Thriving too

Social Dining: Big tables + New Behaviours

I had the pleasure of have having lunch at Hub Islington last week. Laura and I popped over there to meet Amy Smith the new editor for The Community Lover's Guide to Islington and to talk to the Hub team about their clever use of The Civic Crowd website to map and connect with projects in the local community.  I really enjoyed the friendly and fun lunch – and the delicious food which magically appeared through everyone bringing and making a range of salads, soups etc. 

Food sharing in a community setting is much more than sharing big tables. There is a whole range of new ideas and behaviours springing up  - but overall from our work and study there are lots of signs that people want to spend time together in a way that goes beyond arranged social lunches and dinners – and moves towards a more inclusive, community feel, using food as a way for getting to know people in an informal setting.

And people are so clever - especially with a small amount of inspiration from what other communities are doing. In two of the workshops we did with Neighbourhood Challenge groups, one in Lower Green and the other in Boothtown, people came up with some fantastically imaginative ideas on how they could possibly use food and cooking to build relationships and using their existing resources, without waiting for big events, lots of funding... or permissions.

The Lower Green group had the idea that although they didn’t have a big enough kitchen for shared cooking on the scale they would like, they did have a big hall.  So their idea was to come together, prepare the food together, and then take it home to their own kitchens to cook it…. And then come back together to eat it.  The Boothtown group thought that rather than trying to engage everyone in a big street party straight away, that they would hold weekly suppers in the street, moving from one house to the other, growing the number of people taking part each week.

Sharing food is as old as the hills. But below are some examples of how social dining looks and feels different to a regular restaurant’s consumer-based offering (as lovely as that is too)... or indeed a lunch or dinner at a friends house.

Update: If you are interested in encouraging more social dining, where you live, or work for a local authority, here's the brilliantly easy way that the Hackney Chief Exec and team have decided to do it.

Bring Your Own Restaurant

Do it yourself fine dining on the streets of Holyoke. A plein air potluck held every other Friday.

Outdoor Community Kitchen - Copenhagen

I visited this last summer.  Every week up to 80 people in the local neighbourhood bring dishes and share a meal together.

School Kitchen in Rotterdam

Maurice Specht (right) in the kitchen of a [very inspiring] school in Rotterdam - made completely available for the community to use.

Kitchain 

Modular furniture designed for social dining in a public space.

Collaboration O 

Communal dining area at their collaborative workspace.

Sunday Soup - Meal-based micro-granting events (below pics from Bologne and New York's FEAST)

Streetfeast  A day of local lunches across Ireland - as an excuse to share good food, meet new people who live near you, celebrate our streets and show what is possible when a group of people come together to do something special. Organised by Community Lover's Guide to Dublin editor Sam Bishop, and crew. 

Community Lover's Guide: One down, many more to come!

Almost a year after suggesting we make a local edition of Hand Made, 9 March saw the official launch of the Community Lover's Guide to Rotterdam! A collection of 14 initiatives highlighting inspiring and creative ways in which people have been forging bonds and creating communities. Using empty spaces, shops, kids, food, greenery, sand, books, stories, art, and symbols in new and old ways has resulted in some amazing projects.

Making the book has been a thrilling experience. In showed me again how many people are actively trying to make their city into a better place to live. I decided to start the book with an introductory chapter explaining this feeling. So the first draft of this chapter was called 'For the love of public space'  because what I think all the projects collected in this book show is the care, pride and ambition people show for their environment and each other. But it didn't quite get to the significance I started these initiatives had.

So I ended up writting a different chapter called 'Desire Lines', arguing that we should see the projects brought together as social equivalents of the desire lines you see in public space. And just as city planners don't really know how to deal with these desire lines (ignore them, take them into account and make them into official roads, or pave them over from time to time to keep the appearance of the official world as the only way up) policymakers, scientists, media and fellow citizens also find it difficult to relate to these projects. They like them, but what is their particular value? I don't have an answer to this question, but have put it out there as an invitation to explore this with me.

