We invite you set up a local event in your city, develop and use open circularity solutions and connect to people world wide. Here is how and why:

WHY

‘Planet earth is doomed’. Is it?

Humanity faces enormous challenges: Climate change is marching, resource shortages accelerate, species extinction is faster than ever, and the current rise of fascism in some parts of the world presents us a first impression how people react when they get scared by things changing to the worse for them.

But,

You can’t solve a problem with the same thinking that created it.

-Albert Einstein

We need to recreate our economy – our methods of collaboration and production – to build a future worth living in.

Open Source is a transparent, distributed, collaborative methodology made possible by the internet. Though still in its infancy outside of software, we firmly believe that Open Source offers the most rapid and transformative pathway to create a truly ecological ‘circular’ economy that can meet humanities needs while staying within planetary boundaries and enabling all life forms on earth. And this is what we are working for!

But changing habits isn’t easy. The current methods of production and collaboration are effective and deeply embedded in our everyday life and thinking. Open Source – collaboration methodologies based on transparency – on the other hand is still an unsolved riddle in many areas. Let’s solve it! Let’s experiment and make progress. Let’s use and build upon existing open circularity solutions and create more of them. First pioneers have created projects and business that show us the potential of openness and the ecosystem thinking that goes with it. We all can start with Openness and Circularity right now.

So once again we invite you to join us for a global event. Switch on your brains and creativity, activate your optimism, zest for life and local community so that together, we can imagine and build a positive future. Here is a Guide for Participation:

Create A Local Event – FAQ

OSCEdays connects people on the subject of Open Source Circular Economy. In the past 3 years more than 100 cities participated with local events contributing to the progress. In 2018 & 2019 we continue the journey focussing for the first time on using/implementing the resources that were created by the community in the past. It is a big moment :-). Join us, set up your local event, and let’s make progress together. Here is how:

Date & Size

There is no required minimum size for a local event. A room with a smaller group of people working for a few hours or hundreds of people working several days, everything is possible.

You can set up your event whenever you like. Every year so far we announced a global date. This date is not mandatory. And there is no date set for 2019 yet.

Program

What are good activities for an event?

Open Source and Circular Economy are pretty new questions. So some local organizers struggled in the past to find content for an event. But with the work of the past years there are now first good resources to use and build upon at your local event. We invite you to implement open solutions and develop them further. There are also other options for content like talks, workshops and challenges. But let’s start with the solutions:

1) Play With ‘Open Solutions’

The OSCEdays forum contains many valuable things. Really well documented and ready to use resources are marked with “Solution”. Here is a list with a collection of them. For most it is self explanatory how to use them for interactive hands on sessions in an event. Some have extra remarks to support this. So browse the list and find possible activities and content.

Examples from the list:

• Open Source Business Models For Circular Economy. A design-thinking tool and workshop format on open source (business) ecosystems and the practical design of products & services for them. >
  
• Precious Plastic: Well documented machines you can build yourself to recycle plastic locally, build new products with it and set up a business around. >>
  
• ‘Make It Circular’: An open poster on circular making you can translate, print, hang up and run prototyping sessions with. >>

• Circular Wedding (Or Celebration): Learn from Seigos wedding tutorial and create a zero waste event circular style! You can have a circular wedding or adapt the methodology to any other event or celebration. >>
  
• PRe-Use & Re-Use Sessions: Find existing circular modularity in your environment and build infrastructures or products with them. >>
  
• Circular City Hacking: A list of urban interventions/city hacks to transform your city – and to experiment and campaign for the open source circular city. Run a hackathon or implementation session with them. >>

(more here)

Think about combining things! Build an urban garden with reused infrastructure and structures based on a unified grid for example

Call For Open Circularity Solutions!

Do you have great, open and well documented circularity solutions people could use locally, run events around and implement them in their city? For example a hardware that can be built during an event? Let us know Here!

