By creating opportunities for exchange, mutual action and sharing, A4C not only operates as a platform but attempts to create a new commons, a synthesis between arts and political engagement.

A4C intends to explore the  interstitial spaces between power and communities, traditional arts system and society, states and territories. We pursue documentation as artistic practice.

In an historical phase of what Antonio Gramsci named “interregnum” whereas we know what we leave but do not know what we will find, A4C is a space for collective search, experimentation, creation of what post-colonial philosopher Homi Babha named ” a third space”, that transcends traditional definitions of arts and politics. Particular attention will be devoted to building bridges and opportunities for collective work, exchange and dialogue between European and Latin American artists and activists.

Our first steps have moved along the issue of migrations and war, starting with the participation at the Nationless Pavillion at the 2015 Venice Biennale, to the pop-up exhibition “From the shores of Tripoli to the hills of Moctezuma” in Rome-based gallery Ex-Elettrofonica,  to continue with “Dispacci-Dispatches” an exploration in the history of Italian colonial wars in Libya by means of displacements and re-enactment of historical chronicles and documents read in various locations of the Quartiere Africano (African quarter) in Rome, built to celebrate fascist colonies in Africa.

SHOWREEL A4C #ArtsForTheCommons from Rosa Jijon on Vimeo.

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Another trend is organizations forming commons. Creative Commons licensing and Mozilla Foundation are examples. Again, new commons collaborations have a template they can adapt to their specific needs.

But how do organizations formed prior to commons era transition toward an open model?

“There isn’t really a map for that,” Wendy Brawer told me.

Which is ironic, considering that Wendy’s organization is Green Map System. She went on to explain,

“In 2009, we opened up our OpenGreenMap.org site. Mapping data was still very propriety. So enabling users to upload their own content was a step forward.”

Green Map has been collaborative since its inception. So, with the development of multiple open mapping platforms, the Green Map board was persuaded to move in that direction. But how does a traditional non-profit corporation make the transition?

Green Map, of course, developed a map. That helped inform the journey-in-progress. We share it here in hopes that other proprietary organizations making the transition to open will benefit from Green Map’s experience. Similarly, we hope to profile the experience of other such organizations in future posts.

Regarding collaboration with other organizations, Wendy was part of an open mapping presentation at the 2016 World Social Forum. This year, Green Map will participate in Intermapping, a gathering of mapping organizations. The goal of the Intermapping is to find ways to collaborate and make their platforms more interoperable.

Extracted from: correspondence with Wendy Brawer of Green Map

Confirmed by Green Map System’s board in Spring 2016, going open includes relaunching GreenMap.org with a new ‘operating system’ in 2017. With inclusive participation central to our nonprofit’s ethic, we are elevating all types of spin-off initiatives, partnerships and place-making, and raising the status of slower processes and low-tech grassroots methodologies that cultivate ongoing involvement in community wellbeing.

In this era of municipalism and as part of this reboot, we are changing how we serve the diverse needs of agencies, organizations and institutions. For example, we are developing tutorials for robust third party mapping platforms to support our movement’s evolving and expanding network of users. , and take resource-intensive tech tasks off our plate.

Moreover, as the Green Map Iconography and tools go open, we are shedding our sliding fee model and seeking a pathway forward that is a sustainable balance aligned with the solidarity economy. New partnerships will help us consider options toward development of a fresh new business model and at the same time, share our experience to strengthen the commons.

Extending our pattern of piloting new approaches locally before sharing models with the global network, since Superstorm Sandy in fall 2012, our focus has been on ‘solutionary’ climate-centric local projects. Applying capacities developed making Green Maps, we have supplied mapping expertise, communications, systems-thinking and participatory design to local initiatives, including GardensRising.org (a $2M community garden as green infrastructure project), Ranch on Rails (a self-powered bio-industrial park in Long Island City – cutoffcoalition.org), the Return of the #StantonBldg (community resiliency lab) and more. These foreshadow new Green Map tools, and are already inspiring projects led by Green Map Makers around the world.

Extracted from: https://medium.com/@flgnk/without-commons-there-is-no-community-without-community-there-is-no-commons-f00f26e79311#.a0ktyw4b3

The question of how to make commons visible was taken up during the forum in a meeting of mapping initiatives. Silke Helfrich and Jon Richter from http://transformap.co/ , Jason Nardi from Ripess , Wendy Brawer from http://www.greenmap.org/ came together to investigate the possibilities of interoperable standards for sharing data between different commons mapping projects. The group continue to work together and plan to organise further mapping events over the coming year. I also recommend reading Mapping as a Commons for more details on the concept.

