Some ideas for a theme at the OpenVillage event, work in progress.
I’d like to involve projects that are dedicated to citizen science in care. I think one interesting question to explore is ‘How do we solve resource intensive and technically complex issues in care as communities?’. I’d involve projects with different angles to have diversity, a broader view and hopefully validate observations/lessons. I’ve formulated some subquestions at the bottom of this post.
Projects that would fit into this theme:
- Open Insulin: ambitious research project in biotech/pharma, both tough fields, to make an open source production protocol for insulin. Intellectual property, resources, timescale and expertise are all difficult and expensive. Moreover, a global collaboration is forming around the research. How do they manage to pull this off and what are their obstacles?
- echOpen: open source and low-cost echo-stethoscope developed with a large group of volunteers
- Belgian Ageing studies: highly participatory initiative that involves elderly people in the scientific study of the social aspects of ageing.
- University Hospital Ghent: making legal documents for studies, admissions, operations, … much simpler and more readable for everyone, in collaboration with the stakeholders. Particularly children are largely left in the dark by the dense language, as well as people whose mastery of Dutch or English is limited. <More details as I look into it>
- Future Footwear Foundation: hybrid research project at the intersection of anthropology, biomechanics and shoe design.
Some program ideas specifically for Open Insulin:
- KASK Laboratorium, a lab in the art’s school in Ghent, would like to do a call for students to develop an arts project/exhibition/show on the different themes of Open Insulin, to be shown at the event. They're now talking with an artist already working on those themes.
- Through @dfko we got into contact with Claudio, a filmmaker living in Brussels. He was diagnosed with diabetes at 35, almost going into a coma. He’d like to contribute to the Open Insulin project by making a short film for us. We should definitely show it at the event if it goes through.
I’d also think it would be interesting to make the link with the other themes mentioned on the OpenVillage wiki by presenting our experience with the quest to secure long term existence of the lab space ReaGent. We have been setting up structures to ensure financial sustainability and independence, providing people with a meaningful job, while keeping the societal mission intact.
One aspect that is relevant and interesting to go deeper into is how we are figuring out models to the share a community space, the lab, and how these can be applicable to other initiatives.
This returns in some questions that we pose to ourselves for our local projects:
- How do you ensure long term sustainability for your project?
- How do you encourage change at policy level?
- What have you learned about having citizens define and help advance your research project?
Thanks for the remarks and ideas so far! As we flesh this out further over the next weeks: what are some questions you would like to have answers to?
