"F" is for failure.

JK Rowling, speaking at Harvard on “The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination”:

You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.

Last night, I went to a fundraising event organized by my colleague, Kelley. It was called “F is for failure.” The goal was to raise money to bring a group to Baltimore that will run a “Failure Support Group” for artists at the 2011 Transmodern Festival:

Art projects fail a lot, particularly those that are participatory, public and/or social. They fail for different reasons and cause myriad revelations. Nevertheless, the structures that we use to talk about these works and contexts where they are presented often don’t leave room for discussing the failures plainly and objectively.

We’re interested in failure– in its relationship to creative production, artistic rhetoric and public presentation. We’re also interested in making work that does not fail as often by sharing our failures, and hearing yours.

There were several artists presenting failed projects at this event, with awards going to those whose projects failed the worst (the best?). Which is awesome when you think about it. Because the way I see it, being willing to fail means that you’re:

a thinker.
a dreamer.
a doer.
a creator.
an optimist.
Gutsy.
Sassy.
Feisty.
Open-minded.
Free-minded.

And probably a pretty damn interesting person.

But in the professional world, there are no rewards for failure, even though there should be. In an effort to foster more failing in our own design practice and that of our students, Kelley and I are going to host design failure awards in the spring. Because if you’re not failing at something at least some of the time, you’re not trying hard enough.