The Mission Statement for the Open Source Circular Economy Days is online! It was written by me and Lars, but it is based on the ideas, discussions and perspectives of the whole team (Erica, Sharon, Tim, Alice & others coming on board…) What do we mean when we talk about an Open Source Circular Economy? We share the vision of a circular economy. An idea for a truly sustainable future that works without waste, in symbiosis with our environment and resources. A future where every product is designed for multiple cycles of use, and different material or manufacturing cycles are carefully aligned, so that the output of one process always feeds the input of another. Rather than seeing emissions, manufacturing byproducts, or damaged and unwanted goods as ‘waste’, in the circular economy they become raw material, nutrients for a new production cycle. Right now we have a linear system – we take resources out of the ground, and transform them into (often hazardous) waste. We consume and destroy our own planet faster than it can possibly recover. We’ve known about these problems for decades and despite increasing public awareness we are still nowhere near comprehensive solutions. Current ‘green’ approaches merely act as an ineffective brake on this destructive trajectory. A more radical shift is needed – in how we collaborate, and how we design, produce and distribute our products and the services around them. One way to illustrate the circular economy is to think of cycles in the natural world. A simple representation might be a seed, which grows in nutritious topsoil, becoming a strong adult tree –...
In April 2014 I travelled to Georgia and Armenia with Edgeryders and the UNDP, working together with Noemi Salantiu to run workshops with social innovators, while documenting the events and participants’ stories. This is a teaser video for the main event held in June – the story is told through text, as I also needed to produce Georgian, Armenian and Arabic versions of the video. We also visited and interviewed participants to get international conversations going around their stories, and to start building collaborations throughout the region and further afield. Reports from the Spot the Future project can be found here:...
It’s hard to describe exactly what Edgeryders is. A distributed, collaborative network of people experimenting and building new ways of working, living, and understanding one another. A website where projects can be built, networks can grow and people can feed off different ideas and perspectives. A respectable, incorporated, responsible front-end, and motley back-end of activists, artists, data geeks, free software developers, hardware hackers, and community organisers. A big ‘bring on the hackers’ button for the few brave people within established governments and organisations who might be willing to try new things. There are many sides to Edgeryders, and many things to love. I love the evidence-based discussion and decision-making, I love the ‘who does the work, calls the shots’ working method, I love the experimentation with different formats, for communicating, collaborating, financing and community building. I love ‘free and open’ as a default. But mostly, I love the people, a huge network of talented, engaged people from all over Europe, and some further afield as well. The video above is from the 4th annual gathering of the Edgeryders community (Living on the Edge 4), held at the first unMonastery prototype in Matera, Italy, where I also ran a session on motivation and participation in open source projects. The video below is from the 3rd gathering (LOTE3), in November 2013, when I spent a week in Matera, taking part in the process of planning the unMonastery project, and gave a video post-production workshop using Kdenlive. Meeting the community there kicked off a fruitful continued collaboration, and interesting opportunities like heading to Armenia and Georgia to work with the UNDP and...
A collaboration with Judith Carnaby, to introduce people to the BikeSurf bike-sharing organisation, who lend people bikes for free to explore the city. It’s all volunteer-based and run on donations, so if you would like to borrow a bike, or support their cause, head over to bikesurf.org. Video starring Shaun McGirr and the charming little bike The Blue Booby! Music: ‘Happytime‘ CC-BY-NC-SA Podington Bear (unfortunately we weren’t able to find suitable libre-licensed music this time, this is a non-free license with restrictions on ‘commercial use’.) Video: CC-BY-NC-SA Judith Carnaby & Sam...
HowDo is a smartphone app for making micro guides – take a picture, add some sound, and share. The HowDo team invited Jude Pullen from Design Modelling to share his cardboard-modelling skills and get creative with local makers, building electromechanical marble runs from cardboard! Filmed at HowDo HQ in Kreuzberg, Berlin. HowDo: how.do Design Modelling: judepullen.com/designmodelling/ Music: ‘Scenes From The Zoo‘ CC-BY-SA Jahzzar ‘Latin Rhythm‘ CC-BY-SA SunSearcher ‘Evan Evans‘ CC-BY Los...
