Bank of Sustainability

Since the last century, societies around the world have been based on industrial development. Our system relies on constant growth where sustainability as concept has recently been introduced. Sustainability is a topic most people avoid, disregard or just don’t know about. It is a matter of looking after things that have value to us, but it is challenging to put a “value” on and preserve things that nobody has true ownership of, like the environment.

Sustainability is an agreement, so I decided to challenge my ideas under a participatory research. To make a true impact we need from every possible stakeholder to play an important role in this change and do understand that sustainability needs everybody's commitment.

My brief: Encourage conversations, provoke thinking and raise curiosity to create alternatives together.

I believe people look after things that have value to them. Value can be monetary or have different meanings, furthermore things without value do not look important to majority of people. In order to capture the value behind Sustainability, if there is one, I created the "Bank of Sustainability" and encourage people to contribute to it.

The Bank of Sustainability is a collective mean to capture and reflect on the value we give to Sustainability. As a dutiful bank, we also trade with banknotes. Our own ones though, which are meant to provoke people’s thoughts and to trigger discussions. According to the dictionary, banknotes are negotiable instruments. They are promissory notes made by a bank payable to the bearer on demand.

In every banknote there are graphics and icons that represent the culture and history of a place. We could say that the "best" of the place/country and "most representative" is shown on its currency. I then asked people from different backgrounds, culture, age, religion and nationality about their own interpretation of sustainability. Their task was to draw the very ‘best’ and ‘most representative’ of sustainability on the banknotes.

Some people did not know what to draw at the beginning: "I just didn't know what to draw, during lunch I asked my colleagues about it." Some other, did it collectively: "I didn't know, we filled it with my friend and this corresponds to both of us". People asked themselves and asked each other about sustainability. The exercise raised curiosity and provoked discussions.

Donation Box is the implementation of the Bank of Sustainability in an open space. Johan S galleria in Helsinki, Finland was the place and New Luxury the exhibition. Donation Box aimed to fostered people to donate new interpretations of sustainability.

Three step ritual:

1. Sustainability, what does it mean to you?
2. Draw on the banknote your own interpretation of sustainability.
3. Donate your banknote to the bank! Sustainability needs everybody’s commitment and your contribution will help in this big change.

We realized that sustainability needs everybody's commitment and would be naively tackled from just one point of view. Now we need to find how to connect stakeholders. I strongly believe that sustainability is about sharing and at least communicating our own views with others. This exercise is just the first step. It has opened a new world to explore and hopefully will reach a lot of people. It facilitated and engaged people to reflect on sustainability, activate them and provoke their thinking.