Pro-Am Revolution

Concept and report

Concept

= innovative, committed and networked amateurs working to professional standards

Charles Leadbeater and Paul Miller:

"The twentieth century was shaped by the rise of professionals in most walks of life. From education, science and medicine, to banking, business and sports, formerly amateur activities became more organis- ed, and knowledge and procedures were codified and regulated. As professionalism grew, often with hierarchical organisations and formal systems for accrediting knowledge, so amateurs came to be seen as second-rate. Amateurism came to be to a term of derision.

Professionalism was a mark of seriousness and high standards.

But in the last two decades a new breed of amateur has emerged:

the Pro-Am, amateurs who work to professional standards. These are not the gentlemanly amateurs of old – George Orwell’s blimpocracy, the men in blazers who sustained amateur cricket and athletics clubs.

The Pro-Ams are knowledgeable, educated, committed and networked, by new technology. The twentieth century was shaped by large hierarchical organisations with professionals at the top. Pro- Ams are creating new, distributed organisational models that will be innovative, adaptive and low-cost." (http://www.demos.co.uk/files/proamrevolutionfinal.pdf)

Discussion

1.

"A Pro-Am pursues an activity as an amateur, mainly for the love of it, but sets a professional standard. Pro-Ams are unlikely to earn more than a small portion of their income from their pastime but they pursue it with the dedication and commitment associated with a professional. For Pro-Ams, leisure is not passive consumerism but active and participatory; it involves the deployment of publicly accredited knowledge and skills, often built up over a long career, which has involved sacrifices and frustrations.

Pro-Ams demand we rethink many of the categories through which we divide up our lives.14 Pro-Ams are a new social hybrid. Their activities are not adequately captured by the traditional definitions of work and leisure, professional and amateur, con- sumption and production. We use a variety of terms – many derogatory, none satisfactory – to describe what people do with their serious leisure time: nerds, geeks, anoraks, enthusiasts, hackers, men in their sheds. Our research suggests the best way to cover all the activities covered by these terms is to call the people involved Pro- Ams." (http://www.demos.co.uk/files/proamrevolutionfinal.pdf)

2.

"Pro-Ams are not professionals. They do not see themselves that way. They do not earn more than 50 per cent of their income from their Pro-Am activities. They might be aspiring proto-professionals, semi- professionals or former-professionals, but they would not be regarded as full professionals.

Yet to call Pro-Ams amateurs is also misleading. For many people ‘amateur’ is a term of derision: second-rate, not up to scratch, below par. Pro-Ams want to be judged by professional standards.

Many of the defining features of professionalism also apply to Pro- Ams: they have a strong sense of vocation; they use recognised public standards to assess performance and formally validate skills; they form self-regulating communities, which provide people with a sense of community and belonging; they produce non-commodity products and services; they are well versed in a body of knowledge and skill, which carries with it a sense of tradition and identity. Pro- Ams often have second, shadow or parallel careers that they turn to once their formal and public career comes to an end. Professionals are distinguished by the nature of their knowledge. Professionals are more likely to understand the theory behind good practice, while Pro-Ams might have strong know-how and technique.

The stronger theoretical knowledge base of the professionals should allow them more scope for analysis and generalisation. It’s easy to be a Pro-Am stargazer, but difficult to be a Pro-Am theoretical physicist. The relationship between amateurs and professionals is becoming more fluid and dynamic. It is not a zero-sum game. Professionals and Pro-Ams can grow together.

Pro-Ams work at their leisure, regard consumption as a productive activity and set professional standards to judge their amateur efforts. Pro-Ams force us to distinguish ‘serious’ leisure – which requires regular commitment, skills and effort – from ‘casual’ leisure, which is more occasional and opportunistic. ‘Active’ leisure, which requires the physical or mental engagement of participants should be distin- guished from more ‘passive’ forms of leisure, in which consumers are recipients of entertainment. Leisure is not homogenous: a lump of time left over after work. People engage in leisure activities of quite different intensities.

Pro-Ams demand that we see professionals and amateurs along a continuum (see diagram below). Fully-fledged professionals are at one end of the spectrum, but close by we have pre-professionals (apprentices and trainees), semi-professionals (who earn a significant part of their income from an activity) and post-professionals (former professionals who continue to perform or play once their professional career is over.) These latter three groups of ‘quasi’ professionals are Pro-Ams."

See the report page 23 for the graphic mentioned above.

Report

The Pro-Am Revolution. How enthusiasts are changing our economy and society. Demos, 2005:

URL = http://www.demos.co.uk/catalogue/proameconomy full pdf

"From astronomy to activism, from surfing to saving lives, Pro-Ams - people pursuing amateur activities to professional standards - are an increasingly important part of our society and economy.

For Pro-Ams, leisure is not passive consumerism but active and participatory, it involves the deployment of publicly accredited knowledge and skills, often built up over a long career, which has involved sacrifices and frustrations.

The 20th century witnessed the rise of professionals in medicine, science, education, and politics. In one field after another, amateurs and their ramshackle organisations were driven out by people who knew what they were doing and had certificates to prove it. The Pro-Am Revolution argues this historic shift is reversing. We're witnessing the flowering of Pro-Am, bottom-up self-organisation and the crude, all or nothing, categories of professional or amateur will need to be rethought.

Based on in-depth interviews with a diverse range of Pro-Ams and containing new data about the extent of Pro-Am activity in the UK, this report proposes new policies to support and encourage valuable Pro-Am activity." (http://www.demos.co.uk/catalogue/proameconomy)

Excerpts

• See: Open Source Astronomy

More Information

See our entry on Mass Amateurization