Lesson Eight. Keep moving forward

Posted on November 6, 2014 Updated on November 10, 2014

Three cities remain following Seoul in this running stunt. Each of those cities are critical in threading together the intellectual engagement of this question: ‘how might we use our networks to improve the delivery of child survival?’ Glasgow, Toronto and New York are all critical cities renowned globally for their thinking.

For the time being, it would seem that those three cities are immediately out of reach. The sensible thing would be to postpone the journey until it is financially viable and less of a personal risk to myself.

Ought we to play it safe and accept what is reasonable? George Bernard Shaw would advise otherwise: “The reasonable man adapts himself to the conditions that surround him… The unreasonable man adapts surrounding conditions to himself… All progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

This image of a human bridge which inspires the photo-essay in the book ‘Life Bridge’ is in part inspired by words adapted from the legendary Korean marathon world champion Son Ki-chung who broke the world-record in 1935 and won the 1936 Berlin Olympic Marathon: “The human bridge makes incredible things possible when supported by strong commitment and passion”

Holding the remaining three cities in abeyance until 2015 is an option, and still allows for forward movement. But perhaps our frustration with an incomplete journey ought to inspire us to push harder to make incredible things possible now. Completing the running stunt directly from Seoul is an outcome that is not possible within my current resources, but achieving it would give an inspiring context to the Design Forum in the knowledge of a completed running stunt that the seemingly impossible is possible. This is why I am appealing for help from a select group of ‘bridge builders’.

The proposed schedule for the Design Forum would engage with a broad community of partners and stakeholders for participation proposed as follows:

Proposed Schedule for Design Forum
Theme	Location	Date (2015)
Framing the problem: Focus on Papua New Guinea	Osaka	February (middle)
Framing the problem: Focus on Papua New Guinea	Port Moresby	February (late)
Global context, ideation and opportunity	Glasgow, London and Oxford	April
	Toronto	May
	New York	May
Evaluating prototypes	Sydney	June
Evaluating prototypes	New Delhi	July
Implementation, delivery and moving forward	Johannesburg	August
	Nairobi	August
	Singapore	September
	China (TBC)	October
	Seoul	October