Market & Margin: An Openfields Long Weekend

Our purpose for this Long Weekend is to celebrate the first decade of good work at Openfields and this remarkable community of colleagues, and to collectively prototype our Executive Residency initiative and how Openfields might more intentionally cultivate this community and conversation going forward. This kind of space we believe is increasingly critical for the social innovators, philanthropists, and civic leaders that Openfields works with.  

"Market & Margin" is a phrase Openfields coined to describe a tension inherent in creative work. If our work is to be successful in the "marketplace" then we must adopt the values, language, and practices of the market. We have to play the game. Go too far in this direction, however, and you can lose sight of your own values, vision, and beliefs about how the market should operate, and to what end. 

To sustain a constructive and critical perspective while operating in the market - to keep your own deeper, creative vision alive - you need time in the "margin"; the liminal spaces of artists, writers, adventurers and visionaries. You need to venture into the wilderness or the desert. Too far into the margin, however, and you lose any voice or influence in the market. 

Living and working in the tension between the market and the margin is where I believe the most compelling work is done. But it's hard to live there. That's why this community is so important. It's also why "Long Weekend" is more the feel we're aiming for - friends and colleagues sharing meals, developing ideas in long conversations, and making creative connections somewhere between the weekend and the workweek.  And doing this with people who have successfully sustained this creative tension for many years.