We bring “beef,” abeyance, and mania in the exploration of policy failures. Advancing the first global research on “post-failure,” “failing our children,” and “taste of failure”.
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Post-failure research
We make an argument for exploring post-failure. “Post” is meant to indicate the movement beyond the traditional understanding of failure. As well as the consequentiality of failures, and the marks they leave on policymaking and human body. Policymaking and society are profoundly changed by the failures they encounter. In this sense, we ought not only to better anticipate failure, but also to work on a deeper understanding of the materialization of its forms and regimes. Post-failure, refers to policymaking contexts that are marked by increased affective engagement and debate around policy failures – yet not in terms of lack of effectiveness and potentiality of learning, but as social injustice and inequality.
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F*** up tales in science
We not only research failure, but we also engage frontally with it. Our first experiment was the F*** Up Tales in Science in Hannover, 2022. Upon the model of F**** Up Nights, or more conventional events of sharing stories, or Fail Festivals, we invited participants to open up through stories of failure. To analyze organizational and institutional paths of reacting to scientific error and lack of conventional success. The F*** Up Tales in Science event was organized during the “Failure in Science: Context, Ignorance, and the Future of Failing” symposium, which was held as part of the broader Thematic Week “Failure Matters”, a funding initiative of the Volkswagen Foundation, December 12-14, 2022, at the conference center Herrenhausen Palace in Hannover. The F*** Up Tales event was moderated by prof. Xiaodong Lin, founding director of EPIC (http://epic.tc.columbia.edu/) at Teachers College, Columbia University in the City of New York.
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Street art hub at IPSiR UW, Warsaw
Starting with April 2022, at our home institute, IPSiR UW (ul. Podchorążych 20, Warsaw), we create a universal space for social and policy creativity. This engages with raising awareness, prevention, street art, and scientific communication.
We aim to reinvent the relationship between applied social sciences and society. To show how new forms of knowledge should benefit from art in its various manifestations. We organize various photo exhibitions within what informally emerged as a staircase gallery. Further transforming the university space with the help of Warsaw street artists. In the summer holiday of 2023, Andy Black, Warsaw-based street artist completed an original painted project covering the three levels of the institute building with mural artwork about education, imaginary, and future communication.
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Building failure studies
In order to understand the power of reimagining failure in contemporary society we have to go beyond the traditional meaning of failure, which equals it with lack of success in attaining certain policy goals, securing implementation or bridging science and policy gaps. Today, policy failure increasingly speaks about ignorance and social injustice as well. We aim in our research to show how the capacity for change comes from acknowledging and challenging failure in society and policymaking. We also draw attention to how steering with failure is one of the most important and unexpected capacities of change in policymaking today.