Background

The terms “Sharing Economy” or “Collaborative Economy” have been commonly used in recent years to refer to a proliferation of initiatives, business models and forms of work, from the development of far-reaching corporate digital platforms that have become means of organising cooperative practices, to local, regional and community-led collaborative initiatives in sectors such as housing, tourism, transport, social enterprise, culture and the arts, etc. Researchers from many disciplines are currently conducting ethnographic studies of practices, cultures, socio-technical systems and lived experiences of collaborative economies, producing case studies and data sets documenting these realities and their impacts and implications, as well as developing methodological and epistemological insights and sensibilities about approaching these contexts
ethnographically.

The conference will feature parallel paper presentations, keynote talks and open discussion sessions.

Participation in the conference will be free of charge (but places will be limited).

The conference is supported by the COST Action “From Sharing to Caring: Examining the Socio-Technical Aspects of the Collaborative Economy” ( http://sharingandcaring.eu/), developing a network of actors focusing on the development of collaborative economy models and platforms and on social and technological implications of the collaborative economy through a practice focused approach.

Submission Themes

We are soliciting papers contributing ethnographic accounts and understandings of collaborative economy practices and communities, and therefore contributing to the development of a multi-faceted view on sharing and caring practices. We are also keen on receiving papers focusing on the methodological aspects of studying collaborative economi(es) e.g. collaborative ethnography, participatory action research, co-design etc.

Suggested themes include (but are not limited to):

• Ethnographic accounts of practices and/or of forms of community aggregation in collaborative economy settings
• Ethnographic case studies of collaborative economy initiatives, frameworks and platforms
• Instances of ethnographically-informed design of collaborative systems in support of collaborative economy practices
• Reflections on theoretical, epistemological and methodological challenges of studying the collaborative economy ethnographically

Submission Instructions

• Abstracts should be between 500 and 700 words
• Papers should be between a minimum of 3,000 and a maximum of 4,000 words plus references.
• Papers should be anonymised for submission
• Papers should be formatted according to the requested template.
• Submissions should be made through EasyChair.
• All papers will be peer reviewed by the Scientific Committee, and accepted papers will be included in the conference book of proceedings and invited for presentation at the conference.
• Following the conference, authors of accepted papers will be invited to submit extended versions of their contributions for consideration for inclusion into an edited book.

Important Dates

Abstract Submission Deadline: 15 April 2019

Notifications to Authors: 29 April 2019

Papers Submission Deadline: 19 July 2019

Notifications to Authors: 19 August 2019

Final Versions of Papers Due: 20 September 2019

Conference in Edinburgh: 25th October 2019

Organising Committee

Penny Travlou (University of Edinburgh)

Proferssor Luigina Ciolfi (Sheffield Hallam University)

Scientific Committee

https://ulris.ul.ie/live/[email protected]Gabriela Avram (University of Limerick, IE)

Chiara Bassetti (University of Trento, IT)

Vida Česnuitytė (Mykolas Romeris University, LT)

Professor Luigina Ciolfi (Sheffield Hallam University, UK)

Professor Richard Coyne (University of Edinburgh, UK)

Morgan Currie (University of Edinburgh, UK)

Professor Dimitris Dalakoglou (Vrije University Amsterdam, NL)

Anna Farmaki (Cyprus University of Technology, CY)

Alessandro Gandini (University of Milan, IT)

Karen Gregory (University of Edinburgh, UK)

Athina Karatzogianni (University of Leicester, UK)

Cindy Kohtala (Aaalto University, FI)

Airi Lampinen (Stockholm University, SE)

Cristina Miguel (Leeds Beckett University, UK)

Maria Partalidou (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, GR)

Chiara Rossitto (Stockholm University, SE)

Mariacristina Sciannamblo (Madeira Interactive Technologies Institute, PT)

Professor Chris Speed (University of Edinburgh, UK)

James Stewart (University of Edinburgh, UK)

Özge Subaşi (Koç University, TR)

Penny Travlou (University of Edinburgh, UK)

For further information about the conference and/or CFP, please email us here: [email protected] [email protected]

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“Cultural Commons: (How) do we put it into practice in Medellin?” was a workshop held in Medellin, Colombia on 21 and 22 of June 2018, co-organised by Penny Travlou, a cultural geographer / ethnographer (Edinburgh College of Art/University of Edinburgh) and Platohedro, a local Medellin non-profit organization. The report (below, in English) reviews the two workshop days.

