The P2P Lab is happy to announce the launch of

“The cultiMake project: Crowdsourcing open source agricultural solutions”,

celebrating the gathering of designers, makers and farmers who are adapting to the digitised world.

Where: Habibi.Works, Ioannina (Greece)

When: From Monday, July 30th to Friday, August 3rd.

Currently, the P2P Lab aims to create awareness and promote an emerging collaborative productive model of agriculture, based on the conjunction of commons-based peer production with desktop manufacturing. Agriculture is a key activity in the peripheral and less-developed regions of the EU and a crucial productive sector. It is a field in which ready-to-apply open source hardware and software solutions have already been produced and, thus, can be implemented and improved. Considering the fragmentation of the existing abundant open source projects in relation to agriculture, the replication, sharing and improvement of solutions is hindered.

To facilitate interaction and create feedback loops among makers, designers and farmers, the P2P Lab is organising this 5-day event in Ioannina (Greece). The event will be hosted at Habibi.Works, a makerspace for asylum seekers and Greek locals in Katsikas (Ioannina), managed by the German NGO Soup and Socks e.V. Since 2016, Habibi.Works is operating eight workshop areas which serve as platforms for mutual education, empowerment and encounter.

The main aim is to familiarise the local community with open source technologies developed within the EU and, ideally, connect hubs (e.g. Fab Labs) that provide technical infrastructures for development. This may create a network of open source software/hardware communities and local farmers that overcome barriers through knowledge diffusion and collaboration for their mutual benefit.

During the workshop, four solutions related to agriculture will be manufactured. After publishing an open call and receiving several applications, the local community selected the following designers to lead the manufacturing of the prototypes:

• André Rocha, Adjunct Professor at ESELx – IPL and a Senior Product and Interaction designer.
• Angelos Pappas, Software developer and activist.
• Jonathan Minchin, Coordinator of the Green Fab Lab at Valldaura Labs, IAAC Campus in Barcelona.
• Trifonas Papaioannou, Maker and beekeeper.

The selection of the designers was informed by the following criteria:

• Does the solution create value for small-scale farmers and society?
• Does the solution express empathy to user needs?
• Is the solution visionary and paves the way for others?

The workshop will be open for everyone so we hope you join us there.

For queries, you may contact us at [email protected]

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

Organised by

Supported by

Photo by efou222

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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.

What makes this place truly unique, however, is that most of the inventors come from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, and are currently living across the road from Habibi.works at the refugee camp of Katsikas, Greece.

Over the summer, the camp hosted 1000 souls in poor living conditions, leading the refugees to protest the local government. Currently, about 400 people live in the camp with approximately a third of them being children.

The Habibi.Works team arrived in Greece to provide support in an escalating humanitarian crisis. It seeks to expand on the concept of FabLabs and empower people in a limbo situation. Meaning “my love” in Arabic, Habibi.Works has become, most of all, a meeting place where refugees, locals, and international experts creatively collaborate around artefacts and perspectives, combining their knowledge and sharing their expertise. There are adults fixing the bikes of the children from the camp, youngsters going equipped with power drills to assist in building beds, men and women using the sewing machines to repair or create clothes, whilst the laser cutter is warming up for when the workshop students finish their designs. That is, after having cleaned the dishes of the lunch that was collaboratively prepared. It is a dynamic, often fast-paced environment, where the result of learning and working is seen all around the warehouse and in people`s optimistic attitude. According to the team, the goals of Habibi.Works are to:

1. Get active and creative, teach others, learn and do something meaningful
2. Create objects which improve your living conditions in the camp
3. Manufacture products and seek ways to generate money which could benefit the whole camp
4. Involve Greek citizens to improve their understanding of the situation
5. Raise awareness and make a political statement about refugees’ needs and demands

Activities

Habibi.Works is comprised of 7 workshops which cover a wide spectrum of activities:

Kitchen

The Habibi Kitchen is a community kitchen where people cook for and with each other whatever they desire. Being able to decide, even if it is just what to eat, is a way to support the people with self-determination, and considering the number of people that the activity brings, definitely a good step towards building a community.

Carpentry

During the first days of Habibi.Works, this was the main workshop activity, generating all the walls, shelves and tables which outfit the impressive 700 square meters place. Over time, novel ideas by the people become reality and contributed to the improvement of living conditions in the camp.

Screen Printing Atelier

Handwritten on the back of a t-shirt is “CRonaldo7”. On its front, the face of a girl. The Screen Printing Atelier uses creatively a number of materials in order to provide a market of sorts. It presents the creativity of the people involved to the world, through the communion of locals and several artists living in the Camp.

The Metal Workshop

Having been just set up, three refugees are focusing their efforts to create a weightlifting machine, which ought to be the first of many more promising projects.

The Creative Atelier

In the creative space of Habibi.Works one may find sewing machines, equipment for jewellery and painting and many other materials that offer the possibility to create items that are both useful and beautiful.

Habibi.Studios

Radio, music and recording workshops form part of this area of Habibi.Works. One of the young men in the Camp is a professional opera singer, others are gifted musicians. Music sessions have been set up in the studio of Habibi.Works. Another outstanding project is the Radio Workshop, where people from three different Camps in the Epirus region will meet to get their voices heard and raise awareness on their situation.

The Media Lab

Experts and beginners are both welcome. Whether it is about coding, basic computer knowledge, generating fancy artefacts with the laser cutter or learning how to use a 3D-printer – there are plenty of reasons to get excited.

Engaging local society

From the beginning the Habibi.Works team strived to incorporate the people from the camp into the organisational structure so that their work might be continued after their departure.

Local initiatives and individuals are getting involved since it provides a more accessible platform for people to come together. Despite the ephemeral nature of the team’s involvement, Habibi.Works aims at becoming something more than just aid by involving of people from the nearby capital of the region, Ioannina and its big student community. An important step for the integration of the refugees and the mutual understanding and appreciation.

In this context, P2P Lab and Habibi.Works have joined forces with the aim to manufacture an open source house. Following recent events, it has become more evident than ever that housing is one of the most important issues faced by the refugees. This project attempts to provide a more viable and permanent solution by utilising shared information on the designs of a house, the available equipment of the Habibi.Works and the refugees themselves.

Support Habibi.Works

Ultimately, the Habibi.Works experience in Katsikas adds to the raising of awareness on the impossible situation refugees find themselves all over Europe and illustrates how people contribute to its amelioration through collaborative projects.

Feel free to make your contribution and become part of this innovative project. If you want to join the effort, contact them, donate funds or tools.

More details can be found at Habibi.Works website.

Photos by Jennifer Mallmann, Henri Shabani, Rob Timmerman, Andrea Sánchez Brox, Louis Dowse, Kat, Florian Horsch, Manuel Seifried, Mathias Horsch und Anna Innocenti.

Many thanks to Francisco Santos for his help in this post.

The post Habibi.Works: An Intercultural Makerspace appeared first on P2P Foundation.