Trust in Play - October 2nd update

Trust in Play - second update (October 22)

Last Tuesday we had the second call with the partners of Trust in Play, I talked about it here.

The main goal of the project is to create an European School of Urban Games design, there will be an open call to find the junior game designer that could participate, then a remote coaching period, an intense week of training and a final weekend festival with new urban games.

During the meeting we were updated about the meeting that the leader partner had with Creative Europe, we shared our long term vision / extra ideas about the project, few decision about communication, nothing really key so I will use this post to outline the timeline of the project and what is the work of next months.

note we is used as we-the project partners if it’s we-Edgeryders it’s specified

The first phase of the project (we are in this one right now), is a preparatory phase in which we start knowing each other and then we start working on infrastructure, teams and administrative stuff.

The second will be the open call phase, in which we look for the potential team of participants of the school.

During the third phase all the team will converge and have the training (a week in Athens, October 2019)

After that they will finalize the design of new urban games and organize Urban games Festival in their respective countries or there will be a final Festival in Berlin with all the teams invited.

_
As I said we are now in the first phase that will end in January with a 5 day meeting in Berlin (between 7 and 15 tbd) when together with all the partners we will outline the final design of the project and agree on definitions and process.

Our (Edgeryders) activities in this first phase is mainly the platform and fund-raising.

Platform: together with @matthias we are going to develop a Federated version of Discourse, our goal is to collect experience and expertise from european urban game designer, then having the selected teams to share their journey.

I proposed to have the platform ready in the beginning of December, so we can test it and populate it with content that we are going to be used in Berlin.

In this first phase I imagine mostly that the partners will familiarize with the platform so the interaction with the ER community and the community management activities would be very low.

The second main activity for the next months is fund-raising.
This is a co-financed project so we have to collect our 40%, roughly is 24k.
This it’s going to be my focus: we had relationship open with Plovdiv and Matera (we signed a Memorandum of Understanding with both of the Committee and check that will be the first thing).

I’m also working to open a collaboration with the MICA game lab, the University where I’m currently working with, to bring a team of US students to participate in the school and the design process, with them covering the cost and give a participation token to the project.

@alberto you said that this could be an activity that bring inside other potential sponsors, do you have someone in mind, or an idea of what could be interesting for them, with the project picture in mind?

I think it could be interesting for other ECoC cities (thinking about Rijeka @noemi ) if small team of designer from those cities will participate they will design something that could enrich their program later.

Also a smaller invitation could be made to Cultural workers, artistic curator, (operatori culturali) that could participate as visitor/viewer of the Athens training so they can enter the Urban Games community and understand if this kind of solutions are interesting for their cities.

In term of sponsorship (brand and so on) I don’t know, usually Urban Games have small participation numbers, cheap materials, low technology, so I really don’t know who could be interested.

What do you think? @alex @natalia_skoczylas @noemi what is your experience so far with the Culture Squad?

Sorry, right now I don’t recall what I had in mind. Will think about it.

When we are in Rijeka next week we could certainly put the idea of urban games onto the table. Looking at their Rijeka 2020 website one can see that they have been trying and doing all sorts of interesting events and gatherings.

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We’ve never done sponsorships, I don’t really know how it works. I think people like @kiravde know what is attractive or not (most of the Hack Belgium event is run on sponsorships), and how much is relationship based.

So far our approach in the Culture Squad has been to scan funding calls on one hand, and get in touch with people in our network to look for synergies and new places which could adopt projects i.e. Rebel Village.

I would see Matera and Plovdiv funding the rest of it, or a city which will host project activities. So fundraising should probably be local, no?

Could I have access to the more detailed planning of the project, so that i could check in more detail what’s going to happen, when and where, and then think of something suitable?

One idea I have atm is to talk to one of the rich coworking spaces in Berlin and see if they would be interested - there’s a few around me, so I could go there with more info and ask if they’re interested, maybe?

Thanks you all for the answers:
I had a look at Rijieka website and there are different cluster that could be interesting to explore with games or ludic strategies.
Lungomare (Lungomare Art • Rijeka 2020) seems to be a strategy to reconnect through a “wandering museum” made by “15 specially designed art installations” different areas and souls of the seaside strip area.
Usually games are good when you need an excuse to explore areas of the city that are underused, for example the Festival that we’ve organized last November was in the abandoned Tobacco City of Plovdiv, and we managed to bring hundreds of participants (families but also young adults) to the area.
One pitch to the Rijeka Committee could be:

  • hey we saw this Lungomare project of yours, what is this about?
  • in the past we used Urban Games to bring people and connect different urban area, have you ever heard of that?
  • we are starting the European School of Urban Game design, hosting the first round of designer and we are looking for partner that want some site-specific game designed for them, are you interested?
  • extra > Matera and Plovdiv are also on board <
    Maybe for the first meeting that could be enough, then, if they look interested I can prepare a presentation and join the next communications.

Maybe you can add it at the end of your workshop or during an informal lunch/meeting?

@natalia_skoczylas your request means that my update are not clear enough, buhuuu, but I love to have the opportunity to share the entire project with you so I’m sending in pvt, is that ok? I don’t know if the partners are ok with sharing it publicly.
In general, we are creating a School (digital and workshop based) for potential Urban Games designer, so we can have organization paying to:

  • send to potential designer
  • ask for a site-specific game
  • participate as “visiting attendance” to the workshop to learn more about Urban Games and understand if it’s suited for them as a strategy or not
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Perfect briefing ahead of our trip Matteo, thanks!
I am guessing that Lungomare - if it is a real project which will indeed happen, will also have some open calls. But what we’d want is a decision made by the team so that we don’t go through the calls.
Anyway, noted and will include the project in what we present of course.

xx

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just to keep things in the same place - I came across one really promising partner in Bulgaria for that and Matteo is already in touch. Dimitar is a theater director plus runs a summer school every year, and this year he wants to have a game design in it. Fingers crossed! even more, he seemed really interested in myths and rituals and he said he will help us plug it into the Bulgarian scene if we send the proposal. I will prepare it during the next weeks.

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Thanks Natalia,
I agree and planning a Skype with Dimitar (see email) I think it will be amazing if you also can join, it will be a good opportunity to have your point of view “live” on the project, I think you can help bridge our needs.

I think is going to be a explorative call, there are so many directions that a potential collaboration could take right now (cross teaching / building relationship with other partners and so on) we can just listen and share the ideas that emerge from the conversation.

Thanks again!

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