PartnersOctober 4, 2017

Harry Styles and the uninhibited joy of being a fan

Contributing writer

One Direction fan Sacha Judd on fandom, group chats, and how difficult it is to get Harry Styles tickets in New York City.

Tickets to Harry Styles’ first solo tour go on sale on a Friday in May. He’s playing small venues – iconic theatres like the Greek in Los Angeles and the Ryman in Nashville. The registration process is Byzantine. You have to pre-register to become a verified fan, there are different ticket sellers for different venues, and you need a code that will be texted to you just before the sale starts. The tickets will be held until they can be sure you haven’t bought more than four. The official email from Ticketmaster says, “There’s no easy way to say this, tomorrow is going to be tough.”

I’m in San Francisco when they go on sale – at 10am in the timezone of the venue you’re trying to buy for – which for me, trying to buy New York City tickets, means I’m awake and logged in before 6am. My group chat is ready, all of us poised to hit refresh repeatedly on the app and on our laptops. The clock ticks down; the site spins its wheels. The tour sells out in seconds. None of us get tickets.

Harry’s solo album hasn’t even been released yet.

I’ve never been a ‘true’ fan. I’ve never camped in line for anything, never waited at a stage door hoping for an autograph, never screamed myself hoarse for anyone. But in the last few months, I’ve realised that distinction is completely meaningless. I have stayed up late to watch the All Blacks play and woken up early to watch the America’s Cup. I’ve tuned in for the season finale of long-running TV shows, and once went to a midnight screening of Star Wars. I’ve set an alarm for 5am to try and get a dinner reservation at The French Laundry restaurant in Napa. So it’s a lie, really. Of course I’ve been a true fan. Or, rather, the concept of a true fan is bullshit. We all care deeply about different things at different times and in different ways.

I discovered the internet in New York. The first time I went there was in the early ’90s as a fresh-faced university debater on my way to a tournament at Princeton. Manhattan was a much grimier, sketchier place. One of our friends stayed in a hostel in Times Square where he was adamant someone was murdered in the next room. Times Square is, of course, horrible in other ways now, jammed night and day with thousands of goggling tourists and people dressed as cartoon mascots. But the city itself is a different, cleaner, shinier (some would say, more soulless) place.

That first trip we went up to the observation deck at the top of the World Trade Centre, visited Ellis Island, and fought our way toward the ball drop on New Year’s Eve. We went to Radio City Music Hall and saw the Rockettes. And the American college students I met on that trip were the first to tell me about ‘electronic mail’ and the text-based Lynx browser they used to get to their school information. The web was barely a thing, but I came home to New Zealand determined to dive into that world headfirst.

Fandom predates the internet, of course. Fans came together around the things they loved in ‘zines and at conventions long before dial-up modems stuttered into life.

Fans haven’t changed, only the tools that they use. My own fan journey over the last two decades has migrated through Usenet groups, Yahoo mailing lists, fan-built forums, and now the monolith of Tumblr. The internet didn’t invent fandom, but, like everything, it made the concept of fan communities global and all-consuming; on-demand and instantaneous.

One Direction went on hiatus in January 2016. As the boys each embarked on solo careers, the fans themselves started to go their separate ways. I found myself spending more time away from Tumblr in a group chat of women who helped me with my original talk about the 1D fandom. Most days we’ll swap a link or two about what’s going on with the band, but the majority of the conversation is just about our lives. The group has weathered the loss of parents, the loss of jobs, vacations, kids, a wedding.

I’m invited to join a Slack team called 1D-for-Olds. There are a hundred adult members – published authors, professionals, software developers, journalists, grad students. I realise these more private communities are yet another evolution of the form. Aaron Edwards, writing in praise of the group chat recently, says, “These spaces, particularly for people of color, aren’t like social media. They don’t by design put anyone at risk of harassment or of a stranger taking something out of context that wasn’t meant for them. If the space is intentional, it’s a digital therapy in your pocket.”

It seems natural, if somewhat circular, that as social media makes every stitch of Harry’s embroidery immediately consumable, fans should retreat back to these smaller, more intentional circles. There’s no judgment in the group chat.

