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Free Culture Spaces
anas (United Kingdom) · Jun 18th, 2007 3:24 am · 19 votes · no comments made
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| Open Spaces |
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Free culture is a concept that embraces the ideas of culture, openness, freedom and participation. Over the past years, this concept has been progressively more successful in attracting more participants all over the world. However, the accessibility to the global free culture requires a sustainable network. This session was intended to discuss a possible proposal to create what is termed “Free Culture Spaces”, places were public are given access to free culture and in which they can interact, produce and participate in shaping this concept. These places would also serve as nodes of a network to connect free culture communities in different countries. A map of these places can then be generated to act as a kind of “What’s On” for global free culture.
The rough idea noted earlier in the session pictured a kind of place with appropriate infrastructure (such as video projector, wireless Internet access, film screening facilities) with open access for the community. This raised the issue of funding, which may prove to be the most challenging aspect to address.
Several examples were demonstrated to formulate an idea of how existing spaces are currently functioning. The first example came from Croatia, where a DJ/Art Collective Hub acts as an interactive space for free culture. Lessons learned from the experience include the importance of diversification of funding sources to maintain neutrality, the possibility of running low cost projects and initiatives to build and strengthen communities, and the difficulties of mixing technology with anything else. Another example from Brazil was then briefly introduced. This was a large scale project funded by the Ministry of Culture to build spaces that are called “hotspots” for culture. During the implementation of this project, several issues proved to be probably as challenging as funding. Such challenges include teaching technology to non technical audiences, raising awareness of copyright laws, coordination and project management issues (this is possibly an issue arising from the large size of the project, something in the range of 600 hotspots). Bureaucratic governmental processes posed also a major obstacle. Projects from Boston and Macedonia were also discussed, and the main consensus that emerged is that such spaces are certainly viable, which steered the session towards taking about practical issues and ideas to connect existing spaces and establish new ones.
This also raised the issue of focussing on dedicated places or using shared possible facilities. The main problem here is one of funding and resources. Due to the relatively limited available resources, it makes much more sense to use, whenever possible, existing places that may contain the required tools and infrastructures without incurring the high costs of building or maintaining dedicated places.
It was made very clear the importance of making these spaces as open to the public as possible so that the main objective of promoting free culture can be fulfilled. There may be a need to charge a certain subscription for access to recover some of the maintenance and operational costs, but this should be certainly kept to the absolute minimum.
Lastly, an active call for action to connect the existing free culture spaces was made, inviting everyone to participate in what may be instituted as an iCommons node. Forming such a network will yield dividends by enabling sharing of ideas, resources and lessons learned. How long will it take for such a network to see the light? It all depends on how active, determined and willing each of us is!
tags: cardiff united kingdom culture summit07 free-spaces
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