Marinaleda Link
Same topic, different context…
Hi Darren,
it’s a relevant relection, that of agency. Someone else exploring this in Edgeryders is Demsoc, seen this post? http://edgeryders.ppa.coe.int/we-people-session/mission_case/challenging-ourselves
more about agency
I hadn’t seen that - thanks for the pointer Nadia 
Agency
I picked this up from a tweet by Kevin Carson yesterday . It’s at a bit of a tangent but made me think of the conversation here.
participation
We do participate or do not for different reasons.
Many of us participate less and less to the projects which are not created by us. We got spoiled by user driven stuff around. So anything that we’re invited to participate to, but we don’t influence enough is unpopular.
There is some sort of behaviourial change, induced by the participatory reality.
But reality is changing unevenly. And parts of reality which are not participatory often leave us with either resentment or total rejection.
It might be that the problems mentionaed in the document partly arise because of this participatory gap. I mean, some parts of our life all of a sudden became more user driven, other parts stay as they were.
Perhaps less about tech than about people?
It seems that people who make valuable contributions to the success of different projects and initiatives are less frequently visible and acknowledged than the founders/ starters/ spokespeople. I would be interested in compiling a list of lesser known initiatives/ spaces/ environments/projects that many people are happy to contribute towards and understanding what it is about them that attracts that level of engagement.Preferably ones that have little media visibility. One example I can think of directly is the volunteers in the Basic Life Support ambulance services in Italy: Emergency medical services in Italy - Wikipedia
I was really surprised to hear about the extent of the volunteering- you get to participate in a free of charge course and volunteer on a regular basis. Very cool. Maybe we have something comparable in my native Sweden but I have never heard of it…Any more?
What about smart use of tech?
I remember being very impressed by this Polish account of depression and isolation linked to escapist world of gaming and internet… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOepoXgOgrk
Personally, I think this version is unidimensional, but it may be something we’d like to explore: the wise use of technology… Edgeryders itself can be an example of enriching and healthy immersion in online environments and communities… and of course there are other experiences alike in the community.
or: what makes good, healthy online networks? I think a very strong report is Kate’s experience about online presence and feedback not always rose, and Arina’s statement of online networks nurturing offline civic behavior.
Would that work? It also fits into Nadia’s suggested framework.
It was reccomended I post this here: I reckon mutual recognition and user ownership is key, people have to own it, in the metaphorical sense…even more than owning it, they have to feel like its their baby, again the nations to networks essay by Ugarte is very informing…how 5 people make a sixth and the creation of community and so on. It’s clear that you are a key figure in this Nadia, you nurture people, and you try to teach people to nurture eachother, we all need these lessons. For one I need them, I grew up in violence and hurt and don’t speak the language of familial and communitarian love, you do, this may be the most important project of edgeryders, if we can learn to nurture eachother, then we will grow together, otherwise, we grow apart.
In addition it’s useful to again stress the actual meaning of the word democracy and the fact that if one assumes a label with inherent meaning, then there is a consequent effect to that, words have power, and democracy is equal say among participants working according to self interest. Politic is the preferable term and applies to the notion of self inter esse and the common good. You may think this is someone barking on about a personal idea, but this is about more than our self interested judgements, it is very important.
Had conversation about building roots by being the roots
You know it took ages to figure some things out. Mainly as a result of loneliness and sense of not really being embedded in any real community. And oddly enough by being interested in power and affluence
You know my family moved around a lot- and when you do, unless you are moving to places in which you already have a ties the nuclear family is the basic unit somehow. But I lived in environments where I surrounded by people in large extended families. And I could see quite clearly the resilience derived from this communitarian way of living, especially in the Indian diaspora which I feel very much at home in to this day I also saw some of its pitfalls- at times this meant my friends had less individual freedom to pursue their own path as they were constrained to follow certain paths as set out by the expectations of their communities. Sometimes in the more authoriarian families this would take bizarre proportions and after travelling around and having been in different socioeconomic environments my observation is that this is not tied to any one “culture”; I knew one woman from a previously very affluent Swedish family who’s Dad went to great lengths to appease her grandmother’s wishes which included not selling an enormous house in an old establishment part of the country that no one could really afford. To the point where it was ripping his own family and personal health apart. I couldn’t understand what the big deal was, why this obsession with this composition of bricks and trees etc?
