Deep breaths, clenched fists, here comes another JUGG-ER-NAUT!
No, not really. But instead, an interesting archive project from the folks at the Social Futures Institute in Teeside all about the steel industry in the North East and its social impact. They are also doing good works to engage the public in their local history, and they're looking for volunteer engineers...
Go here, they'll explain it much better than me.
Two organisations in the U.K. - the Royal Society of Arts and NESTA - are carrying out research in to how people can innovate in networks, rather than either on their own or simply with the person the other side of the waste basket.
In another part of the park, J.D. Stanley at Cisco has been working hard for several years on Digital Swarming: or how to combine inputs from people, machines and other data sources, digitize them and place them on to networks.
All of this work falls in to the category of trying to understand how people can create, collaborate and share new ideas across dispersed places and spaces.
It's exciting, important and without a doubt what matters in a world in which the connectedness of people, information and technology is all-pervasive. But is there something missing?
Sometimes, animals don't relate but share stuff and copy one another.
At other times, states or experiences change by accident or projection.
In other words, some relationships form on the basis of what writer and Kentucky farmer Wendell Berry once called sympathetic vibration and saw in the behaviour of a violin:
The A string of a violin is designed to vibrate most readily at about 440 vibrations per second: the note A. If that same note is played loudly not on the violin but near it, the A string may hum in sympathy.
Put another way, what may matter in networked innovation is not just mechanics or structure, but also tone - a tone that's set not just by trust but also momentum, and the design of a stage upon which people feel able and want to perform.
Image of Eliasson installation courtesy of Anna Maria Leon, horses by grandylion, window reflection by lux fecit.
A project by Piece Studio If You Don't See it aims to:
"....raise awareness surrounding the social problems facing our cities. Many issues are swept under the rug, hidden from a large part of the population. As long as these issues are kept “out of sight,” nothing will be done to fix them. The goal of If you don’t see it is to empower everyday people to get the word out, take action, and help solve the problems."
Inauguration Day in Boston may prove to be a little unusual. Manefesto!Slam is planning to perform manifestos while riding a biodiesel bus around town.
They are asking for participants!
"Tuesday, January 20th, 2009 - Inauguration Day - 7-9PM.
We invite you to stand on a soap box to read, sing, dance, scream, build, perform – to SLAM! – your own (or your favorite) manifesto. In this celebration, we will climb aboard a bio-diesel bus and drive through Boston broadcasting our individual and collective voices throughout the city. Join us to manifest the visions we have, the politics we feel, and the movements we revere."
Via: Jane Marsching Via: Groundswell Collective
UnLtd and Changemakers, two of the big players in youth social enterprise and development have launched the Big Challenge
A chance for young people to tackle the biggest problems we face in society today, with development money and project support up for grabs.
Inspiring stuff.
Internationally known artist James Powderly has been detained by Beijing authorities. Students for a Free Tibet are reporting that James was arrested preparing to debut a new work and technology of protest, the L.A.S.E.R. Stencil. Word came via Twitter that he has been arrested, and his whereabouts remain unknown.
SFT gives background on the project:
The work, “The Green Chinese Lantern,” uses a 400 milliwatt handheld green laser with micro-stencils to beam simple messages and images up to three stories high on surfaces such as billboards, buildings, and bridges. The Laser Stencil technology was developed in conjunction with Students for a Free Tibet.
This is the clean and simple, inspirational image of cities that we like - and it's fantastic.
But in the London Observer, design writer and curator Dejan Sudjic offers a great reminder of some of the complicated and dirty casting that delivers the reality:
Cities are made by an extraordinary mix of do-gooders and bloody-minded obsessives, of cynical political operators and speculators.
They are shaped by the unintended consequences of the greedy and the self-interested, the dedicated and the occasional visionary.
The hole-in-one here is that cities are made by people - and (more than) occasionally mad ones at that.
Not just the real estate dealers in their sheepskin coats, or the shady, cynical operators in City Hall but also the total fanatics.
This is an image of some of the bloody-minded obsessives that I have been working with over the last few years on an urban renewal project in the U.K.
There are many people missing from the shot but this picture includes community leaders, an architect, a property developer, a former school cook and a cleaner who won an Order of the British Empire - in part for her commitment to the cause.
Every town or city in the world has such a group.
Dejan calls them urban obsessives.
Doug Henton of Collaborative Economics has a better romantic catch-all description of the cadre.
He calls them civic revolutionaries.
WorldChanging's Alex Steffen recently published a piece titled The Politics of Optimism. I think what's most important about his analysis is this statement:
I'm more and more convinced that incrementalism in the absence of committed vision almost always serves the politics of impossibility.
It coincides with some recent thoughts I've been having about the role that art and design can (and should) play in activism. As committed artists and designers, we need to be more holistic in their approach, and work to enact social change, rather than simply live public lives of social concern. Steffen imagines the possibilities when we think optimistically about our contributions. Optimism makes possible:
This, along with much of what happens over at WorldChanging, is a worthwhile read!
On May 10, 2008 -Pangea Day - sites in Cairo, Kigali, London, Los Angeles, Mumbai and Rio de Janeiro will be linked live to produce a program of powerful films, visionary speakers, and uplifting music.
The program will be broadcast live to the world through the Internet, television, digital cinemas, and mobile phones.
You can also arrange to host an event on that day.
According to the Social Capital Blog numbers of young people voting last week in the US on 'Super Tuesday' have quitupled in some areas.
In Massachusetts, the youth vote in the 2008 primary doubled from the 2000 with an estimate that 25% voters under age 30 voted this year, compared with 11% in the 2000 primary.
In Tennessee the youth vote quintupled from 3% in 2000 to 15% on Super Tuesday.
In Georgia, 280,000 voters under age 30 voted on Super Tuesday, a tripling in the turnout rate to 21% from the 7% that voted in the 2000 Georgia primary.
The youth vote tripled in Missouri, and Oklahoma and doubled in Connecticut relative to 2000.
Pic from a zine by Anthony Burrill
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