Facilitation Of Open Solutions 

For most if not all of these resources you’ll need someone to facilitate a public session about them. Do it yourself: Pick a resource and implement it. This is already an event. But if you want to run a larger event with several sessions try to find people in your community interested in doing the same with other solutions. Sessions can be well prepared upfront or you can come together and have a deep look at the resource only at the event.

You can do this also university like: Build a group that wants to set up an event and then each of you picks one activity (solution) to prepare and run.

You can also reach out to the creators of the solution. Maybe they have some time.

2) Challenges, Talks, Workshops Of Your Local Actors

In almost every city there are people working on sustainability solutions. This might be companies or startups or other types of organizations like NGOs. They probably don’t use or build a lot of Open Source resources yet. Invite them to your event. There are a couple of things they can do:

TALKS

Most of them are probably ready to do a presentation. Talks are good, inspiring stories are important. But try to make your speakers not just deliver advertisement talks, but share really meaningful, enabling information and details (how is it working). You can ask your speakers about Openness, Open Source and transparency in the Q&A. Some might have heard about it already and have some ideas or opinions. You don’t have to convince them about Openness. All ideas are welcome.

WORKSHOPS

But maybe you can get them to do more than a talk. They can bring their product, open it – invite people to screw it open, ask questions about technical details, improve it together and so on. Find someone who can teach how to grow mushrooms, how to solder, how to avoid waste in your house etc. Some inspiration how to share solutions in other formats than talks can be found here.

‘CHALLENGES’

Challenges have been the core of the OSCEdays in the past. In a challenge a person, project or company presents and prepares a question or problem and invites people to help solving it. This often needs facilitation. Try to make sure there is good documentation of the problems and solutions afterwards. To get inspiration for challenges have a look here (formats) and here & here(content)

Ok. With this you should have some ideas what will or might happen at your event.

Some Helpful Resources

Pointers and resources for organizing and communicating your event.

• Funding: There are plenty of options how to fund an OSCEdays event: Sell tickets, try to find sponsors, apply for grants. Practical tips and resources that might help you to fund your event are collected and shared here.
  
• OSCEdays Graphic Design Files: We share all OSCEdays graphic designs under open licenses and in editable formats. You can use them and adapt them as you like. Many did in the past and created really beautiful remixes and additions to the available graphics. Have a look into our public graphic design folder.
  
• Video: In the °OSCE TV° category on our forum you can find tutorials how you can document and connect your event with video streamings.

Sign Up! How To Register Your Event

To get your event officially on the map we like you to register it by creating a topic about on our forum. With this you become visible on the global level and a start is made to connect your local activities to the global community.

The forum might look complicated at first but it isn’t. And we have an easy to follow step by step guide for registering your event. Continue here!

In that topic you will also find some suggestions how to make your local community use the forum to share information and collaborate with other cities. Start here!

Reprinted from oscedays. Find the original post here!

IMAGE CREDITS: 18L Module, by Nikusha Chkhaidze, CC-BY-SA; Bee, by Jon Sullivan, Public Domain; Mushrooms, by Dax & ZeroWasteLabs.Com; Open Structures Part, by Lukas Wegwerth, CC-BY-SA; Cargo, by The City Is Open Source, CC-BY-SA; Beer, by The City Is Open Source, CC-BY-SA; Make It Circular, by OSCEdays, CC-BY-SA; Biohof_arche_5012, by: Arche Zürich, CC-BY-SA; Extruder, by Precious Plastic, CC-BY-SA

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“Manuel Castells The Information Age Trilogy has been one of the most influential works to understand the societal change in the awake of the digital revolution of the last decades. It is, as Frank Webster (2002: 97) points out, one of “the most illuminating, imaginative and intellectually rigorous account of the major features and dynamics of the world today”. The theory of the network society developed in these books “open[ed] up new perspectives on a word reconstituting itself around a series of networks strung around the globe on the basis of advanced communication technologies” (Stalder, 2006: 1). Indeed, the work of Manuel Castells has influenced a generation of scholars, shaped a research agenda and has got important repercussions beyond academia (Bell, 2007).

