So the last meeting was a little chaotic because of tech problems, but I took a few notes…
Although we weren’t all able to stick around for the whole call, @Nskocz, @matteo_uguzzoni, @Sa.rah (in Berlin, from Austria), @MGrelewski (in St Petersburg, from Poland) and myself (in Lisbon, from UK) were in the conversation.
We had a little recap of what had already been talked about last week. Natalia summarised it as skill-sharing of artisanal pastimes between different locations and generations (I think! Tell me if I got this right N!). Michal suggested we have a look at Reddit gifts, which is about sharing things between strangers. He also asked whether the intention was for us to craft a game together (across locations), or gamify the crafting/skill sharing itself.
I shared some feedback from one of my contacts who has previously done a cultural project about crafts in the Algarve:
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There is a tension between older people doing craft as pastime and younger designer folk doing pieces that are marketed and packaged and of higher cost, a tension to do with very different understandings of time (not as resource / as resource).
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it’s good to map all the activities already happening in the chosen thematic and physical areas (e.g. for this previous project they mapped all craft activities in the central region of the Algarve as well as some surrounding areas).
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it would be better to have strong convincing links between a smaller number of countries (3?) than weaker links between more (5).
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Even the largest funding pot (€50,000) is quite a small budget for a project involving several countries once events, publicity, website, travel to other countries etc. are included. (After this point we decided that despite the budget challenges, it would be better to go for the €30k pot as it has a higher chance of being selected)
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the relationship between urban games and craft is not yet clear
I then shared my own thoughts of things we need to decide soon:
• the focus for the project and reason for its existence (!) - as the craft idea seems quite tentative at the moment
• whether the urban play element from the previous project will also be part of this one
• whether international travel will be taking place, or if the project design from the outset is ‘covid-proof’ and based on remote working and/or each working in our own local areas
• which countries and why!
After we lost everyone else from the call (!), Sarah and I spoke about whether the craft focus felt like the right direction. We agreed that before deciding to definitely go with this idea, it would be great if everyone could go away and think if there are any themes/project ideas that could be considered. …so people if you have any cross-border project ideas you’ve been itching to try out, let’s have a chat!
@soly @alex_levene
That is why I thought about making whole exchange process gamified if it does makes sense. When thinking about game there is a story that is coming to my mind: We now live in a strange world, seems that many changes are in front of us. Exchanging skills, sharing crafts is something that in this context I associate with postapo world. Well - I don’t think there’s an apocalypse coming but maybe sharing some basic skills, old techniques and so on is not so irrelevant 