WarszawaGratis.info – free culture in Warsaw, Poland

In Helsinki’s Pixelache early April, this was one of the presentations who caught my attention.

Free culture exists in two senses, free from copyright, but also free as in post-monetary sharing.

The latter is the free culture that Wojtek Mejor is addressing with his Warszawa Gratis project, which could serve as a basis for a worldwide network of similar initiatives.

I asked him for his motivation and the genesis of the project and here is the response.

Wojtek Mejor:

“Every day somewhere in the city there are concerts, screenings, theatre plays, lectures, workshops, meetings and other events that don’t require tickets or fees. People meet and do things together without the involvement of money. Already a few years ago I thought it would be wonderful to be able to browse all these events and be able to go out and do things regardless if I had the cash or not. I thought there must be dozens and dozens of such events but information about them is scattered across different media, announced only locally or then spread excusively to a limited group of people. If there are publications or services that include free events in their listings they usually filter them heavily according to own profiles and blend them with all the other events. All in all they weren’t easy to find but to me they felt too valuable to miss.

I started thinking about creating an online free events calendar. It didn’t seem that easy a few years ago maybe because the free tools and services available online were scarse or not as widespread as today. But when I finally started in November 2008 it didn’t take long to put together a simple website. At the moment the service features a calendar with detailed information about each event, addresses, links to the hosting organisations and the source of information. There is also a map with all the places marked that would likely host free events. For the service to be more convincing to new visitors I am also preparing a section that will feature photos and descriptions from past events.

Even though there is a form available on the website through which people can submit their own info because of the technological limitations of the modules I used currently I have to enter all the data into the calendar myself. This system obviously relies too much on my work and my control over what is shown. My future vision of the service is much more than a centrally controlled information resource. I would like to develop it into a broader and participatory platform where people not only enter information about free events they hear about but by means of which they can contact eachother, communicate and organise events, shows, workshops and meetings themselves. There could also be the possibility to support and co-fund such initiatives by means of a p2p funding module.

At the moment it seems that only a small amount of people knows about the project and use it. Nevertheless they use it regularly and I feel intuitively that there is need for such a service to exist and that sooner or later it will be successful. People hava a need to gather, communicate and do things together and if we can do those things without the involvement of money it will only be to our benefit.”

1 Comment WarszawaGratis.info – free culture in Warsaw, Poland

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