When I moved out from my folks home I was quite lonely for the longest time. It always felt as though the party was somewhere else, somewhere I wasn’t invited. It also felt as though while most people in my environment seemed very anxious in their social relationships ( e.g. being very closed to including new people into social circles) there were some exceptions. One person to whom I will always be grateful opened his home and world to me after a funny misunderstanding- will tell you more between four eyes While a lot of people in the environments he moves in are very anxious, his circle of friendships is solid. I learned many things from just observing how he interacted with people around him. They do all kinds of activities…often in nature but often involving going off on one another’s sail boats and staing in each other’s summer houses etc. There was and is an infrastructure that facilitates their building tight social ties over long periods of time- just hanging out because you like each other. And this is different from “networking”. But it is those friendships that see them through rough patches in life, not the “networks”. I think this is why my friends grandmother was so adamant about the house, it was symbolic of the social infrastructure.
Initially I was saddened when I tried to fit into existing social circles in my immediate environment in Stockholm because there was so much suspicion- A friend of mine told me fiends of his couldn’t figure out why we were hanging out so much and they refused to really welcome me into their circle- it was very clear. And thats fine. But the social dynamics that make me feel good and happy are inclusive ones, where new people are welcomed, not seen as a threat to anyone’s particular “postion” in the group. It’s also much more likely you’ll meet interesting people. And so I started to make sure that when I threw parties everyone knew others are aways welcome and always welcoming people to crash at my place if they needed whether or not I really “have space”. Now I am learning to support friends projects and initiatives just because I like the people, honestly- whether or not what they are trying to do makes sense or is of any benefit to me personally. I am convinced that Elf is spot on here, at least in the domain of personal relationships and what sustains us as human beings.
Here is an initiatory mail on a project with our youth cafe…
Mark, this is Eimhin, and Lisa is on here too, I hear you spent some time together recently and never managed to talk about the Birr youth project we are involved in. So let’s fill you in on what is happening right now. At the mo we have a space that is well kitted out, still needs some tech in there but it is ready for anything and we can look after all that end of things here. Lisa started this initiative in response to the recurrent issue of youth suicide in Birr, we know the territory being from around here, the kids are still listening to all those tunes, and more besides, and it’s the same spaces and teachers and lifestyle that we have at least some experience of.
We got OEB funding from the county enterprise board on the basis of funds we raised, 12000 and thus paid the renovation on the building. Unfortunately Foroige got the scrubby little mits in on the deal and we have been lumped in with their unproductive policies and direction, this is very limiting as currently they hold the talking stick in terms of established organization. We need to basically subsume that stance by aligning with’ in their eyes, ‘the daddy’ ie Europe, this will effectively substantiate a position that will enable the type of activities I am about to propose.
- just to mention an explanatory quote from the Foroige chief we work with, he said directly to Lisa “Basically Lisa, it’s like this, you have paid for our new sitting room and now we have to let you sit in it sometimes.” this is what we are dealing with. Also I aligned a project to make an online resource connecting youth cafes nationwide to facilitate connective self organization among the youth themselves via group specifically designed social media, and it would have been free, and this guys response was as follows: " We wouldn’t want to give the wrong kind of people access to children" to late for that apparently, it serves to mention here that Foroige are the left hand of the RCC in Irish youth organizations, typical!
So at the moment the project has been gifted €4000 and has a portion of that to use in some way complementary to the mission of the gifting group, a suicide awareness and prevention setup. (Lisa if you could send on a mail and phone number for these people that would be very welcome) The heart is in the right place as regards their mission, but the application they want to use is pretty far off the point. In their view they want to send out leaflets and put stickers all over town, but , even if this is not directly mentioning the word, it still draws out the conscious reality of the issue and so by doing this we have a similar situation to what happens when anti-fascism actually creates facism, jung’s enantiodromia, a things completion by its opposite, like ‘don’t think about a blue elephant’. What Could be a better idea is to instead organise a day where we have a speaker in detailing the issue and host a public address with complementary activities to attract a diverse audience, we can effectively partner with different local groups and send direct invitations to the chamber of commerce, the relative political representatives , the organizations relevant, the community itself, the parents council of the school and teachers and representatives and general members from the community also.
We have contacted the Ted Wish winner JR and the Inside Out Project and have shared our story, they are very interested to help us do this work, this project is amazing and can give cheap but powerfully impact full material for the public consciousness in Birr to get the people thinking before, during and after the initialising event. In short massive posters of the faces of people directly affected by familial loss through suicide. These pictures are black and white, we have spaces already assigned around the town and can flesh this out further later. The inside out project is an international arts project run by J R and his team to bring the inner experiences of communities to the surface so they can be dealt with.