The first weekend I’m in New York I meet a friend for drinks after her wedding in Central Park. The brides are gorgeous, swishing through Greenwich Village in their wedding gowns. They get stopped for congratulations on every corner. Strangers ask them for photos in the street. I can’t stop smiling. We connected over two years ago because she had a huge Tumblr following and helped me by reblogging my survey about 1D fans and tech. We’ve talked almost every day since. This is the first time we’ve met in real life

Harry’s solo tour kicks off in San Francisco a week later, and the fandom kicks off its nightly routine: gathering on Tumblr and Twitter for the first low-quality pictures of whatever extravagant suit he’s emerging in that night. The livestreams start – fans holding up their phones from the second and third rows – true MVPs who periscope the whole damn thing for their friends who can’t be there and the internet at large. Later come the higher quality images, the videos uploaded to Youtube, the faithful recording of changes to the setlist.

The next night we do it all over again.

At the first gigs, Harry takes a pride flag from someone in the audience each night and dances around with it for a bit before looping it on his mic stand while he sings.

In Nashville, fans start to tweet from the line at the theatre saying their flags are being taken away by security. At first, there’s a rumour that it’s conservative politics rearing its head, but it turns out to just be a small venue not wanting anyone’s view to be obstructed. Before the encore, Harry asks everyone in the crowd to hug a stranger, throwing his arms wide as he yells at the crowd to “EMBRACE!”. Then he fetches a pride flag from the drum riser, “I heard this was removed from somewhere, and I’d like to put it back in its rightful place.” The crowd lets loose with deafening screams and applause. Harry hooks the flag on his mic stand and cries “EMBRACE!” one more time.

I buy a ticket for the New York concert on Stubhub and I promise myself I won’t tell anyone how much it costs. It’s actually not the first time I’ve done this. The first time was to see Hamilton, but somehow telling people you mortgaged your soul to see that show is socially acceptable in a way this just doesn’t seem to be.

Harry’s tour merchandise is pink and black, emblazoned with the words “Treat People With Kindness”. Abruptly, he puts it up for sale on his website. The alert goes out. We hit the site in droves.

Fans who have been to the concerts so far, and tried the clothes on, post information about the sizing. Ordering online is all very well but the one thing you can’t order is the sought-after show-specific shirt. The one with the date and the venue. The one that says you were there.

Harry’s team announces on Facebook that his merchandise will be going on sale a day early at Radio City Music Hall. At 9am the first reports filter in on Twitter: fans are there to buy the shirts but the staff don’t know what they’re talking about and don’t seem to have any merch. By 10am there’s a limited range in store, but not the all-important show-specific shirt. By 4pm there’s a channel-wide announcement in Slack: they have the show shirts. “Ugh,” I post. “I guess I’m leaving the house.”

It’s 30 degrees in Manhattan, and so humid you feel like you’re sweating out of your earlobes. Still, once I’ve grabbed two shirts (one for me and one for a group chat friend) I duck into Anthropologie at the Rockefeller Center and tug the shirt on. “Excuse the sweaty AF changing room selfie: this is a size M,” I post, giving my measurements and joining the string of other similar pictures (in response: four hands-up emoji, two hearts, ten Harry Styles).

Some of my ‘real’ friends continue to tease me – sending me links to pictures of Harry performing and concert reviews. Others have fallen firmly down the rabbit hole themselves. I get a text from one who barely knew what One Direction was when I first gave my talk: “I think he is in the zone with this show. He had a more natural ease. Like any jitters were gone. This frightens me because basically? I have watched every available Harry vid on Instagram.” I mean, you’re welcome.

On the day of the concert, I get bubble tea and work out of a friend’s apartment in Hell’s Kitchen. “You must be excited,” he says, and I realise I’m not, yet, really. Don’t meet your heroes and all that. Not that Harry’s a hero, exactly, but I figure there’s no way the show can live up to the odd Harry-shaped space that now exists in my life. It will turn out I’m wrong.

Before the concert, I meet a bunch of the women from the Slack channel for beers and loaded fries. It strikes me that the last time I was at Radio City, the internet basically didn’t exist, and now here I am having dinner with a group of people I’d literally never have met otherwise.

We’re all sitting in different parts of the theatre, so when we clear security we hug each other and wish each other a great show and go our separate ways. MUNA, the opening act, is delightful. I discover my leg is bouncing in anticipation.

Some of the reviews afterward will maintain with that standard sly cynicism that it’s just a theatre full of teenage girls. As if that would be reason enough to dismiss their enthusiasm.

