Trust in Play - Update November

Workspaces Culture Squad
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The activities regarding Trust in Play are moving slowly but steadily, our goals for the first three months are mainly 3:

  • start the platform development (here the first update)
  • secure the co-financing for the project (our goal is 24k)
  • start developing the team that will work on the project

As for the platform here is the first update, in the next weeks we are going to fill the answers, have a first running version in December and a more refined one at the end of January.

On the co-financing we have two update, one is good the other not so :slight_smile:

This year I will be mainly in Baltimore, being the Game Designer in Residence at the MICA game lab.
MICA (Maryland Institute College of Art) is an Art Academy, very design oriented, where I will teach and research the topic of games and immersive experience.

I’ve pitched to Jason Corace (the Game lab director) the opportunity to involve some of the students of the Game Design concentration, having them coming to the Athens workshops and then design an urban game remotely, he said yes, and we are now working on the final proposal for the chair of the department and the administrative side.

It’s going to be a small contribution (2000€) but I think it’s a very good link because:

  • MICA is a well known institution in the US, if we are thinking about the fact that we are going to create a school, the more connection we have with Academy the better
  • we have now a connection to the US market/scene and this will enrich the conversation
  • students here are amazing!!

Together with @noemi Noemi we pitched the project to the Rijeka and Cres ECoC committee but we didn’t went through, because of budget limitation they cannot be partner of the project.
This is really a bummer, I’m believe that urban games are a really successful and fun way to engage culturally people in the public space as we saw in Matera and Plovdiv recently (Plovdiv just hosted the second Inception urban games festival) so maybe is just a matter of bad timing (2020 it’s too close?) or offer.

Next steps on this is going to be re-connect with Matera and Plovdiv that signed a Memorandum of Understanding during the application process.

I didn’t have the time to think about the project team yet, next update will be about that, in particular I will try to highlight what are the activities requested so if someone inside Edgeryders is interested we can start a conversation about it :slight_smile:

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Too bad about Cres…they seemed really enthused about the prospect.

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I know a large number of theatre makers/ games designers who live and work out of London. Some do Urban Games, others are involved in Escape Rooms and immersive theatre games.
I’m not sure if they can bring much to table in terms of co-finance (or if you’d want to work in the U.K. environment given all the ??? Around at the moment)

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@alex_levene this will become key when we are in the second phase of the project, and we are going to create a small community about the theme, thanks!

Yes, right now I don’t have many ideas, in the next days I will check with Matera and Plovdiv and let’s see!

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@matteo_uguzzoni, about co-financing: I suggest you talk to @hugi and @brooks. As you know, we are opening an office in Stockholm in January, with them at the helm, and the Nordics have generous funding for culture. In fact, particip.io is funded by an art grant. Worst case scenario, you check in with the one and get to meet the other.

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A quick update about the co-financing:

  • Plovdiv, I’m having a call the 27th
  • Matera didn’t respond (I’ve contacted Francesco Caldarola but they are busy with the launch of the year)
  • MICA we have the offer in the hands of the Chair

new leads

  • with Dimitar (more here) from Arte Urban Collectif we are going to help each other in the different calls and we are going to participate in their summer school with a 3 hours talk (2 or 3 of August 2018) and they are interested on participating as observer to the Athens workshop.
    Potentially we can bring some of the games that the school will produce to a Festival in Sofia in 2020.
  • I’m now talking with the Tecnologico de Monterrey (similar to MIT in Mexico), with them we could have the same collaboration that we have with MICA (a group of students participating in the Athens workshop).
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That sounds promising Matteo! With respect to timelines, I think strategically if we can get potential partners in with the strong offer that is Athens and the learning and networking experience there, we are half way through!

Question to @GotheInstitutAthen : are we limited in the number of people we can invite in the Athens program fall 2019? I would see us in the team joining, the game designers recruited to that point and ideally 3-5 more people from the edgeryders/ Trust in Play network. Would that be reasonable? NB this is just my personal early day question.

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