fisharepeopletoo

Free All Monsters! in Rossendale, Lancashire

Occupy Monstrology @occupybristoluk #ows Free All Monsters!

Occupy Bristol and Free All Monsters! @Occupybristoluk @OccupyLSX

Monster Makers from Rossendale in Pennine Lancashire.

 

Press release, apologies for the press release tone.

Calling All Bristol Monster Makers

Saturday 3rd December, 1pm-4pm

Bristol children, and even grown ups, have the chance to create monsters that will travel all around the world as part of a new mobile phone game.

To make a monster, children use the power of their imagination and the pens, paper and art materials provided to conjure it up. The monsters are then uploaded into a mobile phone game called Free All Monsters!

The game has players all around the world who use their mobile phone as a Monstervision Machine to look for invisible monsters visiting their local streets, and monsters created in Bristol will regularly be seen as far away as America and Australia, as well as on the streets of Bristol.

So far more than 300 monsters have been created by children and grown ups, and these monsters have been spotted more than 4000 times in total around the world. Children who take part are awarded a unique Monster Makers badge.

Andrew Wilson, of the Advanced Monstrology Institute said “Making monsters is a great way to practise being creative, and to imagine the world differently.”

Adults as well as children are welcome to come along and make monsters. Dr Paul Coulton, also of the Institute, explained “Grown ups often say that they aren't creative, but we've found that everyone enjoys drawing monsters if they give themselves chance.”

As well as monster making there will also be a monster spotting trail in which players must find monsters living in Bristol city centre and prove their Advanced Monstrology skills to earn a Monster Spotters badge. Families and grown ups who want to take part in the monster spotting trail need to have an iPhone and should download the Free All Monsters app, but there is no need for an iPhone to take part in Monster Making.

The monster making session and monster spotting trail are both free events as part of a range of activities for this week's Community Day at Occupy Bristol.

Families and grown ups should come to College Green between 1pm and 4pm on Saturday 3rd December.

To spot monsters made in Bristol at any time, download the Free All Monsters app.

 

The respected monster Mean Green Giraffe Bee.

 

Re imagining local democracy at City Camp Manchester #ccmcr @CityCampMCR

“Every constitution, then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of nineteen years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force, and not of right.”
Award winning Constitution Designer Thomas Jefferson advocating an iterative approach to constitution design.
(more here, some contemporary constitution design sketches here).

There were two Open Space session on local democracy at City Camp Manchester.

Summarising both of them from memory, and my interpretation only, I'd say:

- there was a real interest in talking about what local democracy is, and wanting to think about how it might be different
- most people don't like the way national politics happens, and want local democracy to be something else (in the Friday session there were two people from a political party - a candidate in a safe council ward, and a local organiser/activist, maybe paid - and even they seemed to think the same)
- people do recognise that good councillors are valuable to the places they represent, but it is their role as representatives and activists that is valued

In the second of the two sessions I scribbled down notes. I tried to write down everything everybody said, but failed by quite a long way. I've grouped them under headings, but the headings reflect only my interpretation. There are many more possible headings than this, but I'm not clever enough to untangle everything.

Cynicism - felt to be justified - and dislike of the bear pit Question Time model - middle aged middle class London based white men [1] shouting at each other

* council consultation exercises (“when did you stop beating your wife”)
* “I didn't believe it would make a difference”
* “they had already made their mind up”
* cynicism - is it justified?
* voting wont change anything
* voters are angry * “the main parties”
* breaking cynicism
* but party machines get people elected
* why aren't things “properly representative”
* what are we allowed to have direct democratic control over? Shrinking budgets.
* what control/access/info do we have to private companies and privatised stuff (example of prisons run by private companies)
* properly representative = women, working class, not London

 

Councillors, councils and their roles
* can councillors work effectively - “gather stuff people are saying”
* transparency
* how to support councillors better
* tracking issues raised with the council “who has discussed this”
* Better CRM?
* process of canvassing
* online tools
* policy as enacting ideas
* start with ideas
* devolution of power from local authorities
* councillors as mediators
* what are we allowed to have direct democratic control over? Shrinking budgets.

