5 Big Questions: BONNIE GREER OBE FRSL

The Possibility Club

Why are Gen Z so valuable to solving current problems?

What is wrong with so many social mobility initiatives?

How do you collaborate when you’re an introvert?

In this week's 5 Big Questions interview we talk to playwright, novelist and broadcaster, BONNIE GREER OBE FRSL

Known for:

• Vice-President - The Shaw Society
• Former Deputy Chair - British Museum
• Former Trustee - Royal Opera House
• Former Trustee - London Film School
• Former Chancellor - Kingston University
• Author - Langston Hughes: The Value of Contradiction
• Author - Obama Music
• Librettist - Yes
• Author - Hanging By Her Teeth

The Big 5 Questions:

1. How do you measure the impact of what you do?
2. How should people/businesses be preparing for the future?
3. How do we build the workforce we need for that future?
4. How do you use creativity to solve problems?
5. How do you collaborate?

Key quotes:

“I like people, even though I’m actually quite shy. I don’t go out in public. I stopped going to dinner parties because I couldn’t stand the small talk. I don’t really go anywhere.”

“I don’t know my phone number, on purpose.”

“I’m really excited about Gen Z and all those generations afterwards, who are going to be making new consciousness for us, so that’s who I want to talk to and who I want to try to dialogue with.”

“The metaverse is a complex conglomeration of different IT systems that create another reality.”

“We have to get rid of elitist education, we can’t keep doing that. You know, Stormzy talking about sending kids to Oxford, that makes me vomit! What is he doing? Why doesn’t he build some schools? I mean, Oxford isn’t a great place for a black kid to go to, is he crazy? Well, he’s a capitalist, it’s a commodity thing.”

“If we make education as long as it is, it should really be of use, not only academic, for intellect but also the community. Kids should be sent out to just stack shelves. I don’t care what kind of degree you’re getting, encounter ordinary people in the aisles at Tesco.”

“We’ve got, in the Conservative Party, a cohort of people in their forties who’ve had no encounter with human beings. And it’s a bad, bad thing.”

“We’re going to have to get off this planet, just to let people breathe. These are questions your children are going to grapple with.”

"The last pay-check I ever had was when they found John Belushi dead at the Marmont hotel.”

“We need each other in order to expand our brain, so I’m always up for working with other people.”

“We’re in an era where people are open about their trauma. We carry institutional trauma, we carry inter-generational trauma, I think we’re trying to reclaim, not the trauma but our sense of survival and transcendence.”

“We are a survivor species and we’ve survived because we co-operated with each-other. And the other way we survived is that the women moved out. We moved around quite a bit.”

Useful links:

• Bonnie Greer OBE FRSL (Wikipedia)
• Bonnie Greer writer profile in The Guardian
• Cuban Missile Crisis (Wikipedia)
• Premiership of Liz Truss (Wikipedia)
• Metaverse (Wikipedia)
• Bonnie Greer takes on Nick Griffin (BNP) on BBC Question Time (via YouTube)
• Jean-François Champollion, lexicographer (Wikipedia)
• Stormzy Scholarships (BBC News)
• John Belushi death (Wikipedia)
• British Museum — Bonnie Greer: The Era Of Reclamation
• The Little Boy and the Robot: A Tale of Our Time - Bonnie Greer TEDx talk (YouTube)

This episode was recorded in October 2022

Interviewer: Richard Freeman for always possible

Editor: CJ Thorpe-Tracey for Lo Fi Arts