Yet, more than two decades after the launch of his theory, the network society and the information age have been developing at a faster pace that anyone suspected in terms of: socio-technological and economic transformation (e.g. platform capitalism, sharing economy, robotization, algorithmic driven society, artificial intelligence and IoT, etc.), power geometries, new identities and socio-political contestation (e.g. populism, indignados, gilet jaunes, alt-right, technopolitics, buen vivir, #meetoo, LGBTIQ, black-lives-matters, youth for climate change, etc.) and new geopolitics and geographies of inequality and power (the rise of China as global power, multipolarity, the emergence of the Global South, the uneven impact of environmental crises, etc.).

At the same time, during the last decades a number of theoretical and epistemological trends have developed or consolidated in the social sciences that can be read as either influenced by or challenging the Trilogy position. Among others, the rise of network theories, mobilities paradigm, communication and power theory, technopolitics, post-colonialism or the relation between digital societies and nature.

In this regard, as 2021 will mark the 25th anniversary of the publication of the first volume of Manuel Castells’, it is time to revisit the trilogy and explore the relevance of Castells’ pioneering work in the light of the current state of the network society and of the ways to research about it. Thus, our aim is to gather together scholars from a wide range of disciplines – Including Castells himself – to engage with the Trilogy and debate on its contributions, legacies but as well shortcomings and new developments not envisioned at the time of its launch to try to develop a critical perspective on future trajectories of the network society and the information age.

We welcome contributions that sympathetically and/or critically engage with the Trilogy in any theoretical, methodological or empirical topic around the contemporary developments of the network society. Examples of areas and themes that we would like to discuss (but are not limited to) are:

• Information, data, datafication and the (new) sources of economic value;
• Networks, space-times, economy and society;
• Contesting the network society power configurations: politics, social movements and new identities;
• The network society in the world: uneven geographies and geopolitics of the information age;
• The Trilogy of the Network Society in front of the new turns in social sciences;
• The influence on the epistemic communities either geographically (e.g. Latin America, Europe, Asia…) or disciplinary (Sociology, media, geography, STS…).

Important dates

Workshop: Barcelona, 10-11 June 2020

• 23/06/2019 → Abstract submission. 500 words + up to 5 keywords
  Submit your proposals to [email protected]
• 23/07/2019 → Communication of abstract acceptance
• 20/3/2020 → Full paper submission: 5.000 – 8.000 words (mandatory). Papers will be the basis for the comments and discussion during the workshop. They will be submitted to a special issue / edited book

Practical Information

Confirmed keynote speakers:

• Prof. Manuel Castells (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, University of Southern California)
• Prof. Fernando Calderón (FLACSO, Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad Nacional San Martín Argentina) 
• Prof. Ida Susser (The City University of New York) 
• Prof. John Thompson (University of Cambridge)

The workshop is free of charge. Food will be provided at the conference for presenters. Accommodation and transportation are not included. 

The workshop presentations should be the basis for a special issue in an international peer-review journal by 2021 to discuss the work of Manuel Castells in the 25th anniversary of the launch of the first volume.

 Organization Committee (IN3)

• Mireia Fernández-Ardèvol
• Ramon Ribera-Fumaz
• David Megías

 Organization

This workshop is organized by the IN3 – Internet Interdisciplinary Institute, Open University of Catalonia. The workshop constitutes a central part of the IN3’s 20th anniversary.”

Further info and queries: [email protected]

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12.00pm, Thu 23 May 2019 – 6.00pm, Sat 3 August 2019

Arts Catalyst
74-76 Cromer Street
London
WC1H 8DR

FURTHER INFORMATION

Free, no need to book

we-are-in-this together-but-we-are-not-one-and-the-same” — Rosi Braidotti

Towards the Planetary Commons is a new exhibition investigating agency and autonomy in the face of global ecological crises. Encompassing artist film, an evolving installation and a programme of talks and workshops, the programme reflects on different ways of living and how new knowledge can emerge from struggles against current ecopolitical challenges.

