Spotting the future child

Workspaces Spot the Future Romania
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Dear Edge Ryders,

I’ll have a double shot presentation, so as to introduce myself and as an application for the connector role in Bucharest.

I am a cultural coordinator, blogger and trainer and the common thread to all these roles is exploring new ways of doing things with my own mind.


Some of the projects I initiated involved an out of the box promotion of cultural memory. One of my projects, Cultural Stations, took place in London, at the Cultural Olympics, in 2012 (parallel to the Olympic Games) and another one, Scara de bloc, in Bucharest, integrating community, cultural heritage, art and design in the communist blocks of flats. I am, also, a proud member of the team who worked on the Bucharest Cultural and Creative strategy for 2015-2025.

Briefly, I consider myself as a non-artist in search of creativity and I am particularly interested in creativity for traditionally non creative persons. I use my blog http://traiestecreativ.ro/ as a playground and a place to gather ideas and tools for myself and those who want to generate imaginative solutions.

The most exciting things for me are:

- connecting people from different areas of creative industries in types of projects they have not thought before

- turning doubtful people into positive changers in their communities.

It’s a hard job, but I decided to take it one bit at a time. That is way I decided to initiate my own projects, get involved in those I love, blog and teach so I can work on different levels and mix their individual powers.

Another difficult part of my work was getting the funds for projects I could not possible do exclusively on voluntary basis. Instead of writing project proposals and applying project management, I switched the way I work and I chose applying design thinking instead. It’s a major shift in my work and I find it so much fruitful to be in the middle of people and generate from there the relevant projects they need and not the projects I thought they needed.

Part of this shift, I plan to experiment my own workshop, called Creative infuser, focused on creative problem solving for people working with projects. I have to admit I was amused to see the coincidence in experimenting a Spot the Future workshop as part of the Edge Ryders’ connector role in Bucharest.

If I were handed the community connector role:

- I would start mapping cultural disruptors such as Florin Anghel (university proffesor), Cristian Lupsa (journalism disruptor) and projects such as Make a point, Halele Carol, Gradini Urbane Comunitare and many more.

- I would definitely document both in text and video format my engagement with avant-garde entrepreneurs, social innovators and cultural shapers. 

Last, but not least, I am presently working on a printed projects for dreamers workbook and I would love to connect with people who can give me hints of specific communities and organizations where I can test the project for dreamers workbook.

All my best,

Minodora

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How to run action based workshops?

Heya,

We were wondering in yesterday’s community call -weekly one to welcome new people in Edgeryders- about the sustainability of workshops. Some of those present mentioned having to invest a lot of time to prepare and facilitate events where everyone has a good time, but nothing bigger happens later to keep people working on the same goal, and energy dissipates. In the end, you can make valuable connections over a beer or meeting a friend of a friend with much lower costs.

So for futurespotters Bucharest we should be thinking how to shape it for the long run… so when people leave the room they have found new/common things to work on together. If you have thoughts on this it’d be great to share them as comment to the call’s notes, so more of us who were there can build up…

PS Scara de bloc looks just like a great idea, congrats! thought of growing it and work with more flats and halls?

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running action based workshops

Hi there,

Good question. Tough answer.

And certainly, I don’t have tips and tricks.

As a little tool I found useful is having an online and printed picture of people taking part in workshops (with a photo and a very short presentation of that they do and what answers they seek) seems to be more helpful in connecting people, at least on small pieces they need to get their projects moving.

In practice, I made workshops where people were not there for a common challenge but for their own (organizational) challenges.

I think  people have little time to invest in voluntary projects. Anyone can admit that paid projects/jobs are first on the agenda and then come all the rest. So, if we take that into account, greater goals are difficult to coordinate as people involved have their own schedules.

Also, people need to trust the larger goal and their leader(s). Otherwise, they are concerned they are investing time in something that is not materializing the way they wanted.

As for Scara de bloc project, I am trapped for the moment and can’t take it to the next level. It’s more complex that I imagined , mostly because of people living in the blocks (who are not a community, but a group of people who are sometimes tolerating each other). Besides that, I am a young mother and I also I need to work first on monetized projects and after that on my other projects.

All my best and look forward to meeting you all, as I feel a nice energy moving around.

PS. Have to admit that this is the first platform I am on that connects people from such various areas that seek to find answers and are not afraid to ask questions