They’re wrong. Harry’s fans are all shapes and sizes, colours, ages, and stripes of the rainbow. Creative director Molly Hawkins posts on Instagram after the show: “I’ve been lucky enough to see something incredibly inspiring every night since the tour started: the audience. Harry works hard to create a loving, safe space for his fans and it shows by how diverse the crowd is- honestly something I didn’t expect. In such a terrifying historical moment it is giving me so much energy to see so many strong, intelligent humans come together from different races, economic backgrounds, sexual orientations, gender identities, for some unabashedly joyful celebrating.”

Joyful celebration is the only good way to describe it. A sold-out room without a single reluctant attendee. The Sad Dads at One Direction concerts are long gone. Groups of friends pose for selfies with Harry’s signature pink curtain behind them. Around me, concert outfits are gorgeous tributes to his signature style: floral jumpsuits, silk rainbow bomber jackets, extravagant boots. Literally everyone is here to have a good time, perhaps most of all the man we’ve all come to see.

“Hello,” he says, after belting out the opening numbers. “I’m Harry, and I’m from England.”

The crowd goes wild.

Harry’s been touring almost constantly since he was 16 years old, and yet he looks like he’s never been happier than when he’s on stage. The contrast to the dead-eyed Bieber performance I endured earlier in the year could not be more extraordinary. He prances and shimmies and whirls. One verse into rock-banger ‘Kiwi’, he stops the whole band and chastises the crowd. “You’re good,” he concedes, “but I think you can be better.” We scream and he launches into the song again, flinging himself about the stage singing at the top of his lungs, “I’m having your baby! It’s none of your business!” Any ironic detachment I’ve managed to maintain while talking and writing about Harry and his fans over the past two years is long gone. I love my noodle-limbed, Gucci-clad, rockstar son.

None of this is to say that this moment with Harry is unique, or even that his fans are. The night is both magical and also completely universal. While Harry is performing, Beyoncé releases new music in support of hurricane relief charities and the Beyhive is in rapture. The same week, Star Trek: Discovery premieres, unfolding new universes for its devotees. I attend a talk given by Frank Oz in honour of Jim Henson’s birthday with some of the most dedicated Muppet experts I’ve ever encountered.

Had you been at Radio City Thursday night, you might not have burst into tears, the way the theatre major next to me does when Harry springs a surprise cover of One Direction’s Story of My Life, but I’ll bet there’s been something in your life at one time or another that you’ve cared about just as much. And if not, maybe there should be.

The night after the concert I go to a karaoke bar at a Korean restaurant in Brooklyn to meet half a dozen of my new concert friends. We spend two hours drinking whiskey on the rocks and belting out One Direction songs. We sing Harry and Niall and Zayn’s solo songs. We even do an epic rendition of Natalie Imbruglia’s ‘Torn’, the song that launched One Direction to stardom on The X Factor seven years before.

When we part ways on the street, I know it’s only temporary. We’re seeing the film Call Me By Your Name together in a couple of weeks. One has graciously started pre-reading the novel I’ve just finished writing. We flap our hands at each other about the latest update of a Harry Potter fanfiction we love. Besides, Harry Styles is performing in Boston tomorrow night, so we’ll all see each other online.

Fans have always been some of the most open-hearted, generous, creative and passionate people I’ve ever met. I count myself so lucky to be among them.

Harry’s performing in Auckland in December. Maybe we’ll see you there.

Harry Styles plays Spark Arena in Auckland on 2 December. Listen to all the music you love, including Harry Styles self-titled album, on Spotify Premium, it’s free on all Spark’s Pay Monthly Mobile plans. Sign up and start listening today.

Keep going!

Thomas Mical is the head of AUT’s School of Art and Design

SocietyOctober 4, 2017

Bigger than agriculture: How design became a multi billion dollar industry

Henry Oliver

Guest writer

Thomas Mical is the head of AUT’s School of Art and Design

According to a new report, the design sector contributed over $10 billion to the New Zealand economy in 2016. Henry Oliver asks Thomas Mical, the head of AUT’s School of Art and Design, what that means for New Zealand design.

Designers know that their work creates value, but a recent report from DesignCo – commissioned by ten New Zealand institutions including AUT – confirms it, by quantifying design’s growing impact on the New Zealand economy. According to The Value of Design to New Zealand report, the design sector contributed approximately $10.1 billion to the New Zealand economy in 2016, about 4.2% of New Zealand’s GDP.