We launched the book in a ‘Community Lover's Lab’ over the course of 3 days, in an empty shop on one of the main shopping streets in Rotterdam. People were welcomed in with a Pie Lab (offering free pie on a china plate), and invited to share what they wanted to see more of in their neighbourhood, and to add assets to a big map of the area. Some were just curious and left after a small exchange, others stayed for an hour talking about the neighbourhood, but also the economy, the value of money, education and coffee shops. It was a really fun and energizing experience.

more pictures of the lab can be found at: http://www.tumblr.com/blog/communityloverslab

Other activities included a conversation with a mixed group of project initiators, urban professionals and researchers gathering to try and find the right language to grasp the value and meaning of the projects brought together in the book. In turned out to be a very difficult thing to do; to have a conversation publicly allowing for doubt in understanding what is happening around us. It has led to a new experiment called 'Doubt-lab' in which we will be trying to find safe conversation formats to publicly express and work with doubts. More will be up on the Social Lab before too long – and it would be great to share others experiences.

You can find all the Dutch chapters here, or buy the book here. The English edition of the Community Lover's Guide to Rotterdam will be available online for free, and in hard copy print from mid-April. So keep a close I on Twitter (@mauricespecht) for the announcements 

We have also developed a 3 day ' Immerse Learning'  experience around the Community Lover's Guide to Rotterdam in which we invite people from abroad to explore and learn from these inspiring projects first hand. We call this trip 'Into the Field'. More details can be found here 

All in all what started a year ago as a quaint remark has now gone into its second phase. With the first book coming out, and other editions from different cities as London (Hackney), West-Alabama, Birmingham, Utrecht and Minneapolis around the corner, the potential of this project is becoming more and more clear to me. It's an inspiring way of building a local and an international network of people changing the world bit by bit.For an overview of all the future edition visit Community Lover's Guide to the Universe.

 

The Ad Hoc Enquiries: Do you have a new theory?

Starting in February 2012 Social Spaces will be running a series of 12 exploratory new events at Hub Westminster.

The primary assumption for the project is that there is new knowledge to be built and that we need to find new collaborative ways of building it.

These weekly Enquiries are structured events designed to give people who have designed and implemented innovation local projects an opportunity to describe their work and their emerging insights to a group of interested and experienced peers. These innovation projects are required to be working specifically in the participatory paradigm where creative and strategic solution seeking and collaborative working are their most evident characteristics. 

What happens at an Enquiry?

The evenings will begin with a sociable supper, during which the ‘theorist(s)’ will present their project, their theory of change and new emergent theory - followed by a number pieces of evidence to support their theory. 

Each participant in turn will state their core disciplinary perspective e.g. science, philosophy, design etc and offers either a supporting or challenging statement for the theory, connecting with other knowledge bases to understand and interpret the new theory. 

How will the Enquiries be documented?

Each week the event will ‘extreme’ recorded to a structured and pre-set format and set into a large format digital/on demand book including all participants names and responses. The events will be audio live streamed - and later converted into podcasts.

Why are they called The Ad Hoc Enquiries?

Enquiry

The name ‘enquiry’ goes some way to describe the format for the evenings. The name implies that the answers to our new questions are not currently evident and that some specific process is needed to draw out the ideas and examine the evidence.

The purpose of these events is a serious one, and the idea of calling it an ‘enquiry’ implies that some noteworthy and important work will take place during these evenings.   ‘Enquiry’ is also an academic term to describe an investigation into a specific topic or question.

Ad Hoc

The word ‘ad hoc’ is a term used in a number of contexts including scientific and philosophical theory; national investigations; technology systems and networks theory. There is also a link to the term Adhocracy, described by Alvin Toffler in the book Future Shock to mean an organisational structure working in the opposite way to a bureauracy.

How have we developed the format?

We have used understanding of how thinking in a new type of social setting might take place to develop this new format.  The events are structured to achieve knowledge creation through social and intellectual interaction and to be respectful of people’s ideas and the time they are offering to the project through the documentation and sharing process. 

The format takes account of the different phases individual and collective cognition might take place: stimulation/processing/connection/discussion/synthesis/building further on emergent ideas. 

The structure secures the serious aspects of the project's aims, and will therefor also allow a great deal of playfulness and fun to be injected into the evenings. We will be running these events in *very* strict order... possibly even using a gavel....

Call for new theories - do you have one?

 The first stage in preparing for these events is to ask people to submit their ideas for a theory they would like to present.

1. Have you developed an innovative local project?

2. Does this project work in the Creative/Collaborative paradigm?  

What we mean here is the work should not work in the Consumer, Representative, Charity or Challenge participatory paradigms.  There may be some of these in the mixture - but overall the project needs to work more collaboratively with communities and local authorities, possibly reconfiguring existing systems and fundamentally changing the way the community interacts in some way (See here and here for more details on how we see the Creative/Collaborative paradigm)

Apply here!