Context + What inspired us

The idea for these two workshops originated in earlier research and collaboration with Platohedro in the project Medellin Urban Innovation: Harnessing innovation in city development for social equity and well-being (MUI). MUI was a two-year (2015-2017) research collaboration between academic and non-academic institutions in the United Kingdom and Colombia, funded by the Newton Institutional Links Grant from the British Council and led by the University of Edinburgh in partnership with Heriot-Watt University, UK. The findings from the MUI scoping study suggest that there is indeed a thriving art community and emerging creative practices in Medellin. By merging traditional Colombian cultural values (buen vivir, buen conocer), participatory pedagogies and new media art values (Do-It-With-Others, free libre knowledge, open source, peer-to-peer learning), these grassroots art collectives and communities are instrumental in the making of new cultural heritage in Medellin. Looking at the ways different groups and initiatives within the network work together and, also with the local communities (comunas) and disaffected youth, makes it evident that their practices are based on creating collaboratively in a non-hierarchical manner.

From the initial MUI findings, it is also clear that this collaborative practice is a rather novel approach to cultural production, particularly as this is performed within and across a network. However, although this makes their practice of great interest across their international peers, recognition of the cultural values produced through these collaborative practices by local public art institutions and the municipality in Medellin is still lacking. This may be due to a failure to communicate this work to a language understood by public art institutions and municipal authorities. The MUI project also found that all these art collectives, organisations and communities that form a network of collaboration in Medellin face the same limitations: their collaborative work is primarily based on affinities; it is still informal and lacks of tools to become self-sustainable. The initial work identified a clear interest in co-creating cultural commons. By this term, we mean, a) something that participants create together, such as Wikipedia, Report: “Defining Cultural Commons in Medellin” Workshops, 21-22 June 2018 2 which participants research, write and manage together online, or ancient indigenous practices forged and passed along by a particular group e.g. Minga (‘communal work’ in Andean indigenous cultures) and, b) a way of creativity that embraces values such of sharing, community and stewardship as opposed to privatization, enclosure and exploitation.

The Cultural Commons workshops stem from these initial findings and represent a new line of investigation engaging with a network of local art producers and independent cultural initiatives to co-design a methodology that, a) can look at, reflect upon and evaluate individual organisations within an ecosystem i.e. network of collaboration and, b) become a tool for the collaborating network to communicate their practice and production of cultural values to public art institutions, other local authorities and funding bodies in Medellin. During meetings and discussions between the art collectives and Penny Travlou in 2017, the group agreed on the importance of developing together a methodology that can enable them to reflect on their practice(s), collaborative ethos, sharing values, common goods production as well as weaknesses. Co-designing a methodological toolkit is a good start to understand the position of the various art collectives, initiatives and groups in the cultural production ecosystem in Medellin and to establish a dialogue with local public art institutions and city administration.

The two workshops were based on a collaborative methodology where all participants worked together to define and explore key concepts: “cultural commons” in Workshop 1 and “intangible cultural heritage” in Workshop 2. For the exploration of “cultural commons” in Workshop 1, the Purpose Statement of the Coalition for the Cultural Commons (https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Coalition_for_the_Cultural_Commons) was presented in the first part of the workshop to engage participants with the term, followed with examples of commoning practices. For the cultural commons methodology toolkit in Workshop 2, a series of key terms from the Arts Collaboratory Network (http://www.artscollaboratory.org/), a translocal  ecosystem of 25 international art organisations including Platohedro, was used to develop the tools. Then, to explore the concept of “intangible cultural heritage”, we followed the official one by UNESCO (https://ich.unesco.org/en/what-is-intangible-heritage-00003) focusing particularly on the characteristics of the term: inclusiveness, representation, community-based co-creation and bridging traditional together with contemporary everyday cultural values and practices. Overall, we were interested in finding out whether and how we can re-define “intangible cultural heritage” as a “cultural commons” where cultural values are co-created, shared between groups and communities, support openness, collaboration and peer learning and thus become a common good.

FULL REPORT:

ENGLISH Report Cultural Commons Medellin share by the P2P Foundation on Scribd

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So, what about politics? (#SWAP) is a fully packed symposium presenting mainly very concrete projects that deal with new forms of political action and governance in the contemporary network society. With examples from liquid democracy, e-governance, civic intelligence, platform cooperativism and autonomous self-organisation.

From the event website:

So, what about politics? looks at initiatives that could be seen as the avant-garde of a new political era. In a critical period of crisis in our political systems, we welcome artists, activists, academics using innovative technological tools to reclaim political processes or to shape new forms of organisation, from local collectives to global movements.

As  Rebecca Solnit says, “It’s equally true that democracy is flourishing in bold new ways in grassroots movements globally”, and “There is far more politics than the mainstream of elections and governments, more in the margins where hope is most at home.” How does this apply to the margins of our technological imagination? Which tools and practices are being dreamed of, tested and explored?