 

Redesigning
* utopias (as a way of seeing what we've got more clearly)
* pirate party +1 vote at least
* start your own party
* why don't people like us [in the open space session] stand for election
* party based local politics is bad
* properly representative = women, working class, not London
* why aren't things “properly representative”
* what are we allowed to have direct democratic control over? Shrinking budgets.
* what control/access/info so we have to private companies and privatised stuff (example of prisons run by private companies)
* what do we think about the online petitions?
* utopia vs reform from within
* devolution to the North ( how, what)
* policy as an open source technology
* open knowledge
* devolution of power from local authorities
* participatory budgeting
* properly representative = women, working class, not London
* offering new alternatives
* party based local politics is bad
* what do we think about the online petitions?
* policy making - who does it now
* How do the ideas from things like this (City Camp Manchester) contact with local democracy and policy making
* everyone gets ten votes = redesign of the voting system
* different forms of democracy. Representative democracy is not the only one eg direct democracy
* “direct democracy is easier to swallow”
* “it's easier to swallow opposing results if you know who they are from and why they said it” - “if I know them”
* properly representative = women, working class, not London
* why aren't things “properly representative”
* what do we think about the online petitions?
* devolution to the North ( how, what) [2]
* is “it” not working and why isn't it working
* councillors as mediators [3]
* policy as an open source technology
* open knowledge
* consultation about ideas rather than policies (pirate party)
* what do we think about the online petitions?

 

[square brackets]
[1] I'm one of those, for my sins, so I'm not saying it's a bad thing to be in itself, just that it's not the only thing
[2]
Manchester city region 3.2 million people
Leeds city region 2.9 million
Wales 2.9 million
Estonia 1.3 million
[3] mediatory democracy is a very interesting phrase I think, and suggests something a bit different from representative, participatory, or direct democracy?

“Ask what you can do for the n*rth”

I'm involved in the early stages of a  project looking at what the arts can contribute to the new democratic cities in the north (that's my definition, for me, of what I feel like I'm doing as my bit of it).

I've learned loads from this process already, and I've got the highest hopes for what might come of it.

Part of what we did as a group was try and come up with some “research questions”. The ones that most rang true for me were about making a contribution. What can the arts do?

The tricky part though is that the fastest road to crap works of art is giving people lectures and trying to save the world.

So, with the dangers of being a boring self righteous finger wagging lecturer in mind, this is what I came up with (this list is really no more than a justification of my interests, and making no excuses for the depths of my ignorance):

• Make visible a network structure of people and places - horizontal, peer-to-peer, bottom up. Where are the gaps in the network? Contrast this with national, centralised, vertical and hierarchical, broadcast structures.
• Make Narrative Capital visible, make new Narrative Capital, make the process of forming Narrative Capital visible.
• Make visible the barriers to creativity, innovation, conversation, exchange, self reliance and self determination, question what causes the barriers, propose solutions for debate.
• Be a way to make sure that all the voices in a place get heard.
• Insist on the importance of places, legitimise and celebrate a place specific world-view and language.
• Legitimise and celebrate iteration, open processes, risk taking, and learning from failure.
• Make complex systems visible, and put the arts within interconnected complex systems of places, cultures, language, economics, and political structures.
• If places are a process, not an end point, make sure that those processes keep happening. “Keep the plates spinning.” as Chris Meads put it.

* I'm sure there must be more, for example “earn money and employ people”, and “contribute to wellbeing”, but it's all got too much for me to get my head round now!

** I took out one at the last minute: “Motivate debate and action.” That might happen, but I'm uncertain about whether the arts should be rousing people to man the barricades. If anything, shouldn't it be the opposite?: “Hang on. Think about things. The world is complicated and complex.”

*** The question might be better framed as “How can arts practise contribute to the civic life of places in the north.

 

Why I Hate The N*rth

I'm involved in a research process which looks at how artists might contribute to imagining The N*rth now.

By way of a "hello and getting to know you" I was asked to write briefly about "What aspects of the project's aims are you, at this stage, most passionate about?"

I launched into this, which is not the cheery hello that was called for, and is about 200 words too long.

        *    *    *

Re imagining, and making connections outside of The Arts. I think it's quite a hopeful time to be doing this. As I read the other day "‘We live in wonderful times. We’ve reached the end of the neo-liberal dream and state domination. It’s time for citizenship, imagination and growth.’"(from here)

But, that was said by Maurice Glasman, who couldn't be more of a London-patriot (in a good way) if he tried. If you asked him where he lived, he'd talk about a real place, London, not a geographical abstraction. He has civic pride. London tells a very powerful story about itself which gets its power not least by using a real name.

