The finale to LIFT 2014’s Change for a Tenner strand, which explored ideas around social change, had a different format to the series’ earlier events but more or less the same strengths and frustrations: lots of fascinating ideas but not enough time to unpack any of them in the detail they deserved.

Previous entries in the series – covering subjects such as how younger people can influence society, whether art should involve risk for those making it, and small-scale secessions from established power structures – basically took the form of panels, with short presentations followed by audience Q&As. This final event, Who Wants To Be?, was a more high-concept affair: a game-show format delivered by The People Speak in which the entire box-office take for the night (in this case £665) is given to whoever comes up with the most compelling idea of how to spend it.

It’s an ingeniously simple set-up, executed with technological aplomb. The audience sits in a semi-circle facing a couple of screens: one shows a live video feed from a camera trained on the audience itself; on the other are displayed quickfire graphic representations of topics under discussion. We all had yellow, green and pink cards; if you liked an idea, you held up yellow to call for a vote, then green to support the notion or pink to oppose it. The ideas with the highest approval went through to the knockout round that constituted the night’s second half.

Hosted by the friendly and efficient if not always effortlessly eloquent Mikey Weinkove, it was pretty much a free-for-all from the start, Weinkove directing his roving mic towards whoever piped up with an idea. They came in a steady stream, and tended to cluster into a few categories. Some were to kick-start grand schemes of social or political change: a micro-credit network; the imposition of an apolitical recess between parliamentary terms; campaigns to make living wills compulsory or abolish private education. (There were a lot of ideas related to education.) Some hoped to fund small acts of generosity, friendliness or subversion: defacing advertising hoardings with five-year-olds’ drawings; paying for women over 50 without much money to have a great night out; supplying each of us with a three-pack of Magnum choc ices on condition we give two away to strangers with whom we converse. Others were of the I-wish-for-more-wishes variety – plans to increase the fund by investing or gambling it.

The audience for such an event is inevitably self-selecting but it was still impressive and occasionally inspiring to see a wide range of causes espoused with passion and enthusiasm. Perhaps predictably, a handful of eager beavers took up a large proportion of the airtime but for the most part a good range was maintained, and a civil tone prevailed. The most complex technical work seemed to come off without a hitch: after the audience holds up their cards to vote, a photo is taken, which a computer swiftly scans to assess the relative proportions of each colour and then rank each proposal in order of popularity. Clever stuff.

Yet on a more basic level, it was often difficult to hear what was being said: the acoustics of the upstairs room in Shoreditch Town Hall were very echo-y and speakers’ words were further obscured by overlaid music and sound effects. And, as in the series’ other events, even the most intriguing idea was discussed for only a cursory amount of time. This tendency, inherent in the evening’s structure, was compounded by the second half’s increasingly rushed countdown format, which actually left the most popular ideas with the smallest amount of air-time.

In the end, however, there was a pleasing frisson to the fact that someone actually left with £665 to put to the service of a well-intentioned scheme. It should perhaps have come as no surprise that the ultimate winner was a plan to reinvigorate the institution of the speakers’ corner at multiple locations. If nothing else, Who Wants to Be?, and the whole Change for a Tenner strand that it brought to an end, emphasised the value of being able to stand up and express ideas – radical, daffy, ingenious or troubling – and get a hearing from your fellow citizens. For all its practical quibbles, that’s a notion worth championing.

Read our interview with co-curator Charlie Tims here. Find out more about Change for a Tenner! here. Follow the hashtags for updates - and make yourself heard #LIFTChange #LIFT2014

Read our reviews of the other events from the series:
Children of the Revolution. Reviewed by Ben Walters [17 June 2014]
With the lights out it’s less dangerous. Reviewed by Ben Walters [17 June 2014]
Some people think I’m bonkers, but I just think I’m free. Reviewed by Ben DeVere [24 June 2014]
Change for a Tenner – The State of Independence Shall Be. Reviewed by Ben Walters [1 July 2014]

Change for a Tenner! is curated by Charlie Tims, Shelagh Wright and Peter Jenkinson. Producing Assistant Alicia Graf. Commissioned by LIFT and supported by Festivals in Transition - Global City Local, Imagine 2020, and House on Fire networks, with support of the Culture Programme of the European Union.

LIFT commissioned Run-Riot to report on the Change for a Tenner! series.