Part I
Showing Marwa Arsanios: Who’s Afraid of Ideology? Part I (2017) and Who’s Afraid of Ideology? Part 2(2019)
23 May – 6 July 2019 | Preview: Wednesday 22 May, 6.30pm 

Part II 
Showing Paloma Polo: The earth of the Revolution (2019) 
11 July – 3 August 2019 | Preview: Wednesday 10 July, 6.30pm 

Neoliberal policies imposed on communities of humans and non-humans reinforce strategies of land grabbing and monoculture, threatening the land and its biodiversity. Whilst corporations and governments alike remain removed from accountability for pollution, natural resource extraction and displacement of entire communities, across the world, in regions such as the Philippines and Kurdistan, people are collectively adopting new modes of decision-making and self-governance through approaches inspired by eco-feminism, class struggle and planetary commoning practices. 

In one room of the exhibition is a rotating programme of artist films by Lebanese artist Marwa Arsanios and Spanish artist Paloma Polo, all of which are presented for the first time in the UK. 

In Who’s Afraid of Ideology? Part I (2017) Arsanios addresses forms of self-governance and knowledge production that have emerged from the autonomous women’s movement in Rojava. Shot in the mountains of Kurdistan and through recorded testimony, the film tracks the practical work of the movement – how to use an axe, how to eat fish within its biological cycles of production, when to cut down a tree for survival and when to save it. It explores how individuals come to a conscious participation in the movement; how they become part of the guerrilla, highlighting group learning as essential to the movement itself. In the film, the soundtrack of testimonies, analyses, and critical histories from those within and in proximity to the movement are edited together in a single, solid density. In Who’s Afraid of Ideology? Part 2 (2019) Arsanios focuses on the ecofeminist groups that form part of the movement, honing in on the alliance between communities of women, nature and animals and problematising the care roles ‘naturally’ assigned to women. 

The second phase in the programme, will see artist Paloma Polo’s The earth of the Revolution (2019) premiered for the first time. Emerging from Polo’s research in the Philippines, cultivated over three years, and during which time the artist located herself at the heart of the ongoing democratic struggles in the region – a struggle in which marginalised countryside communities are actively fighting for democratic and progressive transformations, emancipation and the common good – this new work offers viewers a glimpse into the political practices that underlie the revolution. Segmented into scenes, the film closely follows the guerrilla as they go about their everyday tasks, from lessons and habitual meetings, reporting and assessments to personal conversations and confidences, moments of solitude and rest. Blurring the distinctions between documentary and artist film, The earth of the Revolution seeks to expand our understanding of how revolution manifests itself in a contemporary context, reflecting on some of the positive human elements and processes that might arise from such conflicts. 

Arts Catalyst’s second space will take the form of a ‘living room,’ an evolving installation showcasing case studies that emerge from the programme, presented within the framework of a modular environment designed by artist Lorenzo Sandoval. Works by collective practice They Are Here, artists-in-residence throughout 2019, will be presented alongside Sandoval’s installation. They Are Here draw from research over the past two years into Wardian Cases, a botanical container developed in the early 19th Century to transport plants across great distances. Prototypes for New Wardian Cases (2019) are material structures modelled on non-European architectural histories that function as a form of speculative design. In the context of the public programme, They Are Here will present a live-mix of their new audio-visual work, BRUNO, an enveloping, free-ranging meditation on the relationships between ecology, migration and the urban environment. 

Towards the Planetary Commons is part of Arts Catalyst’s Test Sites programme, an ongoing co-inquiry exploring the rapid transformations in human and non-human lives caused by environmental change. Featuring works by international artists, this next phase in the project opens up the programme to broader planetary perspectives. An accompanying programme of talks, conversations and workshops will be announced soon via Arts Catalyst’s website.