And if design were treated as its own industry rather than a sector within various industries, its contribution to the economy would be larger than agriculture ($8.1 billion) and on the heels of retail trade ($10.6 billion) and food, beverage and tobacco product manufacturing ($10.6 billion). Product design and interactive design are the two biggest contributors towards design’s economic impact, along with manufacturing, human health, financial, environmental and construction industries.

But it’s not just design for design’s sake. The report shows a strong design sector and national prosperity and economic growth. Further, design is a powerful tool of urban regeneration and a way to help solve complex and hard-to-solve problems in both the private and public spheres.

Thomas Mical, the head of AUT’s School of Art and Design, was trained as an architect and has thought a lot about the interaction of public and private spaces. He sees reports like The Value of Design as vital, not just for the design industry to prove it’s worth to the government and the private sector, but for designer’s themselves to understand their economic impact and the value of the work they do. And for Mical, who sees the future of design everyday in his student’s work, its value is only going to grow.

Thomas Mical is the head of AUT’s School of Art and Design (Photo provided).

You’re the head of the AUT School of Art & Design. What do you teach?

I was appointed as a professor. All my degrees are in architecture but I’m kind of a generic, garden-variety, humanities, cultural studies guy. I do a lot of research about mixed-use spaces and how people use different types of spaces for different agendas. How spaces in movies or literature or media get turned into real spaces, and how real spaces start to influence other forms too. Sculptors work in clay, I work in theories of space.

So did you take part in the Value of Design To New Zealand report published this year?

AUT was one of many sponsors. DesignCo’s report is based on the British Design Council’s report which was organised by the leaders of the design schools and industry to persuade the government that design actually had a significant economic benefit. DesignCo’s report was more focused. Three universities – Vic, Massey and AUT – came together and worked with PwC to map and quantify everything.

That result just came out last month and the important number is ten billion a year. That’s bigger for New Zealand’s economy than agriculture. .

The report was intended, not only as a provocation or a justification but, for designers themselves, as a moment of reflection. They two biggest projected growth areas are interaction design and product design. One’s very 21st century, one’s very timeless. Some sectors are growing and some sectors are diminishing.

So how do you define in the design sector?

There is an organisation called the Designers Institute of New Zealand, that works with interior design, communication design, graphic design, digital design. There is a growing range of design practices now and they are increasingly becoming digital and experiential. When the students in product design make surfboards, we expect smart surfboards that can monitor sharks, temperature, stuff like that. Even when a textile student designs, we expect smart textiles so, for example, you can use them for signalling and communication. It’s infinite. They’re actually starting to invent disciplines that didn’t exist ten years ago, like service design, experience design, strategy design. These new design industries are in many ways, not just the future, but they’re already present here. Air New Zealand, for example, hires experience designers so all of the environment is taken into consideration. There’s been a significant understanding in corporate culture of the importance of design thinking. That argument has more or less been won.

So the design sector is expanding, both in terms of the types of work that it does and the money it’s generating for the New Zealand economy?

Yeah, it’s like a garden that’s gone wild. The traditional craft knowledge and the analogue equipment that went with it are disappearing. You used to do a manual poster design, or you would make shoes. Now you can expect our product designers to design shoes that are multi-purpose and biodegradable, with seeds in the sole so when they go into landfills, they turn into trees. Imagine door knobs that can deliver vitamins simply through touch. It’s a fascinating time. It’s like magic. Literally.

There is a type of empathy and emotional intelligence that’s showing up in design skills. That was always part of design but that’s becoming more rare for other parts of industry and society.

Most of this is coming from the private sector, right? Is there sufficient public sector support of design?

The government support for design education tends to be secondary and tertiary education. For example, I’m told one of the biggest consumers of advertising is actually the New Zealand government. They are highly selective consumers of design. Many designers run practices of one or two people, so it’s still at the New Zealand start-up scale. Here’s a couple major firms that dominate, like Weta in Wellington dominating digital animation. But designers are told they need to do a better job of actually advocating the value that they add and the report was about quantifying the value they add. Often we are so busy on their craft it might seem less important than the work but it is important. There is still not that clear communication.

When you say advocating, to who do you mean? Advocating to the world or to our government? Or to citizenry?

