Who was there:
table with names & links to contacts coming here soon
Outcomes of workshop:
- reflections on acting together
- Ideas for work that would make a positive contrinutiion to addressing the issues discussed in the smaller groups (in progress)
- a collaboration mosaic with email addresses (done, waiting for photos from Baris to produce visualisation)
- an Edgeryers South Africa group on the online platform for workshop participants to easily stay in touch after event
- new questions to explore
Reflections on acting together
One of the groups raised the question of how we act to get people to get off the rat race and think about larger issues we face. It was pointed out that the problems of the world feel like an insurmountable tsunami. And that a crucial part of unlocking intertia is surfacing existing alternatives for getting involved and making them visible in the sense that “if you care about this, then you can get engaged there”. Another key thing to remember is the importance of space for multiplicity of calls to action, many things in parallel appeals to different groups and contexts. Here also the power of the arts was mentioned, a case study : project happening around ponti for empowering girls to know how to react if they are theatended
As soon as this diiscussion picked up the group members got into the core questions: " What have you got? How much time can you give for free? What skills have you got? and what would you like to get involved?"
A group of people in a network can make big things happen if there is bonding, bridging and linking going on. Edgeryders: hosts all three processes and creates the contexts that draw all three to work in the same direction. People interacting on the platform and social protocols, foster behaviours amongst participants that makes community stronger in all three features.
- Bonding: Building and maintaining social glue between participants: connect people together and create sense of community
- Bridging: Connecting different communities
- Linking: Interacing with power and resources
For those interested there is an ongoing discussion on how to leverage creative networked communities for more impact on Edgeryders ahead of lote3 the third annual edgeryders community event taking place on October 29 -November 32. You can join the discussion here.
Ideas for work that could be done by participants
1. Mapping unconscious waste and finding new ways of using it...
- What do we mean by common space, what does it mean to us? How are they used and abused?
- There is an abundance of biomass not being made use of in SA: In northern suburbs we generate more biomass in form of grass cuttings then dumped whereas this is valuable resource than can be used to fertilise soil in the city
- Roak uses materials he is familiar with and manipulates them: "I'll install it in interesting location, people passing by would see something they are not familiar with it. It will mess with their sense off reality, a subconscious moment."
- looking at spaces in a different lightassumption of how we use space, we assume that others are not using space that is here, but maybe it’s us that are not using space. The exception in pretoria is where the middle class go about their lives, e.g. shopping malls.
- Setting up activities in places where you don' expect to find them, uncurated spaces
- Occupying an unused space, easiest spaces to occupy are public. Check Joburg property company and the Heritage foundation. Houses at the Edge of delta park. How fast could this be done?
2. Mapping where better alternatives in terms of education and skill development are already being tested ...
- problems with education and skills utilisation. This was boiled down to youth being pushed to make career choices very early in life with result you have people sitting in careers you hate. There was no career guidance early in life
- everyone comes from difft background, different levels of choice
- some ideas to help to make some change:
- Teaching them to be more self sustainable: to free up budget otherwise used from food by setting up school gardens to be farmed by the kids? City Farm. Case study mentioned: Somewhere land around the schools was given to residents for farming.
- Giving young people opportunities to be exposed to different fields and areas of knowledge: ,
- most people dont have access to broadband build community centres within schools,
- how do we support the skills and talents of youth ealy in life. E.g Moleque des ideas
- setting up a series of talks for and by kids, where we get people to speak to the kids.
3. Creating a pan-African, p2p network
It was pointed out that the kind of cohesion we have started forming in the workshop could be useful in other parts of Africa, that we could be the bridge, that one could create a model of sucess to generate more success: something we could do and make happen together. So does that mean we need to do more workshops and networking/outreach around the continent? And what would the people we meet for whom connectivity is a problem plug into? It was pointed out that in a context where Internet access is an issue, we may need to give some extra thought to onboarding, outreach and engagement processes so as to lower the threshold for (South) Africa based to join the network we build:
- What could we together do to make this way of collaborating and collective sense-making more accessible to more people in South Africa?
- What skills needed in order to be able to participate and how to help one another to learn them?
- Who that is not in the room should we engage in this conversation and how could we go about doing that?
In one of the discussions it was pointed out that there is a link between the physical spaces, and in attempting to build a pan african p2p network we may want to build a bridge between the messages we want to give, and putting them in the spaces. Someone mentioned a project that had happended in Ponti, pointing out this was not insignificant. Someone else mentioned that perhaps we need to find ways of Learning how to read different spaces, e.g, townships.
- Gather feedback from participants (done)
- Produce proposal for moving forward
- Schedule project development google hangouts