Image: Paloma Polo: Still from ‘The earth of the Revolution’ (2019), courtesy the artist

Reposted from the Arts Catalyst website: https://www.artscatalyst.org/towards-planetary-commons-reimagining-infrastructures-autonomy

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About the Symposium

We are delighted to invite proposals for papers for the International Research Symposium on Post-Automation? Towards Democratic Alternatives to Industry 4.0, taking place at the Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex, 11-13 September 2019. The Symposium uses a workshop format to explore the idea of post-automation, critically and constructively. Theoretically-informed and empirically-grounded papers are invited that address what a “post-automation” vantage point might bring to ongoing debates about how societies produce and consume, in light of social concern for sustainable developments, dignified work and social justice, and a business-led push for Industry 4.0 and circular economy.

Post-automation is a concept in the making. The idea is sparked by the observation that, globally, groups of people are appropriating and hacking digital technologies for design, prototyping, and manufacture that were implicated initially in successive waves of automation: code, sensors, actuators, computer numerically controlled machine tools, design software, microelectronics, internet platforms, 3D scanners/printers, video, etc. Yet, in place of work through typical in automation, such as enhanced appearing simultaneously productivity, managerial control, economic growth, people are subverting these technologies for other purposes – human creativity, dignified work, and sustainable production and consumption – and situating these activities in non-industrial and new-industrial spaces. The Symposium will interrogate these technological turnarounds: from their human-displacing and human-disciplining origins, through to the creative experiments and prototypes today. In short, exploring post-automation possibilities.

Clues and hints about post-automation emerge in diverse places: hackerspaces, makerspaces and fablabs; citizen monitoring platforms and open science projects; open hardware platforms and grassroots innovation initiatives; new crafting practices; repair, repurposing and upcycling workshops; libraries and educational institutes opening technology to popular experimentation; citizen laboratories and DIY urbanism; workplace struggles for human-centred, democratic technology. Many of these places work through networks that cut across conventional categories; appearing simultaneously to constitute a movement and infrastructure for social relations with technology radically different to the depopulated visions of cyber-physical systems in Industry 4.0.

An Interdisciplinary Call – Who Should Submit

This call is an invitation for diversity and plurality. Applicants from PhD students to senior Professors are welcome from science and technology studies, sociology of work, social anthropology, engineering, innovation studies, design, geography, sustainability studies, and other relevant areas. The key is to provide an explanation of how your proposed paper can contribute to an open, engaged and collaborative exploration of the idea of post-automation, and to see what work can and cannot be made of that idea. You can propose questions (and answers) that you think should be central to a post-automation research agenda. These might include, for example:

• How can post-automation alter perspectives, understandings and practices in technology-society relations?
• What methods can bring insight, facilitate dialogue, and assist developments in post-automation across the scales of projects, workshops, sectors and societies?
• How is post-automation manifesting in different places and circulating between places, for example across the global North and global South?
• How might social theory in post-automation reframe public debate and move policy beyond reactions to automation, and into proactive alternatives for sustainable technology-society relations?
• How post-automation might help to re-imagine an economy based on commons goods?

How to Apply

I. Please send a 500-word maximum paper abstract and 100-word bio for each author (including contact details and affiliation) as a single document. In both sections, please explain how you relate and contribute to the idea of post-automation. Please email your abstracts as a Word file to [email protected] stating the Symposium title in the subject area of the email. The deadline for abstracts and bios is 20 March 2019.

II. Selected participants will be required to produce a 4,000-5,000 word paper in advance of the Symposium by 15 July 2019 and present it for discussion there. At the Symposium we will read and discuss all the papers, and there will be group activities that map and explore emerging themes.

III. The Symposium will run from 11th September to 13th September 2019 at the Science Policy Research Unit at the University of Sussex in Brighton, UK. Symposium papers will be circulated amongst participants only.

