Thanks so much for the advice @anique.yael, adding and crosschecking all of the funding sources with our current list.
The two ways of strengthening the Edgeryders Culture network are both in consideration - a project getting resources to get people to focus attention on something and see what comes next. The other one is to open this conversation, run the mapping in the background and get ideas about where our edge is, like Alex says.
We are definitely having the conversation, but spotting projects as we go along.
We are looking to join the Beyond The Obvious event in October, with @natalia_skoczylas. Anyone has references about Culture Action Europe? ping @rossellatarantino@Branka ?
@yannick since you were at POC, got a quick feedback on this idea of a making of community art camp, the equivalent of poc but with the ER due preparation and online conversation before and after?
Yes i had the POC experience and loved it, changed so much in the way i look at community events and collaboration. It wasn’t the core of the event (building ecological technology for a carbon less future) but the way the community was organized: with enough space and time to change the form on the go. We had open discussions on why it was or wasn’t a good idea that the president of the republic came to the camp, on who wanted to take responsibility to bring meat on the table, on the philosophy of failing. All things that weren’t prepared before but were given the time to explore in those 5 weeks of camp. I think there is some of the essence of what made POC21 special, it was that the organization itself was constantly open for change and that people working on the technology could become organizers and vice versa. I think it was mostly thanks to openstate narrative organization that this succeeded, Ouishare was more the vehicule getting the funds and creating the financial and administrative structure, and openstate created the ‘user experience’, well that is how i felt it at least.
Hope you get something out of this short explenation, would love to see it used in other areas like art and culture
For me this is too short termist, and also doesn’t lead to any kind of artistic or cultural artefacts at the end of the process. However it could create an interesting partnership possibility. @natalia_skoczylas did you say that you’d made contact with these guys during your stay in Italy?
We know them: https://www.artshare.pt. We are even partner in a H2020 proposal (did not go through). They care about artists working with scientists. This is really their niche.
When I look at Edgeryders I see not yet a fully formed culture, but a culture in the making. I see people who don’t just want their life’s work to be good and true and part of what moves all of humanity ahead. I see people who know that to accomplish something this profound it is necessary to fully embody in one’s person and livelihood those values which nurture and sustain life on this planet. I see people who know that doing positive things requires being positive yourself. I see people who know that to nurture a planet means nurturing each other and nurturing oneself. I see people who know that the journey and the destination are one. I see people who, without dogma or particularly overt spiritual explanations for their motivations, nevertheless demonstrate consistently that they are moved by a deep spirit that does not necessarily need to be named. Certain themes illustrate this consistency: un-monastery, care, community, openness, responsibility, civility, to name just some of them. Whatever direction this culture-in-the-making takes, it will be infused with people and actions inseparable from the core values expressed in its writing, projects, and events.
Wow. This is fantastic. Thanks @alex_levene for sharing your insights and projecting this toward the larger vision of Edgeryders, which it appears is evolving slowly. This is beautiful.
My immediate thoughts are to consider a Network Analysis of all persons that are active and interested in Edgeryders moving forward and to document these relationships, partnerships, outputs and the overall collaborative aspect of Edgeryders which is : a culture-in-the-making (Thanks @johncoate) and not void of evolving, by nurturing the self and each other and our collective values. Actually that’s the only constant I imagine, this collaboration which is shifting. By positioning us all on this map, we can better collaborate, share and progress this network. That’s my immediate 2 cents.
Funders
I am not too familiar with funders, as most of my work has been focused on Health/Public Engagement during the last years. I am in a position to present this collaborative approach toward Well-being to the Wellcome Trust if I can swing this as a Progressive Research or Project toward Engagement/Communication or similar. They’re very flexible and if we are speaking about co-creation and events that produce real tangible artefacts, we could argue this with this Funder under their Public Engagement grants. It will present a means of being, creating, collaborating and sharing that surpasses geo-territorial conceptions of community.
That’s an initial thought as I will be visiting the funder in September 2018. So let’s keep this open as I am on very good terms with them.
My second thought is: are there any single researchers interested in chronicling and studying the progression of edgeryders and understanding this network. This could be a really great research study and we could apply for funds for this to be done as a research project (Masters or PhD). This could form the basis for a research topic that directly benefits the network and all subscribers?
My third thought which is one that keeps revisiting me is the idea of Communiversities. These little hubs of knowledge run by persons who have experience and handing over that experience to a new cohort of interested persons. I’ve been following the model of the Fun Palaces, http://funpalaces.co.uk and have met with their leadership. Could something similar which brings together collective experience, expression, arts ad knowledge be of interest as producing a real world “artefact”. This is something that could be funded, as Edgeryders is (via one lens) a communiversity of sharing?
As for the next step of Edgeryders Events, I think these issues highlighted would be phenomenal to have workshopped. With a cohort of interested persons we could tease out the nitty-gritty, and define the next steps in a concentrated effort. We previously spoke about the potential of hosting a camp to this purpose (or rather developing certain ideas/projects further within the network) prior to the next Open Village. Would a concentrated exploratory workshop to this purpose be of interest?
I will give some thought to potential funders in the meantime.
We just had a small talk about networking and potential partnership building opportunities - besides Cultural Diplomacy and the event in Timisoara, where we’re both planning to go with @Noemi, I also found these two:
I’ll be applying for both, and I am asking Ars Electronica if they would like to have us as a team - possibly with Noemi, but maybe someone else, depending on the schedule. I missed Linz (Hitler’s favorite town on the planet btw :D) and I’d be happy to go back, would also be nice to refresh my cultural network in Ljubljana.
I don’t have an answer but rather some unstructured thoughts.
been thinking how hard it is to adopt innovative solutions in our everyday life. I think about all the sustainability and environmental related events where we drink coffee out of plastic cups, or the fablabs/hackerspaces where we sit on Ikea chairs…etc
looking at our own place based innovation track and knowing that there are lots of scattered solutions everywhere, still it is hard to find a lot of them applied in one place.
There are reasons why some of the opensource solutions ( in house ) are not adopted even by the wider hacker community, and would be beneficial to try applying these solutions in a space with the local public participating in such a process to know for real how to build the infrastructure needed in a local level. As alberto was dreaming about the reef 2.0
the thing is there are solutions, yet not applied, not user friendly enough or need more infrastructure or need more time. It could sound as a boring project as it shouldn’t invent something new unless needed but rather collect the bits and pieces on the Internet and apply it and see how usefull/useless they are.
Do events and camps fall under the scope of Wellcome’s Public Engagement grants? What is relevant I believe is understand if we taking about a pitch or a call we should be looking out for? A concentrated exploratory workshop - limited in size and publicity is doable, can you say more about how you see it connecting with the camp in terms of concept and who would be involved?
re: network mapping: I’m sure there would be people to find to study edgeryders artistic (sub)community in a research program. @ChrisC was asking about this not long ago, but he is into international relations… Maybe there are overlaps though?
I have some good news - I got invited to come to the International Festival of Contemporary Arts - City of Women. I promised the organisers some posts and networking They cover all my costs. Let the network expand
