Failing Forward: Creativity and Experimentation in the Alternative Economy

This article analyzes efforts to institute professionally designed alternative currencies in European cities as acts of creative experimentation. The alternative currency consultants, or “the Money Makers,” experiment profusely with alternative moneys. As such, they have instituted various currencies throughout Europe from the 1990s onward—many of which have been funded by political bodies. Alternative moneys never succeeded in the sense that they never achieved their ambitious goal of creating resilient, localized economies. The article outlines how this rapid rise and fall of currency forms is interpreted by the Money Makers as a positive route of discovery toward a fair economy, an attitude of “failing forward.” Never quite successful, never quite finished, never just-right—to fail forward means that failure is not only imminent, it is required to attain success. New currencies are continuously created as reinventions upon themselves and upon capitalist practice. The notion of failing forward is key to understanding the creative design of currency alternatives as carrying within itself not only hopes for the future but also the history of prior forms as well as the current dynamics of neoliberal capitalism. The article argues therefore that creativity, as developing the “alterity” of “alternative economies,” is a collective enterprise that is institutionally shaped.