In short, what is the impact of today’s Internet-inspired post-institutional thinking on the practice of political action? For this we focus on tactics, tools and visions of grassroots initiatives, as well as on changing government policies and strategies.

The symposium revolves around questions such as: What are the politics of a P2P society? How can we perceive a network as a real “distributed agora”? What can we learn from artist- or activist-led experiments focusing on collectivity and political agency?

And most important: What are the concrete tools and initiatives today that really try to facilitate and use new forms of agency such as liquid democracy, e-governance, civic intelligence, platform cooperativism and autonomous self-organisation?

PROGRAMME
Digital culture and technology. But what about politics?

Final Programme coming soon!

Day 1: FRI 3 November
Lectures and Debates, 10:00-18:00

Michel Bauwens (P2P Foundation), Geert Lovink (Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam), Sandrino Graceffa (SMArtbe, Brussels), Xavier Damman (OpenCollective.com), Virgile Deville (Democracy.earth), Saya Sauliere (Medialab-Prado/ParticipaLab, Madrid), Arianna Mazzeo (DesisLab, Barcelona), Khushboo Balwani (Civic Innovation Network, Brussels), David Potocnik (totalism.org, Lanzarote), Lauren Lapige (unMonastery, Athens), Penny Travlou (University Edinburgh), Monica Garriga (Decidim, Barcelona), David Gómez (Texeidora, Barcelona), Emmanuele Braga (Macao, Milano), Panayotis Antoniadis (NetHood, Athens-Zurich), Sanna Ghotbi & Vanessa Metonini (DigidemLab, Gothenburg/Madrid), Barret Brown (PursuanceProject.org, USA).

Day 2: SAT 4 November
Workshops and Participative sessions, 10:00-17:00

Sanna Ghotbi & Vanessa Metonini (DigidemLab, Gothenburg), Arianna Mazzeo (DesisLab, Barcelona),  Civic Innovation Network (Brussels)

Register for Day 1 and take option for Day 2

Credits

The symposium is curated by Bram Crevits (KASK / School of Arts Gent) and Yves Bernard (iMAL.org).
This event is organised by iMAL (Brussels center for Digital Cultures and Technology) in collaboration with the Institute of Network Cultures (Amsterdam), Medialab Prado (Madrid) and KASK / School of Arts (Gent).

After the symposium Blockchain.Fact.Fiction.Future in 2016, So what about Politics? continues our exploration of how society can be improved with the digital world.

So what about Politics? is supported by KASK / School of Arts Gent and Saison des Cultures Numériques 2017, Ministery of Culture (Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles).

Photo by Artur Netsvetaev

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Eddy Adams of SIX interviews P2P Foundation researcher Penny Travlou at the Unusual Suspects Festival in Glasgow, where she spoke passionately about the work she’s been involved in with refugees in Greece.  This interview was originally published in Social Innovation Europe’s Magazine.

As part of our Beyond Crisis Collection, Eddy interviewed Penny to learn more about this work of using food making and sharing to support migrant integration in Greece.

To get us started, can you tell us briefly what you’ve been doing and how you got involved?

I am a cultural geographer and ethnographer based in Edinburgh. I have an academic post in the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, University of Edinburgh. Since 2010, I’ve been doing research on creativity as a collaborative and sharing knowledge practice within various emerging networks.

I started my research with digital practitioners and artists, but currently I am working with nomadic co-living communities, hackers and refugees. I know that it may not make much sense, but all these diverse groups have one thing in common: they are on the move; they are nomadic. Of course, we cannot compare the experience of Northern European web designers – for example – who cannot afford to live anymore in London and Paris with that of the Syrian refugees who are forced to leave from their country due to the war. However, they all form a nomad transient citizenship which in my view is very influential in the way Europe will be shaped and experienced in the years to come.

So last February, I moved to Athens for 5 months as part of my research leave. There, I met the co-living/co-working community unMonastery which had just moved to Athens too. I decided to focus my research on this community, but as they were creating a network within the city I ended up researching that instead! That’s how I got introduced to Jeff Andreoni, an unMonasterian and great connector with whom I organised my first pop up kitchen event last April. Jeff is a food enthusiast who has been organisingdinners in Athens for years to get locals and immigrants together. In this event, we collaborated with an Eritrean refugee, Senait who is a professional cook, but who didn’t have the ‘know-how’ to start her own business in Greece. Senait would like to open a restaurant in Athens in the near future. Our pop up event was held in a beautiful neo-classic house in the centre of Athens. We hosted 100 people, served 15 different dishes and home-brewed non-alcoholic beer all made by Senait and provided live African music.

