Curiosity and Storytelling – Composing and Impact Investing

Composer Anna Meredith talked with great honesty and shared the fragility of her work as a composer and collaborator with commissioners and the work she does as leader of her band. She talked about her approach to composition as knowing the final feeling or goal that her work has and her work, then, is to choose and find the most surprising way to reach that. She spoke about how curiosity was key to her approach.

Her music is always created with authenticity, and she told us how she finds ways to find empathy with the subject and people that she is commissioned to work with. There was much in the way she spoke about collaboration, power, the sense of self and her creative output that encouraged reflection on McRobbie’s work on creatives, as well as Foucault’s writing on power and authorship. Anna also shared the need for strong social networks – social and cultural capital, and how her collaborations relied on this.

Amir Rizwan completed our first week of the Festival speaking about the work he is leading to develop social ventures from London universities. He gave detailed insights in to the way impact investment works, but also how impact investors work with founders. He spoke with passion about the potential of the social innovation and enterprise sectors, the need to find new ways of creating change, and how business models were key to sustaining and developing this form of societal change.

Amir also spoke about the importance of curiosity to his work – “how we collectively solve problems – collaboration is motivating”.

Both Amir and Anna spoke about reasons for optimism being few and far between, but within this, both saw that great ideas continue to grow, that Festivals and opportunities to talk together such as SELFestival helped fuel their optimism. We are so grateful to them for their insights.