And so the event could go like this, one Saturday of a bank holiday weekend schedule the event in a hotel in Birr, hopefully in kind. Have the posters already up in town for at least a week, have copies mounted in the ballroom hall during the event also. A few friends owe me some favours in the circus world and so there can be some workshops going on for kids, plus with nick and legitimate bodies we can work in the dance aspect. The keynote speaker will be someone from the background of the psychology of suicide, top notch no messing, I think I know just the professor. His task is to form the basis for informed discourse among the participants. The people from the photos should also be present and if they are willing should offer to facilitate public engagement as a group to reflect on how the talk reflects with their experience, how others can recognise the process in others, and in helping them come to terms with their own loss and the processes involved.
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At this event there should be, by virtue of foundations laid already, a presentation of a model to generate public funding to partner withthe EU social fund in generating a project to do two things, sustain the youth cafe network in the country, its services and to establish excellence through the feedback mechanisms in place there, and should set the scene for summer use of school buildings to attract learners ( as opposed to educators) to share their learning either live or through tech enabled media with self selecting learners attending these summer events. There are countless studies proving that young people who do not have learning experiences in the summer months are at a severe disadvatnage to those whose parents can afford it. Everyone needs places for their children to be in a safe learning environment, especially in the summer, plus this centralisation of activity to a location establishes value flows that the community can benefit from in multiple ways, teaching organic gardening, hands on learning, nutrition, physico-spiritual practices etc This serves to engage the community in a collective learning experience.
The key is the contrast, teachers and curriculum in the school year, self selected learning in the summer, DIY learning experiences built on community engagement amidst a landscape that needs these kind of processes in order to engage and communicate intercommunity dialogue.
It’s one shape of a solution to some of theses problems anyway. If it rings any bells let me know.
Getting my head around the components
Hi Involute,
Thanks for sharing the email-I read it with interest but some of the communication has nuances that are difficult for me to grasp. Here is what I understand, please correct me where I get it wrong…
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Lisa and yourself started a suicide awareness and prevention initiative after a series of suicides in Birr where she lives.
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You both are from the territory so have personal experience and relevant knowledge about teachers, lifestyles and spaces that contribute positively or negatively to suicide rates?
- You have a physical space that needed som renovation and you raised some funds for this. You were then awarded an additional 12000 Euros for this from OBE county enterprise funds. You did the fundraising in collaboration with or under the organisationional umbrella of Foroige and now Foroige is the organisation within which your inititive lives. This is problematic because you argue that their policies and direction are unproductive. You give two examples
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As part of the initiative you aligned (what does that mean- got different youth caf’e to sign up to the platform/ formally agree to collaborate? Built the platform? Something else?) a social media-based project to enable self-organised suicide awareness and prevention efforts of young people, free of cost. Foroige as an organisation objected to the initiative on the grounds that it would make children vulnerable to being approached or accessed by “the wrong kind of people” (how ?). You think that this person’s objection has something to do that Foroige is somehow tied to the RCC in Irish Youth Organisations.
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The project has been awarded an additional 4000 Euros from a suicide awarenss and prevention group that wished you to produce and distribute leaflets and stickers. Your objection to this is that is might be counterproductive instead contributing to more suicides " jung’s enantiodromia, a things completion by its opposite, like ‘don’t think about a blue elephant’.
Instead you want to organise an event that would gather a broad range of stakeholders and expertise on the psychology of suicide, a creative communication project that focuses on the experiences of those affected by loss through suicide in the local community, as well as develop a model for long term initatives and how to sustain them and present it at the main event. These include a year long program of activities in an environment that enables the entire community to be involved in and contribute to suicide prevention.
So if I’ve understood the above correctly Im curious which of the initiatives is up and running or closest to being set up and how would you see others, e.g. individual Edgeryders members contributing to it?
One soup…
This is one soup, Nadia is showing us a solution here, in a very maternal and appropriately feminine way. The answer to the conundrum is not to be found in the same isolation and analysis of the ‘issues’, this is about root causes, and the root cause seems to be the isolation that people experience in youth by virtue of the formal and pointedly patriarchal institutions we have developed. There are many ways in which the problems this one sidedness can manifest, the need for significance in the face on non recognition can lead to bullying (violence being the fast track to significance) ; isolation and despair and no encouragement toward personal communication lead to empathic shut down and suicide in worst case scenarios, lack of connection to welcoming and mutually involved communities leads to drug abuse (false sense of union) and youth pregnancy; and the psychology of self harm shows the act as an inwardly directed response to injustice experienced outside a person and beyond their control, the needs to effect the appropriate response is fulfilled against the self.
