Written together with @Ben!
“to make the world work for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation, without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone.” — Buckminster Fuller on World Game
Is competing for grants the best we can do to accomplish this goal?
CheFare is a tool for research on new ways of making culture in Italy today, they’re offering a big prize, € 100,000, which unMonastery is currently in the running for - but something doesn’t feel quite right.
“Ours is an era increasingly marked by mass communication horizontal and oblique and less than pyramidal, vertical.”
“At the same time it is necessary to experiment with new ways to financially support cultural initiatives, new forms of economy based on creativity, innovation and collaboration, play on alternative definitions of value.” - Words taken from the CheFare website.
If this is true, why is the call to action a voting system designed to burn social capital and energy for clicks? And why is it a winner takes all scenario?
This blog post is a call to action for the future winner of CheFare and all other entrants, with the aim of taking the award from competition to co-operation. There are 2 days left in the competition but 22 until the winner is announced.
In CheFare there are 40 projects, each likely composed of 10+ individuals, with networks of hundreds, if not thousands, right now those networks are burning energy to get votes, instead of focusing on the things that matter. The overheads for a single winner is huge compared to multiple projects succeeding.
Collectively we have 23 days to turn the race completely upside down. Let us work together to use CheFare as an opportunity to build a model that can be used to decentralise awards such as this forever and build a greater level of cooperation between all those involved.
The start of the trouble.
CheFare requires a legible business plan in order to win and in doing so declares: “The first step is to define with clarity of thought and speech what is the crux of the matter: to define the so-called core activities.”
With the unMonastery, we quickly realised that the ”crux of the matter” was the very antithesis of developing a business plan for what is an emergent model, striving towards matching real assets with real needs, without the need for finances to get there. So we quickly switched our attention to working on a Sustainability Plan, with a view to building something resilient and honest for the project.
Now with this said, let us draw a distinction between Assets (Material Goods and Services) and the means of securing said Assets. The existing mainstream socio-economic paradigm insists that the only means to securing these assets is through the use of legacy currencies such as the £, $ or € - ensuring the only means of exchange is a financial one and thereby limiting the scope of possibilities. This process in itself denies the existence of a collective intelligence and the desire to share assets between networks and communities.
So how can we change this?
In the projects listed on CheFare, there are initiatives like the Open Culture Atlas, FARM Regeneration, RisorsaCultura, Periferica and Terra Piatta. The aim of these projects seems to be focused on leveraging a different way of securing the required assets to make something happen - whether it be through sharing knowledge, repurposing abandoned space or developing new kinds of exchange.
Money based calculations are unstable, which can shift the variables in a project significantly, if food prices rocket, land speculation occurs or the energy prices soar due to conflicts taking place elsewhere in Europe - you’ll find your business plan totally broken. Of particular significance for CheFare and other awards of this nature, is a built in scarcity factor to the finances in the network participating, whilst the real world assets of the network are of greater abundance. Property is a good current example of this, in Europe there are 11 million empty homes, enough to house the homeless twice over.
So we ask ourselves, what are the other ways in which we can secure the assets we need to realise our project without the aid of finances?
- Asking for in-kind donations - Building reputational value through the work you do.
- Openness - Making your transactions transparent, with the aid of projects like Open Spending & Open Banking, which builds trust and encourages people to invest in what you do.
- Network Pooling - Sharing your outputs and outcomes within a network enables you to call on that network for help and support when you need it.
- Barter - In a network the assets required are often present but not visible, we can look at different ways to secure and exchange them. Using algorithmic barter systems like the Economy App is a good start.
- Changing the Rules - Innovating new standards and policies for handling the ownership of data, land and production.
Making these alternative methods legible, viable and replicable is at the core of the unMonastery concept. The more alternative means we use to secure assets the less finance is required for achieving our shared aims, this is likely to be true across all the CheFare projects. Fueled by the desire to create meaning beyond existing financial models.
What would this look like if applied at scale to CheFare?
If we return to the distinction between a sustainability plan and business plan, on one side we have an asset plan, which defines the precise requirements of a project. In the instance of unMonastery, 6 week requirements for 10 people are 3 meals a day, 594kWh, 40m3, 160sq m of sheltered space and laptops. Versus a budgeted plan, € 757,03+ a month for food (prices variable), electricity 594kWh x 0.23c; €136.62 (prices variable), rent of building €2800 a month (prices variable), laptops 1x€500 (prices variable). See our open spending and food analytics.
Within the network of the CheFare competition, who has € 4,193.65+ to spare for someone else’s project… Or even further, between all those participating, who has the assets required to make something happen if identified? Imagine if we used CheFare as an excuse to facilitate that kind of exchange - of both resources and skill - enabling projects to grow in ways inconceivable within financial constraints.
The Proposal.
Don’t stop when the voting ends.
If the competition calls on us to produce a business plan and you’ve already done this, you’re already halfway to writing an asset plan. Prior to the announcement of the winner in April the next steps look like this:
Share your asset plan online publicly, amongst the community that makes up the CheFare bid.
Study one anothers asset plans, figure out what you can give yourself or arrange in-kind to support a project. Be it labour, resources, property, political leverage or whatever else.
Pledge these assets to one anothers’ projects.
Collectively figure out what the financial shortfall is, then map this against the offering of a € 100,000 prize.
Collectively petition the winning project to adopt this strategy.
But why stop at CheFare?
Building a framework and method for doing effective asset sharing would be a waste if we restricted this approach to CheFare. Why not also extend the approach to develop a model and turn awards into meeting point for communities to work together with the backing of a shared insurance package. Competitions like the Fuller Challenge loom on our horizon.
As a participant in this competition, we pledge our commitment to building the necessary framework for making this happen.
We have already begun work on creating a clear dependency chain for the assets we currently use - mapping all in and out flows of resources. We’ve made the first moves towards structuring how a sustainability plan would work and we’d be very happy to share our learnings.
We offer participation and help with organizing a convergence gathering where participants of all 40 can work on coordinating efforts and finding the connections they need to make their project bloom.