Deadline for applications to present a theory: 25 January 2012 

Register early interest to attend and participate in an Ad Hoc Enquiry here!

More pics of our cubes

 

Social Spaces: Solar Powered Pops

Isn't this beautifully done... Solar powered van selling ice pops....

Fun Theory, Twicket and spots of time

In an earlier post I said two things kept me wondering after having heard Richard Reynolds of www.guerrillagardening.org give his public lecture. The first had to do with how we (the public and our officials) seem to have gotten stuck in a strange habit of dealing with public space. The second had to do with how Richard explains the meaning of guerrilla gardening.

For him it’s not so much a political or social story – although it has important political and social meaning – but it all has to do with being fun. People don’t necessarily all want to change the world, but many of us are willing to make it a bit more beautiful. So it starts from where people are, starts with something fun. This down to earth approach struck a nerve with me, but even more so with my girlfriend. She is often charmingly critical when I am talking about big changes the world needs, but now she was as big a force as me to make a contribution to change our environment. So we ended up creating the guerrilla garden in front of our house the next day, together with our daughter. A fun experience, which hopefully is the start of more project like it.

And the interesting thing is, once you are enthusiastic about something, it seems to be all around you. So the rest of this post is a collection of link and quick thought on fun and social action.

The first thing which came in mind was a movie someone whom I often work with showed during a meeting for a housing corporation we organized.

 

On their site – (sponsored by Volkswagen) – they describe fun theory as follows:

This site is dedicated to the thought that something as simple as fun is the easiest way to change people’s behavior for the better. Be it for yourself, for the environment, or for something entirely different, the only thing that matters is that it’s change for the better.

On this site is a whole collection of movie and ideas people sent in as entries for the Fun Theory Award. Whether it has to do with having people throw their rubbish in bins, get more people to obey speed limits, or recycling glass, all entries us fun and not the economical, safety or environmental cause as a way of changing behavior.

Another recent example came from the amazing story of John Popham and his Twicket project, which he introduces in his recapture of the story in a long but interesting post by saying:

This is the story of 15 days in April.

Two random tweets on a Sunday afternoon led, 15 days later, to me standing getting sunburnt in a field, while around 4,500 people watched and listened to a village cricket match online.

 

I won’t recapture the story here, but would encourage you to read his post. Here I want to draw attention to something John wrote in another post reflecting on the meaning of this project:

A key element in the success of #twicket was that it was built around a fun activity. I hope those people who have been championing the cause of rural broadband for years do not mind too much that #twicket seemed to generate more interest in 15 days than much of their campaigning has done in years; but, I think the point is that putting the cricket match up front made people turn their heads in my direction and I then had a platform from which to make some serious points about countryside connectivity

Here we see how fun can have more social impact than direct campaigning. It’s by creating an environment, a platform first (with some trust and social capital invested in it) that you become, or rather enable yourself to express yourself in a manner which actually gets heard by others. This fits nicely with Richards ideas about putting fun before saving the world. And it also ties in with the conversation on community organizing, collaboration and conflict which was sparked of by Tessy with this post and was continued on many places such as … and …

A final example I came across in this recent period was in a blog post by Matthew Taylor from the RSA (but which I can’t find anymore). At the end of this ghost-post he referred to http://spotsoftime.org.uk/

They argue:

Small moments can make a big difference – they can lift us up and make us feel good about the world.  Seeing a beautiful picture, hearing someone sing a song, reading a favourite poem or just eating a delicious handmade cupcake. Here at ‘spots of time’ we want to multiply these great little moments.

We reckon that there are thousands of you out there keen to do something good in your community with talents and passions you could share.  Chances are though, you’ve not found a way to volunteer without committing to once a week for a year.  But we think changing the world starts small – and that you can have fun at the same time.

What is interesting is that once you are intrigued by something, you seem to pick it up all around you. If people have more examples of projects using fun as a clear starting point for their work, please share them with me.

So can we us this human attribute to nudge people towards public oriented behavior. Can we somehow, by being, collecting and telling stories about militant optimist, slowly change the world for the better. Wouldn’t that be fun?

