I gave a talk at the celebration evening at Downlands Community School in Sussex this week. It was fantastic to meet a dedicated team working in the most important futures field of all – raising the next generation of citizens.
I would like to thank the leadership team for the invitation, the fantastic hospitality, and for allowing me to share the speech here too. One of the most important things we can get across to everyone – not just children – today is that we’re all allowed to make things up.
Good evening, and thank you for inviting me to your celebration, it is an honour to be here. My name is John, and I am from Sussex. As my accent clearly indicates, I’m from… well, North Sussex.
But we’ve lived here for nearly twenty years, and my Grandad was from Sussex. In a way, when we moved here. it felt a little like retuning home.
I wear several hats; I run a strategic design practice called Smithery with my wife Helen, which I’ve done for 15 years. I am one of the convenors of a new collective called the Sussex Futures Network, who are particularly interested in imagining what new kinds of futures Sussex could have. This is particularly relevant with the prospect of a Mayor for the whole of Sussex on the horizon, an election that many of you may be entitled to vote in.
And I lead a local nature watch group where we live in Lindfield, who are one of the community champions of Weald To Waves, the initiative supported by the Knepp Foundation.
This evening, I think it’s probably my job to say some cheery, optimistic words.
So here goes.
“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born. Now is the time of monsters.”
This quote, attributed to Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci, captures much of how it might feel be living through 2026.
What a world to be born into. A summer of heatwaves, the likes of which may now become the norm. Increasing social division and species loss, economic uncertainty and technological free-for-alls. Visions and ideologies of the past are creaking under the burdens of the present, weighed down by the decisions made by generations before.
But nothing gives me more hope for change, and more appetite to get involved, than looking around at the generation of young adults emerging from schools like this one.
The first thing that is worth noting is just how much they have each others back. It feels like this generation are people who can step into the shoes of others with ease, understand what they are going through, and offer whatever support they most need in that moment.
That ability to connect, as humans, and create a supportive environment for those around them, will stand us all in good stead as they make their way in broader society after school. These kids are brilliant citizens.
They are also natural communicators, in an age where far more tools enable all sorts of voices to extend around the world.
It gives them an edge in the world they are about to enter, because they have also developed delightfully healthy skepticism about just what it is they see and hear online.
They are more familiar with the dangers of misinformation and bad actors online than many older generations. I believe it will be this generation that manages to reshape the information environment for the better.
Why? Because of their ideas. It is astounding sometimes to sit with kids of this generation and following their minds as they flit between ideas and concepts, the old and the new, making new connections and suggestions at the drop of the hat.
It feels like a generation with a particularly practical ingenuity about them, entrepreneurial minds who spot opportunities the rest of us won’t see for years.
And yet, as brilliant as they are, they need a little help from us. To support them as they start to make their way in the world, because the word of the year – the word of the decade – is ‘uncertainty’.
None of us know what’s happening next.
Now, if you are a young person sitting there thinking ‘I have no idea about anything that this guy from North Sussex is talking about, and I’ve also got no idea what I even want to do’, do not worry.
I was exactly the same at your age. There didn’t seem to be a particular goal, career, industry or profession I was interested in pursuing.
Sure, I wanted to work, I wanted to learn, to try things, but none of the pathways and options seemed to be exactly what I was after. I went through the clearing system to University, to study Economics, a topic I’d never even thought about at school. I left university and started a job in market research, then worked in a research department in a media owner, then innovation in a media agency.
To be clear; I had no idea these jobs existed, or even these industries. Why would you when you’re young?
Keep in mind that there are so many jobs out there that you don’t know about yet, and some of them you will really love.
What I found myself was that, over time and trying different things, I wanted a way of working and being in the world that seeks to make change.
When I talk about Smithery as a ‘strategic design practice’, it really is design at its broadest. The economist Herbert Simon said this in the 1960s:
“Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones.”
Our work can be as big as as working with the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London on circular economy, or with the United Nations Development Programme on creating a future trends and signals system.
Or it can be as small as helping a local museum rethink a visitor experience, or a housing association reimagine their customer helpline.
Over recent years, and perhaps after the COVID-19 pandemic, I have sought more ways to apply ourselves locally, both in Lindfield and across Sussex.
What kinds of change will make most difference here?
I probably don’t have to tell you about the wonderful, pioneering work that happens in Sussex, what with the Character Days you have been on to Knepp, Wakehurst, the University of Sussex, the AMEX Stadium and more.
There is something happening in Sussex that draws from its past and is rising up to meet this moment.
At the Sussex Retold conference a couple of weeks ago, Libby Drew of the Knepp Foundation talked about how Sussex felt like it was on the frontline of the climate crisis, but that meant that is was also beginning to lead the response.
Sussex people have a stubbornness about them, a heady mix of defiance mixed with pragmatism. It fits our character that we should decide the world needs to work differently.
To show you what I mean, I’d like to read from The Sussex Charter:
—
For all the people of the ancient kingdom of Sussex!
Let it be known: the 16 June of each and every year shall be known as Sussex Day.
Sussex Day shall be celebrated according to the rites and traditions of Sussex.
Let it be known all the people of Sussex shall be responsible for the maintenance of those boundaries that join to those of our neighbours.
Let it be known all the people of Sussex shall be responsible for all the environs within those boundaries.
Let it be known, the people of Sussex shall recognise the inshore waters that lie inside a line drawn from Beachy Head, and extending to Selsey Bill as being, the Bay of Sussex.
Let it be known, the people of Sussex will undertake responsibility for the general well-being of our neighbours.
Let it be known the people of Sussex shall be guardians of our wildlife.
Let it be known the people of Sussex will, through custom support all local business.
Finally, let it be known, as guardians of Sussex, we all know Sussex is Sussex … and Sussex wunt be druv!
—
It sounds like it was written sometime in 1833. Maybe earlier.
It was in fact written by Ian Steedman around 2006.
Ian decided that Sussex, where he’d lived and worked most of his life, was an amazing place. And whilst there were lots of individual town days, there was no county day for Sussex.
So, basically, he made one up.
He spoke with the Bishop of Chichester, who suggested St Richard’s Day, 16th June would be appropriate, as he’s the patron saint of Sussex. He took the charter, and the day, to the local council in Worthing, and lobbied them to adopt it. Which they did in 2007. The celebrated it that first year. After a few years, more local councils started marking it.
This year, nineteen years later, councils and communities across the county celebrated Sussex Day.
All because Ian made it up.
The Sussex Futures Network, which I mentioned earlier, is also a made-up thing. Just over a year ago, a group of us got together and decided there should be different ways that democracy could play out for the good of all people across Sussex.
One of our ideas is that every Sussex Day from now could be about the future, and not simply a celebration of the past. A day in which every community – and school – could come together and imagine how the Sussex could work differently.
Weald to Waves, and the nature group we’re part of on our local estate – these are both made-up things. The job I do – and maybe the thing you you excel at which doesn’t exist yet – these are made up things too.
You can decide to make things up.
Find new ways to look after the general well-being of your neighbours, to be guardians of our wildlife, to support local businesses and economies. So go out there and change the world. Because we need you to, and you’re allowed to.
As David Graeber said:
“The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently”.
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