Finding Purpose in Creating a Future Worth Living Into #40 #cong22

Reading Time in Minutes

3

1. Frame purpose as an open question

2. Create purpose from the future

3. Live into your purpose

4. You are unique, find your flow

Roisin Markham is a systems expert and design thinking pioneer. An innovator, founder, future-thinker and technologist she has worked for more than twenty years helping clients align process to purpose by drawing a path from strategy to sustainable action.

A generous skills-sharer and ideas connector, Roisin is a visiting lecturer on design thinking and rapid prototyping at NUI Galway, and on digital facilitation practice at NCAD. A former artist with a social research practice she has worked in community education and with schools.
Roisin works as a designer with eBay.

She is the founder and network steward of the Irish Doughnut Economic Network, IDEN.

A founding member of RASDA a group responding to anticipated systemic disruption.

She volunteers locally with Wexford Environmental Network and Climate Action Wexford.

Roisin is a cultural thinker living with the question – How do we create a future worth living into?

By Roisin Markham

Our lives are marked by transitions and big life events: life, death, birth, trauma & change. We typically view the lens and focus our purpose from the past.
Except I’m not typical.
As a designer, maker, cultural thinker I create future things.
So I come to my purpose with a future vision, ambition and work tactically to make it a reality.
Since Covid my purpose, my work, my thinking, influences and doing have changed both in my personal and professional life.

In a rouse to get myself to a first draft, I deconstructed PURPOSE and broke it down.

Definition

P – PLANET

My main purpose is now around planet.
I am a climate activist with a eco-fem-soc-econ lens across local and global issues.
I speak to leaders, catalyse, steward, people weave, support and create movement labs using experiential & behavioral design, doughnut economics and well being frameworks. All the time living with the question
“How we might create a future worth living into?” and
“how we might live within planetary boundaries in a safe just space for humanity?”

*photo Down Patrick Head by Roisin Markham

U – UNIQUE

I am grateful to have found a belonging since 2020 especially in places I volunteer & work. I am realising my unique and valued perspective. Never before have I felt so seen and appreciated. That’s given me courage and emboldened me to stretch into the difference I bring to spaces I live, work, play & learn in.

*photo a selfie taken at Earth Rising Eco Arts Festival, IMMA by Roisin Markham

R – RESILIENCE

This is the dance I learned young and continue to learn. A reoccurring growth opportunity that is not like GDP but a leveller. It humbles you. It allows you to move & be in ways that may have previously been unavailable to you. It allows me to be present, empathetic and build capacity… mine & others.

*photo of the Pavilion in the central courtyard on the opening night of Earth Rising Eco Arts Festival, IMMA by Roisin Markham

P – PURPOSEFUL

Purposeful experimenting finding my feet, exploring, opening up, sharing, unmaking, trying again, keeping curious, stopping. Sensing, synthesising, observing, tweaking, levers, inputs, relationships, feedback, redesign, regenerative, cyclical. Co-design with people not at them. Consciously being part of a system beyond human needs.

*photo unraveled wool, unmaking experiment October 2022 by Roisin Markham

O – OPENNESS

As we move through life tough times and experiences can close us down. I’ve tried to stay open. I’m not always successful.
Sometimes my openness is to say no and purposefully create healthy boundaries. But I try to live with an open heart.

*photo sunflower, grown & photographed by Roisin Markham

S – SILENCE

I value quiet, restful, restorative quiet. Most often I find it in nature, wandering down our lane, over the sand dunne’s, pottering around the garden, planting, tending our food system. But also in self expression drawing, journaling, doodling, painting, photography, printing and making textiles. Colours, textures, patterns, bird song, our dogs and sometimes humans.
I realise having quiet personal time is an important part of my restorative practice. Not just in doing but in being.
I find solace in silence.

*photo nasturtium leaf, grown & photographed by Roisin Markham

E – ENERGY, MINE

E is for personal energy. Practice and being purposeful brings me energy. This helps me get into action easily, being in flow, making things happen, supporting others and getting the work done.

*from the thistle series, graphic digital editing, thistles grown & photographed by Roisin Markham

Since Covid, my purpose, work, my thinking, my activism, my influences, and doing have changed both in my personal and professional life. I continue to shape my own future living with questions.