Newcastle, Sheffield, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds. That is a powerful list of words. When you say it like that it's a litany. For a birth or a death? People often talk about the 21st century as "the century of the city", about cities as "our greatest invention", cities as self organising systems from which most human wealth, culture and innovation comes. Newcastle, Sheffield, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds. Those cities made the world once.

So re imaging the N*rth means saying the words, even if it takes a bit more breath. Making the effort to use real names is about respect. People don't live in abstractions, they live in places. An abstraction like "The N*rth" makes human lives too easy to dismiss. "Those people who don't work in banking and can't afford interships for their kids? Don't worry, that's The N*rth. It's like that there."

And it's about self respect. What did "the N*rth" ever motivate anyone to do except cry into their beer?

If nothing else, abstractions always make bad writing. We need to begin with an investment in narrative capital (more on narrative capital here).

Say the names: Newcastle, Sheffield, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds. Now your head is wired differently. A process of re imagining has started.

Vote! Vote! Vote! For Me! Me! Me! (and other people!) Last chance! @nesta_uk @ace_national

The Arts Council (ACE) and NESTA are going to provide funding so that arts organisations can:

"use digital technologies to engage audiences in new ways and create opportunities for new business models."

Which is fine as far as it goes, but whether that money is put to use creating valuable outcomes is all down to the interpretation of those phrases "engage audiences"* and "new business models".

It is important that there is space for rich, creative, non-mainstream and challenging interpretations, because that is where new things come from. And that they can come from non-mainstream organisations.

There is chance to vote for some attempts to open up that space, by me and other people, closing today.

I don't claim that any of these are the final word, but they are about opening up, not closing down, the relationship between the arts and technology.

If we recognise these spaces, we'll recognise others.And that is where the "art" will be hiding.

 

"Creating welcoming, participatory spaces using just enough appropriate technology, analogue and digital."

Vote here

 

"The mixed reality of cities, public space, mobile technology and imagination as an "arts venue" for stories and play."

Vote here

 

"shifting engagement: how digital technologies invite audience co-creation of the art work"

Vote here

 

"Discussion about what "digital" really means in terms of the arts. Goverment and large organisations think "digital" means Youtube video of their publicity. An app to view opera publicity on your smartphone isn't digital art, is it?"

Vote here

 

*I don't think it's valuable to talk about audience engagement. Online ticketing is audience engagement. We should be talking about participation.

Arts Council #NPO funding broken down by artform, national totals #artsfunding #ace #opendata

Theatre £504,290,038

Combined Arts £288,755,415

Visual Arts £210,049,215

Music £182,661,161

Dance £179,966,183

Literature £30,254,260

Not artform specific £6,829,794

Big Opera £301,846,638

 

This is Arts Council of England spending on National Portfolio Organisations 2010-2015, broken down by artform, with Big Opera (Opera North, Royal Opera House, English National Opera, and Welsh National Opera) taken out of music and combined arts because they were so expensive they seemed to be skewing the picture.

Combined Arts is so big because it includes a lot of venues, for example the South Bank Centre, which gets 22 million per year. I don't know if this funding contributes to the running costs of the National Theatre, but most of combined arts should probably be put into theatre, music and visual arts in proportion to their income by artform.

Exercise very due caution about my spreadsheet skillz.

My totals for spending just come from adding up the columns in the Arts Council's spreadsheet,which comes to about 1.7 billion.

The Arts Council press release today says there is £950 million available "for the period".

The difference could be down to a few things: different timesscale for the figures - the spreadsheet includes 2010/11 - and the Arts Council says it is giving those organisations who are loosing their grant completely a year's grace. There is also some stuff in the press release about extra lottery money, which might not be in the 950 million.

The other explanation is I've got it wrong.

You have been warned.

The data is from a spreadsheet called national_portfolio_organisations_30_march_2011.xls which i downloaded from Steve Manthorp's site.