IV. Once papers are accepted, the organisers will negotiate a special issue on post-automation with a leading scientific journal. Participants will contribute revised versions of their paper to the issue, drawing upon insights arising in the Symposium. Revised papers will be submitted to the journal.

V. The Symposium has no fees. Lunch, coffee breaks and the social dinner will be covered by the host organization. The organisers are able to cover the travel and accommodation costs for one author per paper only.

Upcoming Deadlines 2019

• 20 March: Abstracts Submission and Review
• 15 April: Decisions on Abstracts
• 25 July: Papers Submission
• 11-13 September: International Research Symposium
• December: Revised Papers Submitted to Journal for Peer Review”

Organisers

Adrian Smith – Science Policy Research Unit

Mariano Fressoli – Fundación Cenit

More info on this event can be found here.

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Wed 21 November 2018, 18:15 – 20:30 GMT

Makespace Oxford: 1 Aristotle Lane, Oxford OX2 6TP, United Kingdom

REGISTER HERE

Building upon Shareable’s years of experience covering the ‘sharing ecosystem’ and the 137 model policies and case studies curated for the new book, “Sharing Cities: Activating the Urban Commons,” Tom Llewellyn, strategic partnerships director of Shareable, will show how the real sharing economy is already connecting people together, empowering community-led disaster recovery efforts, and working under the radar to meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Tom Llewellyn is a lifelong sharer, commoner, and storyteller who travels the globe inspiring and empowering communities to share for a more resilient, equitable, and joyful world. He’s the Strategic Partnerships Director for Shareable.net, executive producer and host of the podcast documentary series The Response, and co-editor of the book “Sharing Cities: Activating the Urban Commons”.

Following the presentation, attendees will participate in an interactive ‘World Café’ style discussion, working together to evaluate Oxford by exploring the state of things, the available resources, the needs of residents, and what the steps might be to meet those needs together.

This workshop is for anyone interested in exploring how we might activate Oxford’s urban commons together to address some of our city’s most pressing needs. Please bring your enthusiasm, ideas, and any examples of projects you’re already aware of to share and connect with others.

This event is in partnership with the Solidarity Economy Association, an Oxford-based organisation supporting the growth of the UK’s solidarity economy through education, research, and awareness raising projects. The solidarity economy is made up of grassroots organisations, informal meetings, local community groups, co-operatives, associations and networks of organisations in every sector of our economy. They have been created to meet a need within their community, or broader society, that isn’t being met by our mainstream economy, or because those needs are being met in unethical or unsustainable ways. These initiatives all share a set of values that include equal decision-making, equity, sustainability, pluralism, and solidarity, and they are working towards a just and sustainable world, one that puts the real needs of people and our planet first.

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A new initiative Collaboration for Change which is bringing together radical initiatives proposing solutions to the economic, social, environmental and cultural challenges we are facing.

Please keep Sat 6th Oct 2018 free for an event in Derry’s Guildhall which marks the 50th anniversary of the start of the Civil Rights Movement by bringing together radical environmental, economic, cultural and social initiatives to share and learn and possibly create something new together.

Eventbrite Invitation Link

This is an invitation for everyone involved in creating radical progressive alternatives and also for interested individuals.

The event will be a place where those who say it can’t be done take back seat to those who are doing it. (Laura Flanders)

Collaboration for Change is a gathering of citizen-led movements called to mark the anniversaries in 2018 of the Civil Rights Movement in Derry and the signing of the Universal Rights Declaration. We will explore the contributions already being made to building a just and resilient society in Northern Ireland and how we can develop that work by collaboration between the various economic, social, cultural and environmental alternatives. The organisers recognise that our own work can only be enhanced by learning and sharing and we are committed to creating spaces for this to happen.

American activist, speaker, economist and environmentalist Michael Albert will be there to offer his support and expertise.

The 6th October Gathering is the first of three planned events shaping a collaborative movement which puts people and planet first. After our first event on Sat 6th Oct, we will be building a network and making links with similar initiatives worldwide, including P2P.