As an outsider, it seems everyone in New Zealand seems to be an amateur real estate speculator, and if something doesn’t improve the value of their home or property, like a coffee shop around the corner, they don’t seem that interested in it. There is still evidence of that suburban mentality. But there are grassroots movements, for example in design and social justice initiatives. I’m told the Auckland Council now is seriously looking at bike lanes and sustainable transportation instead of highways.

For right now, we’re going through a type of creative renaissance, I think, within the local and the larger global economies. With the polarisation that’s happening in most countries between the haves and have-nots, you’re finding lot more pop-up urbanism, a lot of spontaneous sharing economies. Like in my home country, the United States, the public services feel they are being contracted, if not collapsed, and leaving people on their own. Or, like in London. It’s one of the most creative cities in the world, which also has one of the biggest disparities between rich and poor. The creativity comes from the friction between the two. That’s Richard Florida’s old argument too. It’s the diversity – the socio-economic, racial, cultural diversity of a city – that determines its longevity in terms of creative industries.

As someone relatively new to New Zealand, how do you think those issues are being approached here?

I’m kind of new here, so I’m still studying it. There are many fascinating design practices here, intimate knowledge networks, and easy connections. I note more international companies are interested in New Zealand due to its unique demographics.

I recently taught in Vienna, and Vienna is considered one of the most well designed and beautiful cities in the world. My architecture and urban planning colleagues spent their whole lives there and they work in it, often ignoring what is excellent to outsiders. But I’m like, “You guys should be publishing the case studies of what you do because it would be globally useful.” I’ve always felt that about New Zealand designers too. There’s a humility here which puzzles me, and even our best designers don’t think they’re as good as they really are.

As an American, you figure something out and you might say, “Oh I deserve a Nobel Prize.” If a Kiwi wins a Nobel Prize, they might say , “Oh it’s not one of the better ones.” You know? As a consequence, I think there is less recognition of the inherent strengths and quality of design, design culture, design sensitivity present here. Even if it’s work with wire and tape and the do-it-yourself, fix-it-yourself imperative! It’s probably one of the few countries where people still imagine building eccentric functional devices, maybe even a time machine in their basement. You still get those kind of 19th century inventor mentalities here, and that is encouraging. I just find it fascinating because a lot of the world has become globalised, homogenised and stratified.

What is New Zealand’s strength in design? Is it that distance?

There’s a type of design outcome that has a “funky pragmatism”, but even the most slick work is always a bit edgy. It’s often highly socially responsible. The ethos of the landscape filters in, as do the cultural values of inclusion. There’s a greater shared sense of responsibility, it is an ethos that shows up in design so we don’t have as many frivolous or wasteful or flakey things as you would find in US or Australia.

The ethos also comes from not being wasteful, not designing something that causes harm as much. I see this a lot of the students when they go into their profession too. Design is to accomplish good, not simply to produce wealth.

How do you think that quality finds its way into the sector’s economic value?

Sector value is a quantification of the financial benefit – to get the attention of the politicians, to say to them that they’ve got a huge, huge, unique resource and a significant point of difference here that points to future industries and future social impact. Design for us is where the future is.

But the good designers aren’t grandstanding, they are just getting on with it. They don’t spend a lot of time reflecting or writing books about theories of design like they would in New York or London. They get busy and they stay busy.

As someone who has come from lots of places and studied spaces, what’s your take on the way that Auckland is approaching its public space?

It’s healthy. I take public transportation but I do that deliberately. Where I live, in Onehunga, I have lots of options to get around the city so it’s actually quite good. It’s more effective for me, cost- and health- and time-wise to use public transportation and that wasn’t the case in the past. There’s an increasing respect for healthy lifestyles, sustainable design principles, and we are seeing growing support for a lot of very enlightened policies around inclusive design.

The future of Auckland I would imagine would be in the aspects that are more attuned to subtleties of the environment, the climate, the cultural nuances. The old city planning techniques that served their purpose don’t really work with 21st century lifestyles. The number of people around the world buying automobiles in older economies is going down, and the traditional fuel that propels vehicles is also increasingly getting priced out by alternatives. In many ways, this is how good design innovation gains traction.

My only concern is that things move a little slower here than I’m used to. But I see great promise and great potential and I’m intrigued and sometimes surprised by the insights and outcomes of my colleagues and students. Designers are expected to live a bit in the future, to see signals and traces of the networked future in present scenarios, and this is how I imagine the spatial future Auckland.

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