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Although none of us actually abdicated our authority as partners, we often deferred to others in their area of expertise.

Our previous installment in the Democracy series highlighted sortition, a democratic process in which randomly chosen representatives deliberate on behalf of the larger community. This final installment features liquid, or delagative, democracy.

Represent.me is a democracy platform featuring the ability for members to delegate their votes to trusted others within the community.

Extracted from: https://represent.me/

We are a dedicated and experienced team who believe that the most enduring way to make the world a better, safer, happier place is to improve how political decisions are made. We believe that creating an ever-better civilisation should be enjoyable and something we can be proud of. We’re making it easy to be a part of it.

Extracted from: https://medium.com/progressive-coders-network/this-week-progcode-be4f994e564f#.mr8zd1yel

Represent.Me is a versatile, people-first democracy platform. It lets you have your say on any issue, build a personal political profile, and use it to engage in a direct and delegative democracy platform. It’s currently being used by groups in the UK to communicate the voting public’s opinions to both their communities and representatives. With users in 57 countries it is already a powerful tool.
represent.me
The project makes it easier for users to separate issues from personalities, build consensus, identify the best representatives, and more effectively collaborate with with decision makers. The project is currently focusing on their back-end API and are actively looking at how it can plug into other experiences (e.g., #project-swimmy) as well as build a Tinder-style front-end (i.e., #everyonevote) to make engagement easy and use simple.
This toolkit for modern democracy is delivered via a powerful API with a CC-BY-SA license.

Extracted from: http://blog.represent.me/

Why is this better than submitting evidence directly on the Government website?
In short: Represent makes it easier, faster, gives clearer insights, and is a lot easier to get started with.
Take this example question from the : “Are there other ways in which universities could be asked to contribute to raising school-level attainment?”
On the Government website this is a ‘yes / no’ with a textarea. Take a moment to think how you’d answer that.
It’s hard, right? It’s open-ended, and has a lot of assumptions in the question.

We break the question apart to make more questions each of which are much easier to answer. Still want to comment? Each question has its own comments section.

What do we do with the data?
We analyse it and submit it to the Government as part of their inquiry. We have a relationship with them which lets them accept submissions direct from Represent as a channel for public representation.
But it doesn’t stop there: because you’ve answered on Represent it’s automatically aggregated and shown to your MP, your local authority, and other agencies who can help deliver what you want. Naturally you don’t want spam, and your security comes first so no one can contact you directly via Represent until you permit them to.

Extracted from: http://blog.represent.me/category/values/

Politics needs to take a modern approach and be designed around people, not ideologies.
Asking people what they want is a great thing. Forcing all our hopes, passions, fears, wisdom, experience, compassion, ideas, and enthusiasm into a single X is a terrible thing. It tells us nothing and is an insult to our intelligence.
You should have had a dozen Xs on the EU Referendum ballot paper. If you’re smart enough to have an opinion on austerity, migration, economy, taxation, environment, free movement, health care, welfare and more, then your opinion should count and set our direction. And now that opinion counts more than ever, because we’re on our own. This is our future we’re creating?—?right here, right now.

Extracted from: http://blog.represent.me/2015/03/04/mapping-the-21st-century/

exists to map the world’s opinions and values so that we might find better ways of working together for the greater good.
But if we’re to represent people globally, we are going to need some really good maps and really clever data manipulation. Which is why I am so incredibly proud of our tech team who have done all that, and made it ridiculously fast, too.
Represent now has county / state level opinion mapping for almost every country in the world.

Extracted from: http://blog.represent.me/page/2/

Delegative democracy (aka ‘liquid democracy’) is what most people invent when answering the question “How do we make politics better?”
We start at “well we should all be able to vote on everything”, but then realise we don’t want to vote on everything and also probably don’t know enough detail to trust ourselves. So we need people we can trust to vote for us (delegates) on specific topics.  Of course, this is how it most democracies currently work: Every 5 years you delegate your votes to one MP who takes all those decisions for you.

This version is just more granular. At elections you may think like this: “I like A’s education and transport policies, and B’s foreign policy and C’s welfare plans.. but I can only pick one so I guess it’s A”

With delegative democracy you no longer have to choose least-bad. You can cast your vote in line with your values. Of course you may not get what you want (51% may think that your education choices are terrible) but it will have greater influence. Eg if your education preferences get 20%, the group that gets 35% may say “we can blend these ideas and have 55% – a winning majority”.

Photo by uncoolbob

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