Header image, the Guildhall: Wikipedia

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Saturday 13 October: 11.00-18.00

Register Here.

What to expect

In his book ‘Tools for Conviviality’ (1973), the late Austrian philosopher Ivan Illich argued that the nature of modern ‘tools’, from machines to schools, had the effect of making people dependent and undermined their own natural abilities. What he called “convivial tools” were those that encouraged people to think for themselves and be more socially engaged.

Convivial Tools is a programme of talks, debates and workshops exploring new strategies for a more cooperative society. Using Ivan Illich’s concept of “conviviality”, it will bring together designers, artists, media theorists, curators, and social thinkers from diverse fields to examine current tools and technologies that encourage alternative modes of production and social relations.

Working together with those in the cooperatives movement – which includes economists, technologists, philosophers, sociologists and proactive citizens – the programme will explore whether they can help to create what Illich would call a convivial society.

Speakers include; John Thackara, Eleanor Saitta, Joseph Rykwert, Ben Vickers, Torange Khonsari, Adam Greenfield, Ben Terrett, Sarah T Gold, Dougald Hine, and many more…

Photo by P. Marioné

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The Fab City Global Initiative is organising the Fab City Summit in collaboration with the City Hall of Paris and the Fab City Grand Paris Association, and it will take place between Wednesday 11 July and Friday 13 July this year. The extensive program takes place at the Parc de la Villette in Paris. An invitation-only event for City Officials and Representatives from the Fab City network will open the conference on the 11th, presented by Anne Hidalgo (Mayor of the City of Paris) in their capacity as European Capital of Innovation Awardees 2017, and Carlos Moedas, European Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation.

The Fab City Lab will be followed by two days of high-profile international speakers at the Fab City conference. This ticketed event includes keynote and conversations with speakers such as Dave Hakkens (Dutch industrial designer and founder of circular economy community Precious Plastic, Neil Gershenfeld (MIT Centre for Bits and Atoms); Saskia Sassen (Professor of Sociology at Columbia University who coined the Global City). A special week-long campus will follow, open to the public from Saturday 14 July and will provide an exciting way for everyone to experience life in a Fab City, with family-friendly hands-on activities, bike tours and fun.

The Paris summit will welcome new cities to the Fab City network, from as far as New Zealand and Brazil. City leaders have identified the network as an invaluable tool for sharing best-practice and concrete experiences in how cities can transition to a future which empowers citizens and ensures productivity and sustainability.

Fab City: A global collaboration project between innovation ecosystems, governments and industry that is enabling the transition to more sustainable and productive cities during the next 36 years. Started in Barcelona in 2014, Fab City stands for human values in the age of technology, and fosters actions and experiments that allow to build new urban futures based on the relocalisation of the production of food, energy and products, and global collaboration. Fab City has been initiated by the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia, MIT Center for Bits and Atoms, the City Council of Barcelona and the Fab Foundation; it operates within the over 1300 strong Fabrication Laboratories (Fab Labs) global network, using it as a distributed infrastructure for innovation and knowledge source to enable the technology needed for cities to produce everything they consume by 2054. As of 2017, 18 cities are part of the global Fab City network: Barcelona, Boston, Somerville, Cambridge, Ekurhuleni, Kerala, Georgia, Shenzhen, Amsterdam, Toulouse, Occitanie Region, Paris, Bhutan, Sacramento, Santiago De Chile, Detroit, Brest, Curitiba.

Join https://summit.fabcity.paris/tickets/

Media Contact: [email protected]

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This 5-day workshop will be hosted at the intercultural makerspace “Habibi.Works”, which is located in Ioannina (Greece).

More details on this call, along with the application form may be found in the following document.

DDMP-cultiMake by P2P Foundation on Scribd

Deadline: 25 June 2018 22:00 CET.

This event is organised in the context of the Distributed Design Market Platform (DDMP) Creative Europe project.