(a particular link I have not made here, but which is obviously there, is the relation of fun theory to the whole debate on nudging people into action. I have no time to answer the following question, but would love to hear other people’s thoughts: are these the same things, or is nudging something different and if so where does the difference lie?)

Come Out and Play Festival

 

Come out and Play Festival  will celebrate its fifth year of street game fun the weekend of June 4-6 in New York City. This year's festival is being hosted by The Brooklyn Lyceum in Park Slope, Brooklyn.

"Come Out & Play is a three-day festival of street games. The festival seeks to provide a forum for new types of public games and play. We want to bring together a public eager to rediscover the world around them through play, with designers interested in producing innovative new games and experiences."

Tie Me To Your Favourite Thing

I have blogged about Lauren Currie's lovely experiment before... but I was thinking about it just now.... There is something so perfect about it!

Lauren went into the park and asked people to tie a red balloon to something they loved.

Send a Singing Email

Send someone a singing email .... immediately!

 

No Impact Project

I *really* like this No Impact Project. 

It is fun, and could lead to people making real changes to their daily lives by trying their one week 'experiment'. I took to the guy who wrote the book and developed the project straight away. He lived 'no impact' for a year and clips from the film below showed him to be a genuine, non-preachy human! 

Happiness Hat - Tools for Improved Social Inter-Acting

Behaviour change folks are going to love this! 

The Happiness Hat has been designed by Lauren Maccarthy. 

'It is a wearable conditioning device that detects if you're smiling and provides pain feedback if you're not. Frowning creates intense pain but a full smile leaves you pain free! The first in a series of Tools for Improved Social Inter-Acting.' 

Brilliant on *many* levels. 

 

happiness hat from Lauren McCarthy on Vimeo.

I Met and Liked

Notebooks by Archie Grand

In sync

If I had a time machine, I'd go back to the 50's. Icecream soda, halterneck dresses, swing dancing and perfectly coordinated policement on Vespas. *sigh*

Via BoingBoing

If You Like Squashed Faces You Will Like This Video

Via:Marc Bubb

The Longest Way

If this charming 5 minute video from Christoph Rehage doesn't make you feel like travelling ... and growing a beard (I would like to, but obviously can't)... nothing will...

Via: Altruism in the morning

500 Pencils by Social Designer

Social Designer (Good for the greater good) have just launched the 500 Pencils project. 

They have created 500 colours, which when you order get dispatched 25 colours at a time. Social Designer is an offshoot of Design 21 Social Design Network.

I have agreed to become a Creative Ambassador for the 500 pencils project because it supports one of my *very* favourite initiatives.  For every 100 sets of pencils sold, a set will go the DREAM Centre's, UNESCO's art programme for children in post conflict centres. 

There is also a competition where you can win a whole set!

Song for Sunday

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What Makes you happy?

**Really** nice short film by Jon Rawlinson.

Crazy Urban Camping

Import Export Architecten designed a new type of ‘small scale’ urban camping. The mobile UC can be implanted in any city centre that likes to experiment with this new type of camping. UC is a place where adventurous city wanderers can stay overnight, meet other campers and find a safe shelter with basic designed practical facilities.

Please Vote for Thriving Too Blog

Thriving Too has been nominated in the Dorset Cereals 'little blog awards'.  There are some lovely blogs nominated so happy to be in such great company.

... but please vote for us. We need/want/desire/hanker for the eggcup prize!!

What's Facebook?

Jelly Mongers

Bompas & Parr make jelly. I think they are fab!

Herd Behaviour

Sheep + LED lights = hilarity.

More New Math

From More New Math

Laugh at Perfection - It's Boring

Cult of Done via Dan Pink

Pointless Games

Whether you use play to stimulate creativity or learning, or as this brilliant site describes: as Pointless Games, I can't imagine any situation where having a good knowledge of these games wouldn't be helpful. 

If your point is to help people reconnect - break down some formal social barriers - then game playing is a wonderful thing to do... It seems we *really* need new and interesting ways of connecting ....

Bernie DeKoven and Elyon DeKoven have generously put together a comprehensive and really fun collection of games ... take a look.

Giant Cards (pic above) was a final project of the USC, School of Interactive Media Department:

"Students learned that getting busy people to participate in a public game can be challenging. How can you make something exciting, inviting - easy to try, and rewarding to play over time? Large-scale gaming is inviting, the students agreed"