That made us think that such small-scale events can be a great way to give job opportunities to newcomers i.e. immigrants and refugees and get them feel part of the Greek society and culture. From that event onwards, we got collaborated with and participated in other immigrant collective pop-up events. In the summer, we set up the African Collective Kitchen “OneLoveKitchen” with a group of cooks from Senegal, The Gambia, Sudan, Nigeria, Eritrea and Ethiopia. We collaborated with the African United Women Organisation and Nosotros: the free social centre. All our events have been self-organised without any formal funding. We have organised small pop-up dinners in houses and roof terraces, have served food in a solidarity economy festival and have catered for two conferences. Since September when a great influx of Syrian refugees has been arriving in Athens, some of us have also been involved in daily collective kitchens preparing food for a housing squat for refugees and other similar initiatives. Jeff and I are now working on the Options Foodlab, a professional kitchen and co-working space for food training which we hope to set up soon.

Why do you think food is such a good connection point with refugees?

What I always say when people ask me why I got involved in such a project is to think of where the words ‘company’ and ‘companion’ come from. They both derive from the Latin word ‘companio’ which means one who eats bread [pane] with you. Thus, food making and sharing is a social act and a means of exhibiting respect for an existing or future relationship of reciprocity. Food making is about hospitality and connectivity. There is not a better way to bring people together: you don’t need linguistic cues to connect with others. With this perspective, we can think food as an object of exchange, a gift that can be shared and exchanged.

Tell us a bit more about the migrants you’ve been working with. Are most of them new arrivals? Where have they come from – and do they see themselves settling in Greece or moving to other parts of Europe?

Most of the immigrants and refugees we are working with are from Africa and have been in Athens for a couple of years. Some have gained refugee status and others are still trying to get their asylum status. Most of them have daily jobs such as working in cafes and restaurants, busking, house cleaning and looking after elderly patients. They are all underpaid. Then, there are the ones who are unemployed or do small jobs from home (e.g. making and selling bread in their community, hairdressing, mending clothes etc.) Nonetheless, most of them would like to stay in Greece for long and making plans for settling down and opening their own businesses. Only two of our cooks left to Northern Europe in the summer when the Macedonian borders were still open.

What barriers are they facing, in terms of social and economic integration?

The list of barriers that refugees and immigrants face upon their arrival in Greece is very long. Don’t forget that Greece is still within a financial crisis and austerity-ridden environment. Thus, the problems that refugees experience are even harsher: hostility and suspicion from locals, unemployment, homelessness and difficulty to assimilate new cultural values. Some of the people we work with have escaped from extremely undemocratic regimes, faced imprisonment and torture before arriving to Greece, so for them it is very important to move on from their past and make a better living. Unfortunately, in most cases, they find themselves trapped within a bureaucratic system which is difficult to penetrate and get the necessary papers and documents in good time.

Often, building a trusted relationship is the key to successfully working with vulnerable marginalised communities. How have you done this in Athens?

I fully agree with your statement: trust is the glue for good and long-lasting relationships. In our case, I think we have succeeded to make good friends and business partners because we have tried to avoid hierarchies within our group. We are true believers of collaboration, peer-to-peer learning and horizontal power structures: we are all equal within our network of collaborators. Of course, this is not easy to maintain and there is not a magic recipe either. We also had our failures: there were instances of conflict among our group. How could you bring together people of so many different cultures, political ideologies and religious beliefs? We’ve been working with Muslims and Christians, old and young, women and men, anarchists and new agers, people of different sexual orientations, basically with very different people. Thus, conflict should be expected and welcome in the group. It’s a way to go forward: of understanding people’s differences and positionalities. What though has made us continue is ‘trust’ amongst one other: the belief that we are all equal and part of a solidarity network.

Who have been your key allies and supporters on the ground? In Greece when there are so few resources, where has your support come from?

So far, we’ve been working as self-organised autonomous initiative without any formal funding. Most of us work as volunteers in the foodlab and pop-up events. In fact, only the cooks are paid via donations that the guests give. We have also got a small grant from OuiShare, the global community for a collaborative society.

In the past, we tried to make partnerships and collaborations with local authorities and public organisations but without much success. Due to the financial crisis, there is a lot of resentment on what they can offer financially to initiatives like ours. We also tried to collaborate with NGOs, but again as they also face an uncertain future, they cannot commit to new projects.

Our closest allies and supporters are people who know well our work and ‘trust’ us, other self-organised initiatives and collectives.