The post Open call for ideas: Crowdsourcing open source agricultural solutions appeared first on P2P Foundation.

It is such a crucial time in human history. It feels as if we are capable of transforming our world, and at the same time we are at the edge of the abyss. In my analysis, governance is at the heart of the great challenges we face – whether or not our societies can protect and create that which we mutually depend on for our survival and wellbeing, our multifaceted commons. We are at a crossroads. Will we live in a world of oligarchs, where antiquated systems, monied interests, elites and corruption undermine our capacity for wise and effective social navigation? Or will the aspirations for distributed, participatory and contributory decision-making create a world of deep democracy and transparency where citizens have real lateral power in forging equitable and sustainable pathways?

Some of my initial ideas on this were put together in this book chapter on the Futures of Governance. Overtime with others I’ve begun to formulate some more general ideas for how governance works across commoning activities, such as through a recent paper co-authored with Michel Bauwens on an Ecology of the Commons.

This is a shared journey and an ongoing exploration for all of us in this movement. Together with Dr. Michelle Maloney, founder of the Australian Earth Laws Alliance and the New Economy Network Australia (NENA), we have developed this one day course called “Transforming Governance for People and Planet” as both an introduction to thinking about the futures of governance and democracy, and as an opportunity to work on synthesis. How do we make sense of the many contexts, threads, innovations in a way that can provide orientation and empowerment in terms of how we see ourselves, individually and collectively, as agents of change?

So in the course we will explore the outline of shifts taking place from a global perspective, current challenges, and the many new innovations, experiments and pathways that are harbingers of change. From the community meeting to the office and work environment, to our local municipal, state and federal systems, and to the global system, we know the context has shifted and the stage has been set for dramatic changes. We will ask the question to participants, at what scale and where do we want to play? The course will provide an overview of the big trends in governance and provide ways in which participants can consider how they want to participate and shape the future. The course intents to bring forth ideas for transforming governance in plain language, with strategies that anyone can use to empower themselves and their communities.

This workshop will present and explore:

• the idea of the “commons” as a framework for rethinking governance;
• how the commons framework provides answers to the critical challenges we face in areas such as: resource management, ecological protection / rights of nature, addressing oligarchy, protecting digital / knowledge commons, humanising and democratising our work and community life, etc;
• an overview of critical historical shifts that bring into relief the great transitions we are experiencing in the early 21st century;
• examples from around the world that demonstrate transformations in governance, and which point to new futures – the many new innovations, experiments and pathways that are emerging around the world in response to our challenges;
• a deep questioning of when our democracies protect and build the commons, and when they undermine them, and what strategies we might take as societies to ensure healthy democracies that protect and build our commons.

Specific topics that will be covered include:

• bioregional governance
• commons governance
• workplace democracy and decentralised decision making
• liquid democracy (and other e-democracy systems)
• rights of nature / Earth jurisprudence
• urban collaborative governance
• peer to peer / digital commons governance
• participatory and contributory democracy
• overcoming the challenges of oligarchy / plutocracy
• global / planetary governance
• anticipatory governance

The workshop will be run as a mix of presentations, audio-visual content, interactive discussions, games and self-guided reflection.

By the end of the workshop, participants will have a general understanding of the big shifts and issues in governance, and the ways in which they can participate in our great transitions and in shaping the future.

For those interested in registering info is HERE

* Several scholarships are available for students and others who wish to attend. Contact us for details.

For more information: Jose Ramos – [email protected]

ABOUT THE WORKSHOP PRESENTERS

• Dr. Jose Ramos, writer, futurist and director of Action Foresight, brings over 15 years’ experience writing about cultural, political and economic change and designing, teaching and facilitating courses on social change, strategic foresight, commons governance and socio-political transformation.
• Dr Michelle Maloney, lawyer and National Convenor of the Australian Earth Laws Alliance (AELA) has been working for 25 years at the intersection of ecological and social justice, and is passionate about building Earth centred law, governance and ethics.

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