Arts Council spending in Yorkshire broken down by artform #artsfunding #npo #ace #opendata

Theatre £36,665,554

Dance £19,612,345 (includes Northern Ballet)

Visual arts £18,475,136

Combined arts £5,892,419

Music £4,412,739

Literature £1,111,375

Not artform specific £678,300

Opera North £50,355,401

 

Yorkshire region of Arts Council of England spending on National Portfolio Organisations, broken down by artform, with Opera North separated from music for clarity, 2010 to 2015

Exercise very due caution about my spreadsheet skillz.

The data is from a spreadsheet called national_portfolio_organisations_30_march_2011.xls which i downloaded from Steve Manthorp's site here: http://bit.ly/gDU8h4

All Architects, Planners, Designers, Developers and Planning Committees should be made to cross this bridge.

 

Look into your souls, you wretches.

Really quite nice on one side.

 

 

Awful on the other.

Shocking but brilliantly designed infographics showing investment in high speed network infrastructure in UK city regions

 

Historically high levels of investment in high speed network infrastructure.

 

 

Historically low levels of investment in high speed network infrastructure.

 

 International Comparison

Investment in high speed network infrastructure in a medium sized post industrial city in Germany.

 

Why I Still Heart Text Messages :-)

This piece is part of my contribution to What Makes Us Tick, organised by Diane Sims and Alan Williams. Any self indulgence is all my own fault.

 

Why I Still <3 Text Messages :-)

I fell in love with text messages through poetry.

I got my first mobile phone in that strange period between 1999 and 2001 when mobile phones went from being something that only loud mouthed rich people had, to something that nobody could live without [1]. I didn't buy it for the texts though, I bought it because I'd read about something called WAP, which connected mobile phones to the internet, and the idea of having all that information in the palm of your hand felt like something to do with reading and writing. It felt like books. Within a couple of days of buying the phone I knew my guess had been right, but it wasn't the mobile internet that did it, it was texting. As soon as I sent a text I was head over heels. It was like writing poetry. Does that sound odd? It's just texting after all. But how about if I gave you this definition and asked you what I was describing: “It's an intimate kind of writing, with a set of formal limits, that tries to get an emotional response.” Am I talking about poetry, or texting? Because it's not a bad definition of either.

So standing at a bus stop on Kirkstall Road in Leeds, on the first warm day of early summer, I wrote a poem in a text message and sent it to a couple of mates. And they texted back:

“Wot R U on about?!”

But that didn't matter. I'd proved the point to myself, and over the next 18 months I wrote 80 poems that are small enough to fit into text messages, and collected them together in a book called, well, what else, Text Messages. When that was published I ended up on the Today programme being laughed at by John Humphries and shouted at by a famous poet for trying to destroy the English language. I didn't succeed in destroying English, but the book is still available on Amazon, right here, and I highly recommend it, especially for the bargain price of 35 pence, which is what it once sold for!

Of course I wasn't the only person who thought there might be a connection between creative reading, writing and mobile phones, and a few months after the poem on Kirkstall Road I sent an email about poetry to Vic Keegan, the editor of the Technology section of the Guardian, he replied, and in a few more emails we had worked out a way to run a poetry competition by text message.

In May 2001, the Guardian asked people to send them poems by text message. They got 7000 in two weeks, which were whittled down to a short list of seven by two proper poets, Peter Sansom and UA Fanthorpe, and those seven were sent back to everyone who entered, one poem per day, for seven days. Each day at about lunch time the participants got a poem by text, read it, decided if they liked it, gave it a score of between one and ten and sent that score back to the Guardian as a text. At the end of the week the scores were added up and the poem with the highest score was the winner, which was this one by Hetty Hughes, a student in Bradford at the time:

txtin iz messin,
mi headn'me englis,
try2rite essays,
they all come out txtis.
gran not plsed w/letters shes getn,
swears i wrote better
b4 comin2uni.
&she's african

What was so fantastic about the competition was that the texts came from everyone, everywhere, all the time. Of the seven people on the short list, none thought of themselves as poets, and the 7000 messages were about everything from big news stories of the day (mad cow disease) to personal relationships, to a poem about texting on the toilet. It's this quality of everyone, everywhere, all the time, that is at the heart of why I heart text messages. Because texts have become such a big part of people's everyday lives, they are by far the most welcoming medium - nobody is scared of writing a text, and people will take part by text who wouldn't take part in any other way.