Looking at the work that’s been done so far – although it’s a loaded term – where’s the innovation in your opinion?

In a few words: ‘human capacity’ and ‘solidarity’. All our work is based on developing a strong network of supporters and volunteers and sustaining relationships within the network. Each of us has a distinct role within the project according to our skills. Some maintain the online communication, write blogs, organise the events, and others do the shopping and help the cooks. We also care for each other, we try to ensure that we are all in good health and happy. Thus, innovation is in collaboration and sharing. We co-create the pop-up events.

And what are the plans for the future? How can you build on what’s been done so far?

At the moment, we are working on our business plan as we would like to see our project becoming more self-sufficient (not depending only on donations). We are looking at all different business options from setting up a social enterprise to a company for-profit. This is not an easy task as the business environment in Greece is not very good at the moment. We are also looking for a space to use as our co-working hub where we can cook and organise pop-up events.

How transferable are the approaches that you have developed? What can other cities take away from this work?

If you don’t mind I will change your question a bit and ask first what people in bottom-up initiatives in other cities can take from our work. Well, this is easy to answer: commitment, enthusiasm and belief that you can change things if you get together. You can only succeed if you collaborate and share knowledge practices and skills. However, city top-down level support is more than welcome. It will make projects like ours have a future: it will provide financial stability to those who need it e.g. the refugee/migrant cooks. We also cannot always depend on people’s goodwill to help for free; this will only sustain precarious labour.

If people reading this want to help or get involved, what can they do?

There are two ways that people can help our Options FoodLab: if they are in Athens, they can come in touch with us and get involved in the organisation of our pop up events. Then, they can of course help us raise money to purchase cooking equipment and set up our space.

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Learn more about Options FoodLab and see other examples of migrant integration in our collection.

The post Options Foodlab: How food making and sharing is supporting migrant integration in Greece appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Can food be used as a way to bring strangers together, if only for a meal or two, and create the beginnings of a new type of community? Penny Travlou, a cultural geographer and ethnographer at the University of Edinburgh, decided to find out. In an interview posted on “Social Innovation Europe,” an EU website, she talks about her experience in co-organizing “pop-up dinners” that bring together immigrants with local Greeks in Athens. The idea is to use meal preparation and eating together as a way to break down cultural barriers and support migrant integration in Greece.

Travlou’s specialty as a researcher is the collaborative practices of digital artists and practitioners. But recently she has been fascinated with “nomadic co-living communities, hackers and refugees.”  Syrian refugees of course face some very different challenges than hackers, makers and other nomads of digital culture. Yet they both are living a kind of “nomadic transient citizenship” that Travlou believes is changing Europe.  One might say that ad hoc cooperation based on mutual need, empathy and shared circumstances is a big aspect of modern life.

In developing the idea of pop up dinners for refugees and local Greeks, Travlou had been inspired by Jeff Andreoni of the unMonastery, who had been organizing dinners in Athens for locals and immigrants.  Working with a professional cook, an Eritrean refugee named Senait, Andreoni and Travlou held a dinner for 100 people at a house in Athens.  As Travlou explained:

That made us think that such small-scale events can be a great way to give job opportunities to newcomers — i.e., immigrants and refugees — and get them feel part of the Greek society and culture. From that event onwards, we got collaborated with and participated in other immigrant collective pop-up events. In the summer, we set up the African Collective Kitchen “OneLoveKitchen” with a group of cooks from Senegal, The Gambia, Sudan, Nigeria, Eritrea and Ethiopia. We collaborated with the African United Women Organisation and Nosotros: the free social centre.

All our events have been self-organised without any formal funding. We have organised small pop-up dinners in houses and roof terraces, have served food in a solidarity economy festival and have catered for two conferences. Since September when a great influx of Syrian refugees has been arriving in Athens, some of us have also been involved in daily collective kitchens preparing food for a housing squat for refugees and other similar initiatives.

Travlou and Andreoni are now setting up a new project, Options Foodlab, which is a professional kitchen and co-working space for food training.  Travlou said that food is a great way to bring people together:

What I always say when people ask me why I got involved in such a project is to think of where the words ‘company’ and ‘companion’ come from. They both derive from the Latin word ‘companio’ which means one who eats bread [pane] with you. Thus, food making and sharing is a social act and a means of exhibiting respect for an existing or future relationship of reciprocity. Food making is about hospitality and connectivity. There is not a better way to bring people together: you don’t need linguistic cues to connect with others. With this perspective, we can think food as an object of exchange, a gift that can be shared and exchanged.

An inspiring project!  You can read the full interview with Travlou here.

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