Mapping the grassroots that not many believe we have

Workspaces Spot the Future Romania
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First of all I wanna say I’m extremely glad and impressed that you’ve started this project . A few years ago me and my NGO, Poiana lui Iocan embarked in a somewhat similar project, of trying to understand what is the core of our grassroots initiatives in Romania, what are the strategies, how to they communicate and interact with one another and most importantly how do they actually allow people to participate and engage outside their group.

At the time though, I think there where other dots to connect, for our NGO, for the innovators that didn’t see themselves as a community that could strive through collaboration and for me who just finished architecture and wanted to get more into understanding cities through interdisciplinary interactions.

I think now is a better time to start this, also for the emerging community and for me as a urban studies master student in a european wide interdisciplinary program that focused on exactly this, understanding the role of these stakeholders in a number of european cities.

I don’t know if i am eligible as i am still abroad until the end of June but i would be most honored to be taken in consideration, partially because of my experience in interdisciplinary urban research and partially because my current NGO projects in Bucharest focus on just that, discovering alternatives to our classic city development strategies and trying to build a new inclusive narrative in which all of these stakeholders might better negotiate to reach new outcomes so we’ve already done an extensive research on existing initiatives in Bucharest.

I think my colleague has already talked to you guys about our on-going project, Urboteca and how we want to use it as a tool to get closer to communities and empower them to get involved in city related issues. Its a test and I think we have learned a lot by doing and by failing at reaching our initial goals, but most importantly its a platform that can be reused to serve new goals. We would be more then glad to use our mobile pavilion to promote the practices discovered through your program.

At the same time we are hard at work on a project that wants to promote open data and i think that this would be the perfect medium for cross-sector collaboration bringing together journalists as story tellers , design as visual communication, grass root initiatives, and citizens as local experts, the growing local tech community and other instigators to change that want to base their stories on complex yet understandable data sets.

Going beyond the scope of this job call I would really want to meet and discuss the potential of a longer lasting collaboration and see how we can develop new stuff together, outside our professional boxes.

Cheers,

Razvan

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Outside boxes indeed

Heya,

indeed I have been in touch with Oana last week, and now I see you guys are working together, cool! Being in Bucharest over these next two months is quite important because I’m counting on someone to show us around and maybe interface physically with people we don’t know yet, but nothing that you can’t make up for. If not for this gig, then we’ll surely find collaboration spots. Plus you’re right in time for the July event - we’re thinking sometime before mid month.

Re: Urboteca, how do you see that you failed at your initial goals? From where I’m looking at, it seems you managed to get funding to map citizens’ views on their neighborhoods in terms of access to and quality of green spaces, leisure spots etc and have built good collaborations. Great use of OSM by the way, I know a lot of Edgeryders folks use that too, for example to organise mapping parties. Are there signs that people are using your maps or other eMedia tools?

I know some people in Arcub are doing neighborhood or sectorial workshops too, as a way to consult citizens. But this goes nowhere near building empowerment, which unless it’s a sustained effort feels like the hardest thing to do. What does it take for people at that scale to work together? With online networks for example, being awfully passionate matters A LOT, sometimes it simply does the trick because people come on board based on stuff they already care about.  Of course, you design with more things in mind, but curious what is the glue which can tie together people living on the same streets?

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Hmmm…I don’t know how much you know about our field work, because the on-line platform is at the moment more of a repository for data collect on the ground and the beginning of a wiki for local urban development. Its the mobile pavilion and the activities there that we’ve put a lot more focus on and I think they are yet to materialize at the scale that we’ve intended to.

Basically, the pavilion is a delivery truck with the back of it converted into an office with exhibition panels, benches and tables that can be pulled out in order to make the place around it into an event space. Our info panels and board games manly revolve around urban development, how to understand the legal system, how can you participate in discussions about municipality projects etc., but an important and I think crucial add on to this rather unsexy subject would have been to bring around initiatives active in the areas that we go to, to make it into a sort of local StreetDelivery and transform a neglected public space into something more for a few hours and offer local the possibility to engage with initiatives in their areas. It is this mix that makes urban development in itself start to make sense not the way it is now, closed up in its own institutional box.

I think it is this where we have a lot more work to do and its not because we don’t know who to ask for help but rather because we are a very small team and talking about urban development in itself is a hard to takle subject and we are constantly thinking of new ways in which to make it more understandable and friendly. A good example of a mix of local initiatives and our activities was this event we held at Cinema Favorit in Drumul Taberei, check it out in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YA8tFQubYXE

This is why I was proposing you a potential collaboration, in order to bring together all of these grassroots initiatives not in a classic conference room or indoor space but in a public space of the city which is in many ways closer to their working environment and more open to outsiders wanting to get to know more about what’s happening in their cities and maybe getting involved in one of the projects shown there.

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Got it now!

Urban development happens in the streets, can’t disagree with that one. And researching a bit more your website, I found the truck :slight_smile:

I would love to have an outdoor event in Spot the Future and a projects fair - maybe walking the city and organising stop overs for projects’ hacking -  bringing in a diverse set of participants that come from different domains and helping you or committing a day’s work for very simple tasks: a key thing I learned while working online is the added benefit of having a space for documentation and ensuring that any event has an open preparation phase & follow up that go beyond on-the-spot excitement. so sure, looking forward to it!