I’d like to ask you all what kinds of activities, online and offline, would be interesting for you to have run by our community over the next weeks, in June and July?
I was asked by @matteo_uguzzoni to suggest a couple of ideas for us - and I feel that webinars were great, but it’s maybe time to move into something different.
I’m throwing in a few suggestions, but these are not binding - I’d love to hear what kinds of meetings and formats would be interesting for you, and push your work further.
- Collaborative writing of a grant - in early June, we could set up a small working group in which we would develop a collective proposal for few interventions in your countries. I believe projects in places that are underfunded will be welcome, and they can happen worldwide, so we could focus on rural Portugal, Namibia and Burkina - ping @Highfather @soly and @LizzieH as potential hosts, but also everyone else who is now scattered around and has some good ideas and would like to be part of this, if you feel like forming a small collective for that purpose is a good match for you.
Solidarity, connection and openness are keywords to play around.
https://www.culturalfoundation.eu/culture-of-solidarity
There is also this fund https://civic-europe.eu/idea-challenge/how-it-works/ - and we could try to activate our partners from Poland and Hungary here, for example, @Anna.szilagyinagy and @MGrelewski - if that sounds like something you’d like to explore, we can set up a collective around playfulness and civic participation, for example, using some of the ideas and games already designed in the process here, and experience and talents of our community.
- We are planning to launch a magazine and invite you to write pieces about your work, areas of interest, methodologies, discoveries, things that drive you and excite you, or scare you, or you know, anything else - around urban play, space, connectedness, and fun. Of course, there’s an extra spin on how your work was affected by the crisis and how you envision the role of play, human contact, urban space change over the course of the years - what will stay, how will these adapt, how will we change. But also, really, anything else.
I was wondering if while we’re rolling out the call, and the details of it, and then start writing, you’d like to also hold a couple of research-meetings in which we’d for example talk to some interesting spatial practitioners or designers or activists, using online spaces such as Second Life or Animal Crossing, or other super popular digital agoras - to explore the potential, test the limits, and try new things out but also support your work and inquiry into a topic.
- As the MICA trainees were tinkering with the podcast format, maybe some kind of audio-experiment would also be a nice thing to try out for some of us?
This is an open list, so if there’s something else, feel free to add it - and I’ll be here to make it happen 
@matteo_uguzzoni @soly @MarinaKy14 @Highfather @BagelandBalloon @LizzieH @LeaLeroy @awhitney @KyrAvram @jyow @Coll1sion @LukaMilorava @giulia.25 @GavinWood @lilyhiggins @vitorfreire @vivianacordero @Olina @michail_galanakis @Katerina_P @nikos @Lynx @GiorgosPapavasileiou @jsenzel @izabel.k @nikolas_kan @Katerina @lydiamanitsidou @Sa.rah
and,