Social
Spaces

During her workingperiod in Kilpisjärvi, Rosanne van Klaveren gave a workshop at the Small Projects gallery in Tromsø about arctic food in general and about her FOOD RELATED project in particular. After a short presentation and introduction to the online platform at  www.foodrelated.org, a very usefull mapping was made with the MAP-it tool developed by Social Spaces collegues. The participants also worked with cultural probes to focus more on the experience, meaning, future and difficulties of food within the circumpolar north.

REcentre repeats the school projects around new, relevant, and sustainable themes. Therefore REcentre created two interesting pitches in which students can take part of.

Pitch 1: Les Ardentes 7.2, 18.2 and 25.2.
Les Ardentes is a 4-days festival, which takes place every early summer in Liège. It is a middle size event with an expected audience of 70.000 for its sixth edition of 2011 (26.000 in 2006). Students are challenged to find practical outcomes that are feasible to implement on how to make a festival like this have a smaller environmental impact.

Pitch 2: Dingens Barometers 4.3, 18.3 and 11.4.
Dingens Barometers produces internationally renowned barometers. As mercury is being prohibited in the production of barometers, they had to find other sustainable solutions. Dingens wants to challenge students to find a way on how to use sustainability and sustainable products as a unique selling point and add power to the marketing force of it. The barometer is an ‘old-fashioned’ instrument that is being passed on from generation to generation, how can you fit it in in contemporary living rooms and market it as a sustainable instrument?

Students are urged to find practical solutions that are feasible to implement. They will get help of professional moderators and specialists in order to reach these results. Each workshop day will led by a moderated and an expert. Students will be mixed in groups of different people coming from around the Meuse-Rhine Euregion. The winning team of each pitch will get a price.

More info on both pitches can be found here
REGISTER HERE

Sustainability@School is a collaboration between REcentre, Saint-Luc, MADfac, GutRosenberg & ABKMaastricht.

A new project called Resource-lab started within the research group Art|Object & Design in collaboration with Kringwinkel Turnhout. The project involves the development of new products using materials and products gathered by the Kringwinkel Turnhout.  Resource strives for sustainable use of products by stimulating awareness concerning waste and involving users in the design process. They support a social and open design philosophy by sharing the development processes through social media and involving people through workshops.  Resource is currently still in its first phase of developing prototypes. Gradually it will develop towards a sharing and collaborating platform for developing new ideas and products.

Take a look at their prototypes on their blog. You can also follow them on Twitter or facebook.

On Wednesday, 8th of December, we organised a workshop together with the NGO Eeland about their project Go 2030. Funded by the P&V Foundation, this project aims to present the world of 2030 through the eyes of the youth. What better way to do it than through art? The project will involve 5 cities in Limburg, and each youth group will be guided by an artist who will help them translate their story into an artwork. In the end, the 5 works will come together in a “gesamtkunstwerk”.

The purpose of the workshop on Wednesday was to define the project’s creative concept together with the partners (Z33, Stichting P&V, FLACC, Villa Basta, Media Lab, Social Spaces). We created a bunch of visual cards that related more or less to the concept of future and, after splitting them into 2 groups, we asked the participants to choose 25 cards that envision the future. Common themes were chosen between the groups, such as pollution and ecology, the importance of innovation, the diffusion of virtuality in our daily lives, the idea of the Big Brother..

Our English colleagues of socialspaces.org are travelling around these days doing colourful mapping sessions. If you want to experience the rich results of these mappings and the amazing diversity, visit their Flickr Page. The mappings have the goal to “stimulate new and interesting local projects in line with the Social Spaces thinking of Learning, Sharing and Making. The workshops will draw together inspiration from existing new projects and new methodologies … as well as spreading traditional positive community building know-how”.

Have a look at their website for more info.