How to Curate Events

Editor's Notes

• #3: Taking place in 12 cities across the continent from Amsterdam to Warsaw, from a storytelling bus to a caravan of the commons, from rediscovering the city through the eyes of refugees by bike to repurposing economic alternatives through a treasure hunt, the Transeuropa Festival helps people imagine, demand and enact new ways for citizens to connect across border on transnational issues. We started organising a festival in festival simultaneously across London, Paris & Bologna four years ago amongst friends and now we do it across 13 cities each with their own festival team.
• #6: What impact do you want your event to create? In other words, how can your event help you achieve the objectives of your campaign. How would you know what success looks like?
• #7: Taking place in 12 cities across the continent from Amsterdam to Warsaw, from a storytelling bus to a caravan of the commons, from rediscovering the city through the eyes of refugees by bike to repurposing economic alternatives through a treasure hunt, the Transeuropa Festival helps people imagine, demand and enact new ways for citizens to connect across border on transnational issues.
• #9: Think about what would motivate people. Let’s think about what motivates people to go to Glastonbury, some people want to see acts on the main stage, others want to learn how to juggle, while others just want to immerse themselves in the experience.
• #10: Armchair activists: prefer to be card carrying members of parties or organisations or sign petitions online because they don’t yet feel comfortable or powerful enough to shape the issues they’re campaign on. Organisations like 38 Degrees are the best examples of getting “armchair activists” to take part in real life campaigns like “saving the forests”.   Brand addicts: prefer campaigning for high profile initiatives so they can be associated with symbols of success. They enjoy activities which don’t require too much effort but allow them to show others how they have been involved in winning change.   Bright lights: prefer campaigning in innovative groups or new issues – often outside their neighbourhood as they enjoy meeting like minded people. They are comfortable with disruptive techniques like direct action and may themselves shift accepted approaches on campaigning. Groups like War on Want use a range of methods to keep “bright lights” excited and productive on campaigns like Love Fashion Hate Sweatshops.   Coalition builders: prefer to campaign on issues than for just one organisation. They can bring new ideas and energy to campaigns but can also be associated with breaking the rules. They can appear anywhere as their purpose is to organise different campaigns at the same time. They can be guerrilla-like, finding niche issues or activities to make their own. Coalitions like Fair Fares Now enable “coalition builders” to come together to campaign on symbolic issues like stopping us getting ripped off by train fares.   Community organisers: prefer getting involved in campaigning around where they live because they want to be in familiar surroundings and campaign on what affects the people around them. Groups like Barnet Participates train people to make sure they can lead their communities to hold decision makers to account.   Hobby horses: prefer getting involved in workshops or community activities because they want to try and learn as much as possible as much for social reasons as the training itself. Initiatives like Transition Towns build the capacity for “hobby horses” to affect structural change in communities.   Public spirits: prefer organising people for campaigning on the streets because they are looking for something more profound and enjoy intervening at a large scale. Movements like the “Occupy” create spaces for groups to self-organise in a consensus-based collective.   Creative Safarians: prefer getting involved in different organisations on the issue they really care about because they take pride in knowing their issue and wanting to share knowledge about it with others. Issues like fair trade cross over various types of community, campaigning and entrepreneurial activities to provide a common thread for “safarians” to stay involved whatever the environment they’re in.
• #11: Use
• #12: Develop tools that you and others can reuse in the future
• #13: Develop tools that you and others can reuse in the future
• #14: Develop tools that you and others can reuse in the future
• #15: http://vimeo.com/10555859
• #16: Whereas four years ago, the festival was just something we did for fun, it’s now turned into an transnational organisation where we’ve helped people make a living through doing what they love, raising over £2 million and creating friendships and even a baby.
• #19: However many technology bubbles the economy creates, however many digital landfills of retweets and blog comments pile up in the internet cloud, we’ll be left with the handmade communities and the social “bricks and mortar” that embodied the behaviours that digital technology reminded us we’d lost without being dependent on the tools themselves.   As Clay Shirky once said “transformation in society doesn’t happen when it adopts new tools, it happens when it adopts new behaviours”   But we rarely reflect on this, as we create videos, craft presentations or curate conversations. When the next technology shift happens (and it will be in Iowa, trust me!), let’s not try and pretend that Youtube won’t follow VHS into the graveyard of fashion. At least we can turn cassette tapes into jewellery (respect @irate_modu) and hack VHSes into pinball machines, we can’t wear our tweets?   So how can we best use the behaviours and techniques that digital technology have given us without needing to rely on its infrastructure?   Will the “human microphone” used in the occupations be the next generation’s amplifier or retweet?     Will the “complaints choirs” spreading across the world be the next generation’s user-generated feedback or comment form?   Will the “mindful map” be the next generation’s “open air” data visualisation?   What all of these have in common is that they put digital techniques out into the open air and in contact with the senses that technology finds so difficult to recognise or value. We’re all impatient for the benefits of the cloud, but why wait when we’ve got open air?   Open air is spacious enough that everything is possible – it’s a blank canvas. But it’s small enough that making “open air innovation” has to be at the scale of humans or even an object to respect and value the space it’s in, whether that’s a market or a bus. It’s making the micro feel like it can grow wings, by shaping whispers and glances of solutions to big challenges – it is our way of “micro-making” a more creative transnational future!