I like what Nadia just did posting that comment, it’s too easy to dismiss such honesty and underlaying wisdom with facile judgement, and this in itself, what we have learned to do so easily in the west. Today an article was released outlining how a lobby group of well respected ( predominantly male) scientists have advised the Australian universities to do away with courses in ‘alternative medicine’. I spent three years in European hospitals undergoing multiple surgeries and eating up to 23 pills per day, I asked if my digestive disorder may have something to d with nutrition and my diet and I was told- “that is alternative medicine, we don’t do that here” , later I experienced a full healing in India with an Ayurvedic doctor in two months using dietary awareness and herbal mixtures. The patriarchal analysis and insistence on demonstrable proof is very very harmful, it ignores the effects of emotions, the intuitive process, the instance of consciousness, and the way in which we are collectively fucking up each others lives and the world by our western patriarchal hubris.
Nadia and Elf are on track here…Let’s engage with this, not as ‘experts’ , but as human beings.
Boiling this down to something actionable
Ok so refining the question to look for examples of spaces, inittives, projects, people, communities etc that do a good job of, directly or indirectly providing (for young people)
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Recognition: need for significance in the face on non recognition can lead to bullying (violence being the fast track to significance).
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Connection to welcoming & mutually involved communities/ encouragement toward personal communication: isolation and despair and no encouragement toward personal communication lead to empathic shut down and suicide in worst case scenarios, lack of connection to welcoming and mutually involved communities leads to drug abuse (false sense of union) and youth pregnancy;
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Responses well grounded in understanding of psychology of self-harm: and the psychology of self harm shows the act as an inwardly directed response to injustice experienced outside a person and beyond their control, the needs to effect the appropriate response is fulfilled against the self.
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Examples of when analysis and insistence on demonstrable proof are appropriate- spaces projects or initatives where processes to understand what is going on and how to support it are positive: When are counterproductive or harmful?
Does this make sense? And how might we go about surfacing them? What do we ask twitter
More learning - food and energy
I was just reminded of this resource which makes a strong case that learning should be based around food and energy, two subjects very close to my heart, though it may be of interest.
Formulate challenges with the education system.
Caroline. I'll elaborate a bit... Wrote a bit about that in my response to the outcomes of the learning session:
We need to open up (and maybe i go too many steps back in the process here, but i felt it was needed.) I think we need go deeper & we need a better analysis on the problems.WHAT THE PROBLEMS WITH EDUCATION?FOCUS QUESTIONS
- Why is young people today find schooling unneccissary or uninteresting?
- Is school preparing us to identify and solve complex problems creatively (ourselves or in group?) How can we solve that?
- How can we transform the school system from a system that today create extrinsic motivation (based on rewards & grades) to a system where youngsters can keep, find & shape intrinsic motivation (curiosity, self-guided, self-motivation)?
- How can school prepare people to adapt to many possible future scenarios? Not just for the current paradigm. And not just be flexible in the way current leaders or employers want?
- How can we create a school that help students to understand themselves and how the can become citizens so they can be a part of society?
- How can school today create students that solve tomorrows problems?
DIVIDING THE STREAMS
Hello
I’m finding this stream of thoughts really interesting. However, we have two distinct missions here. One is a response to the issue of emerging youth suicides, the other is a response to an invitation to contribute to the London Festival of Education. There’s a huge amount of overlap in the content but not in the address to the invitees. It so happens that I’d already said I would speak at the LFE about how an educated person is a radical bio-empathetic resilient (a Edgeryder?). I’d be happy to share the platform with others, to run a panel discussion after some short provocations perhaps. Let me know if you’d like to do that. I don’t know how the fees work, I should say. They might not pay entry tickets for panellists, so I will check.
If you want to contribute to a portrayal of an educated person as an Edgeryder, you are welcome to edit the Google doc here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/13YIo_EAOGBYpNmNvOhi-sidn-ZToTx04A5DAu4MCQCg/edit
So london Festival of Education collaboration document here…
Hi Bridget,
Had managed to miss the google doc you set up. Will ping everyone below who left commennt about it and let tvem know. Thank you!
On it!
Thanks Bridget, makes sense to move the discussion in an editable format. Will spread the word for sure!
My question at this point is whether your presentation would be critical and painting a picture, or would you see also some specific recommendations based on the HOWs, and mechanisms of change: how could people become better educated citizens in the future/ Edgeryders? The brief seems pretty loose, so I’m guessing it would be our choice.
Is there something we could use from this lote report on learning?
http://edgeryders.ppa.coe.int/where-edgeryders-dare/mission_case/learning-lote-session
started drafting a report
for the motion in google docs http://tinyurl.com/c325pyh
Need critisism, suggestions etc.
Does anyone prefer a pad? https://lite.co-ment.com/text/tM7QqTlzqh4/view/?adminkey=AbSGEaFDRPs
Thanks K!
We may be making our lives harder with 2 docs… I’ll go for the goole doc and invite other people to join…!