Good morning everyone.
I wanted to make a quick post to pull together some of the discussion happening around promoting the unMonastery and getting the word out for the international call and the project at large - lets discuss tactics, ethos and strategy. With [#329] and [#422] now onboard for facilitating the communication of the project, now feels like a good time to pool ideas. But firstly I wanted to highlight the great card designs [ola-möller] has put together.
They’re designed to be printed as low cost mini MOO cards, for offline encounters. The back and front of each design can be found here: http://unmonastery.eu/pdf/MOO/ - There are 3 in total, aimed at publicising; unMonastery Matera, unMonastery Project, LOTE3. This sort of thing is good for sharing the idea with strangers you meet and makes the project a physical thing.
You can get 100 printed for £12.23 - but also visit here for coupons to reduce the cost. I’m going to be ordering a 1000 for the core team over the next week. Also these files are vectors, so if you feel like printing a banner for a building, that’s also an option - [andrea.paoletti] potentially we could put one for LOTE on the unMonastery building in Matera? At least create a specific design for it.
Beyond offline promotion a number of approaches have been discussed.
[#45] has suggested that we reach out to universities for those looking for a good context in which to build their thesis.
“The unMonastery residency program is perfect for thesis projects. It provides a valuable context as you get to take on real challenges that someone cares about seeing solved, surrounded by interesting people from whom you can learn and you don’t have to take a loan or starve your way through the thesis work. Even the length of the residency is just about right for doing the field work, developing the prototype and testing it! A perfect fit. So my suggestion is to write a call/ do a video especially for thesis students and get it out to every student at every relevant degree program at every university in Europe and beyond. We write the call in English, and ask the community members to help get the word out in their respective countries & online e.g through Studentcompetitions.com.” - See more at: /t/unmonastery/315/quick-summary-of-unmonastery-community-call-1#sthash.9mCSkAs7.dpuf
In addition to this, I felt it would make a lot of sense to silo a single residency and promote it as a competition to design and architecture schools throughout Europe, not only will it lead to an interesting project being contributed to unMonastery but will potentially fuel the imagination of reimagining space in the context of the unMonastery project.
Another Idea floated by myself in the last community call was leveraging the mailing lists of organisations that sit within the EdgeRyders network - [#32] very helpfully put together a list of individuals that may be able to help.
I’ve also compiled a list of my own press contacts and potential channels for distribution - so I’ll be meeting with people over the next few weeks to try and get some extended coverage for the project and LOTE3.
We also need to write a press release, I think this is one of the first tasks for myself, Fabio and Ilaria to tackle in the coming week.
In my dreams I think about a crowdsourced book, 20 authors each writing a fictional account of life in the unMonastery and in the world on a 10 year sliding scale - that maps out the potential future of the project on a 200 hundred year trajectory. This is perhaps though is a project for post-Matera.
So with all that said, what have I missed? What else might work?