Mobile phones are an intimate technology - we keep our phones within an arms length most of the time, often right next to our bodies, and the texts we get regularly are from our closest friends and family - so people will use text messages to say the things that they need to say, even if they would never say those things out loud. And because we always have our mobile phones with us everywhere, text messages can be used to reach people in the spaces where they live, and where they feel comfortable, rather than in official spaces, for example by using signs at bus stops or beer mats in pubs. If you give people something they are interested in, they always have the means to take part by text if they want to.

The Guardian's competition was very timely, and generated publicity for them round the world. For a few weeks the people who took part had come together and made a community, but once the competition ended, the community vanished. People took part from everywhere, but that meant that the community wasn't from anywhere. It wasn't rooted in a place. At the same time, mobile phones were changing the way that public spaces felt. Private worlds and public places were starting to get mixed up, and a new set of rules for how people behaved in the company of strangers were being worked out. Suddenly, the most intimate private relationships would find people in public places, either by text or by phone call. Public places became a mixed reality, haunted by the presence of people who were somewhere else but could ring you at any time. If you are old enough to remember it, everyone noticed this happening, whether they liked it or not. This was the strange period when comedians could make whole TV programmes out of carrying around a giant mobile phone and shouting “I'm on the train.” And the strange period when academics wrote whole papers about why people say “I'm on the train.” (the reason is very illuminating, but you can work it out yourself, if you think about it.)

So I wondered if we could use the intimacy, inclusiveness and commitment that text messages offered to somehow “build” public places. After all, public space is one of the things we all share, or choose not to share. Lots of different kinds of people can cross paths in a public space without ever needing to know anything about each other apart from that they all care about the quality of that place, and live some of their lives there. In late 2001 I started work on City Poems, and it opened to public participation on Valentine's Day 2003.

City Poems was a text message biography of the city of Leeds, written by the people who live and work there and delivered from a network of Poem Points at key locations around the city.

The Poem Point locations were chosen to tell the story of the city through its places, and City Poems was a book that people read on their mobile phones, finding new chapters as they walked around the city, and reading them in the place they were written about.

Each of the numbered squares on the map is a Poem Point, including a bar (3), Leeds General infirmary (6), a bus stop (17), an internet cafe in Chapeltown (8), Armley Prison (12) and an old people's day centre (13).

A Poem Point sounds quite technical, but actually it is just a sign on the wall with some instructions on and a key number.

  

Send a text with just the key number in and you'll get a poem back about the place you are in.

For example, Poem Point 3 is a bar, so if you sent '3' as a text you'd get back a poem about being drunk, or hoping to meet someone, or hoping to avoid someone or regretting the night before. 6 is Leeds General Infirmary so there you'd get back a poem about care or grief or something that fits in with the location. If you send the key number again you get another poem.

To get the first poems for City Poems we set up some creative writing workshops at some of the Poem Point locations, run by Peter and Ann Sansom, but after that anyone who wanted to could send in a poem just by texting it to the same mobile phone number and I would guess where it was about and add it to the system.

In 2004 Antwerp in Belgium was the World Book Capital, and Stefan Kolgen and Ann Laenen set up a sister project to City Poems called STADSchromosomen (City Chromosomes), so we twinned Leeds and Antwerp by choosing the same sort of places in Leeds and Antwerp, for example the civic theatre, and in Leeds you could read poems from Antwerp about plays and performance and at the theatre in Antwerp you could read poems from Leeds on the same subject.

 

City Poems was about people making their own sense of shared public spaces by reading and writing while in those spaces - readers might never find out who wrote the poem they read at the bus stop, but they knew that there was some common ground because they shared at least one of the same places.

I was the “editor” of City Poems, I choose the places to be Poem Points, and these Poem Points made a biography that was chosen, at least in part, by me. But that is just one biography of a city, mine, and there are as many biographies of Leeds or any other city as there are people who live there. It's really not for me to say what the important, meaningful places are that people care about. It's for whoever wants to, to make their own choices.

One of the things I've been doing since is trying to make a web site that lets anyone who wants to set up their own version of City Poems, or set up anything else that they want to try out by sending and receiving texts.

