Let’s discuss boldness

I had to think a lot about boldness and its wonderful ambiguity when assessing applications in the field of film, and Kone Foundation’s Bold Initiative guideline became a very important part of my work process.

The Bold Initiative guideline helps assessors understand that certain something that is important to the applicant that would otherwise have no other place in the formal application text. Boldness can be an internal motivation and a social observation, and also an observation related to a working environment. Boldness is so much more than courage and immodesty, which are often associated with the word today. When I read the applications, I noticed that my eyes would often return to the boldness section as if to remind myself of what prompted this applicant to initiate this process and project.

The lack of passion in the Bold Initiative section sometimes annoyed me. It felt like the applicant had been startled by the section and had just come up with some politically correct response. Boldness is wildness! It can be used to assert and prove your opinion and reveal something (related to the application) in your ideology that would otherwise remain hidden from the assessor.

In my mind I compared the Bold Initiative section to conversations in a bar. In these conversations our eyes glint and hands gesticulate as we describe our plans, dreams and fantasies to other people around the table. Or those times when we are spurred on to make intelligent arguments and come up with various unusual angles to help us justify these arguments.

So what could be a good substitute when these methods, which help us convince listeners in intimate communication, are unavailable? Ladies and gentlemen, the Kone Foundation Bold Initiative section could be a good substitute to the glinting eyes and gesticulating hands, the intelligent arguments and well-justified points. Therefore you should really put your mind to this section and carefully think about what to write about yourself and your relationship with the project.

I would like to mention perhaps the most surprising Bold Initiative statement that I read, which was humility, to provide you with an encouraging example. It gave me a very different perspective of a difficult subject and the way in which I had read and interpreted it. The applicant managed to step out of the text and introduce me to his/her own world and view.

So be bold, my friends, and tell us about this in your applications!