a Dries Van Noten suit and a soft, sophisticated patois. He was every inch the trope of the worldly design guru and nothing like the stereotype of the blingking implied by the headline, and one can’t help but think that it was a vulgar nod to Burks’ heritage.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Moral MarketplaceHow Mission-Driven Millennials and Social Entrepreneurs are Changing Our World, pp. 64 - 83Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2018