My friends from the Ordsall Writers group in Salford have using the latest version of this web site to run what started out as creative writing but quickly became a lot more than that, in a way that could only have happened through using text messages.

 

 

The first step in the process was a creative writing workshop, again run by Peter and Ann Sansom. Peter and Ann are great at engaging with people who aren't confident as writers, and they use creative writing games and exercises that help people to say the thing they need to say. Their approach is perfect for texting, because they give people confidence to talk in their own voice, and Jane Wood, one of the organisers of the Ordsall group, described the workshop as “absolutely brilliant”.

At the workshop, members of the group signed up to a text message mailing list. After that, one of the members of the group, Amber, started logging into the web site each week and using it to send out a question by text message everyone taking part, designed to draw out a fragment of interesting autobiographical writing from each participant, for example “What piece of music always brings back memories?”. The members of the group each text their answers back, and all the responses are collected and published, anonymously, on a web page for the Ordsall Writers, for example:

“Telstar does it for me, the record was made to celebrate the launch of the first telecommunications satellite in 1962 I was on my way to australia as a boy on my first trip to sea I can remember watching the night sky out on the ocean every night for it”

 

 
(one of Amber's jobs is pretending to be a ghost, and she often comes straight from work.)

This page has become a very engaging archive, written collaboratively by the people taking part, and browsing through it is a great introduction to the area and the people who live there, in their own words.  This is very helpful for Ordsall, because the area has a reputation that isn't always positive. One of the questions the group asked themselves by text was "What is the best thing about living here and why?". And after a few weeks, Jane and the other organiser, Mike, incorporated the creative texting into the radio show they present on the local community radio station Salford City Radio.

As well as developing creative writing skills the group noticed how it had increased their sense of wellbeing. The questions give them reason to think and write about meaningful personal memories, and they enjoy the sense that they are doing this at the same time as other members of the group. As one of the group said “I had had a rough day and the message cheered me up”. Jane feels that this is both therapeutic and good community development.

Everyone taking part thinks that there is something unique and valuable about using text messages. Sylvie, one of the members of the group, said that “a question out of the blue makes you be creative on the spur of the moment” and that being able to reply straight away by text made the answers more personal and honest: “it wouldn't be a true thing if you didn't do it straight away, it would be calculated”. Mike felt that being able to text anonymously meant that “in a group, people are mindful of what they are going to say in public, but when it's just you and a phone you can be a bit more open.” This anonymity is different from “social media” web sites like Facebook and Twitter, in which contributions are linked to a personal profile.

Sending the text “is like a message in a bottle”, a rich, intimate experience for the person writing: “it digs things out of your head that you didn't think about”. Being able to go to the web page and find other people's answers makes it a shared event, even though the members of the group didn't know who has submitted each answer: “you would be on your own without the web site”. Jane says she goes to the website straight after every question, and Sylvie discusses the messages with her partner: “I told him the questions and read the answers out, and said 'can you tell which is mine'?” This combination of anonymity and openness contributed to building trust within the group.

When the Ordsall Writers group began using text messages five months ago, there were seven people signed up to take part, but that has risen to 18 through the members of the group introducing the activity to other people. There seem to me to be two reasons why the Ordsall activity has been a success so far. The first is the talent, good humour and initiative of the Ordsall Writers. The second is text messages, and the qualities that are, if anything, even more true than they were for the Guardian’s poetry competition in 2001 - that text messages are welcoming, intimate and that all of us have our mobile phones with us all the time.

The web site that the Ordsall Writers are using works anywhere in the country, and is open to anyone to use, so if you'd like to try it out please do just email me: wilsonandyb @ gmail . com

 

[1] I sometimes get caught out saying “everyone” has got a mobile phone, when there is someone listening who doesn't, and I've thought about whether I should say “most people” instead of everyone.

But in the end I've decided to stick with “everyone”, not because I don't care about who it excludes, but because of everybody it does include. For example, my friend Ann Sansom ran a creative writing workshop in a prison as part of City Poems, and she said that men who would be described as illiterate were able to take part when she told them that they would be writing text messages. If we want to listen to the voices of all the people we share our towns and cities with, text messages are the best way. Those people who don't have a mobile phone (which is a perfectly reasonable choice) are the exception that proves the rule: more than 90% of people in the UK have a mobile, including more than 50% of over 75s.