weird going on's

It was only a matter of time but this weekend confirmed it thinkARK people are by far spending too much time together. In one day alone we had these two clashes. Allie and Laura confirming when working together all those years ago in CHAPTER that they were actually secretly wishing that one day they could come together and be a superhero duo.

On the very same night Laura and Angharad were caught mirroring each other in actions and clothing. We feel this is very serious and needs to be looked at. Everyone is going to the doctors to see if there are any issues with crossed brain functions :-) Enjoy the shots.

Papergirl Cardiff Update

A quick update on what's happening with PapergirlCDF...the submissions deadline has been extended to next Saturday the 4th of June. This was a bit of a relief for anyone who was struggling to meet the 27th of May deadline, especially since this is a busy time of year for a lot of people.

Next Thursday the 2nd of June there will be 2 print workshops for children running in The Printhaus, Llandaff Road for young people and their parents to learn how to screen print and make some art for Papergirl . The workshop times are 10am-1pm and 2pm-5pm. Spaces are limited, so anyone interested will need to register. For more details, check out the PapergirlCDF blog here.

We are also looking for people to take part in the art distribution bike ride on the 18th of June. If you are interested in taking part you need to fill in an online form on the PapergirlCDF blog. We also need volunteers to help package the art, put up the exhibition and help with other stuff. If you're interested in helping out please get in touch!

Finally, if you're still wondering what Papergirl is all about, here is a link to a lovely video from Papergirl Capetown which sums up what's great about Papergirl

Responding - Attracting people and the lessons we are learning.

Well this year started with a bang we had an event that we had to get organised (still not to late to come along with your friends to it. Tuesday 25th January from 6pm at Cardiff Arts Institute). Coupled with the really good news that a number of people who were looking for work have now got new jobs and some have been redeployed to different areas of their business. So for 2011 this brings a whole different feel to thinkARK as most of the projects have relied on people using some of their spare time to help out creating projects and events. So this year is going to be even busier.

Anyway back to the real reason for the blog post. We have for many months now averaged about 10 -12 people coming and chatting about projects. And we have got to know each other very well which is great but is also an issue when new people come as we have groups of people that are talking about things that have happened or about to happen. So for potential new people coming into a close group it can always be a bit intimidating.

Firstly as we have been starting to get involved in a lot of projects we have started to let our planning of these control our Wednesday evenings, which were always envisaged as more of a social event and experimentation space rather than physically working. In balance to this we have been struggling to all meet up at one time so Wednesday is perfect for talking about projects. The layout of the room at Cardiff Arts Institute is also a bit to do with the issue as for the last few months it has made us talk in a large circle where people have become disengaged and it is really not as fun as it has been.

SO TO NEW YEARS RESOLUTION

- in 2011 we are going to divide the wednesday meeting up, so there is either a space or time to discuss projects. Then another time or space for just having fun and socialising.

- in 2011 we are also going to try and stop mass talks and break into smaller groups. We hope this will create a more creative and personal experience for everyone.

- in 2011 we are also going to develop new ways of introducing new people to the group. So we are aiming to pick one person who says hi and looks after a new person gets them introduced and is made to feel welcome.

We hope these new small changes will help in the development of an even better community, and come together with better projects. Would love to hear your thoughts

Bringing, Sharing and having a Good Time

Thanks to all the people who came to share their skills and talents last Wednesday night in CAI. Everyone seemed to have a good time, even if they didn’t come away with exactly what they were looking for!

In the lead up to the event, what struck me was the amount of people who claimed not to have any skills to offer. It’s easy to forget that not everyone can do the things that you can do and that something you take for granted can be valuable to other people. So to help jog people’s memories of what their skills were we put up a number of headings that skills could be categorised under. They were Green Fingers, Computery Things, Health & Happiness, In the Kitchen, Art & Crafty Stuff, The Business World, DIY Dilemmas, The Life of the Mind and Miscellaneous. We also put up a list of other potential skills for people to take inspiration from.

We asked people to consider 3 basic guidelines for sharing and bartering:
-The unit of exchange is one hour
-Give freely – it’s better if you offer something you enjoy doing
-Skill sharing is based on trust and common sense – so keep fairness in mind.

People were then invited to spend the first hour putting up everything they had to offer and everything they wanted under the various categories. Then the next hour was for finding the people who were offering something you wanted and bargaining with them for it.

These were some of the skills offered...
Digging and weeding
Basic blogging
CV revamping
Intermediate knitting
Curry lessons
Basic hoola-hooping
Intro to sustainability
Wardrobe weeding
Bike maintenance

And some of the skills wanted...
Body popping
Bouzouki classes
Astronomy with binoculars
Basic Welsh
Positive thinking
How to screenprint
Mushroom foraging
Basic website design
Biological pest control

Bartering was good fun; I found myself in a few humorously tense ‘lay your cards on the table’ situations in order to get what I wanted, having to stand there and list every skill I could think of until the person I was bargaining with consented to do a swap.

A couple of people who weren’t able to come have asked if the skills swap can go on online. It would be interesting to figure out a way of doing this, however there are already a lot of skill swap and local exchange trading systems websites dedicated to this. ( Freeconomy , Cardiff Taffs) The charm of Bring and Share for me was being able to speak to people face to face, get to know new people and have a laugh. However I think we are going to have a look at putting the skills offered online for other people to do swaps for some time in the near future.

Actually I’m finding the barter mentality hard to kick – today on Twitter I spotted an opportunity and negotiated a ukulele lesson in exchange for basic sewing. Might be skill swapping for Christmas presents this year ...

If anyone would like to offer any feedback about Bring and Share or comments about skill sharing in general it would be good to hear from you...

A year in the life

Always good to show the developments of the group.

ARK Observations

We have been thinking a bit more about the idea of how to create new projects for the future you can see the posts here and here. The thoughts are two fold to bring other people to into projects that may not have visited one of our Wednesday clubs but also to keep a record of the project and how it develops. A fear we have had is that 'project' and 'idea'may already be a bit too advanced. So we are thinking about an observations section to the website. Here you will be able as the name suggests to post observations the above diagram should explain it a bit better.

From the observations on the site it would then be up to people to rate them in terms of interest and comment on the observation. If it gains a lot of comments and conversations then we believe this will naturally evolve into some kind of response. So for example the observations on the above diagram may lead to a project that looks into new forms of how we throw things away, or how to encourage people to actively put rubbish in the 'bin'. Perhaps it maybe even to challenge the concept of what is a bin. After a few chats with people I think we are going to try this out for a while and see where it goes. At first we think the observations will be similar to twitter tweets. short and fun then hopefully as it develops more and more people will get involved.

As with most design it will have to be prototyped and tested but we are looking to create a genuine space where divergent thinking is encouraged which can then lead to convergent developments.

Developments within thinkARK and ARK LAB

After celebrating our first birthday and in the end zone of our first Professional project we have been looking into how we can develop the group and how we can bring new people with great projects to ARK. A few months ago there was a post about how ARK was envisaged working you can see that article here.

Even in this short time this has been changing and evolving. For us though because of the nature of the group and how it works it was always going to happen. So last night we had a discussion about how we could work in the future and also how this would tie in with a new website. The drawings above and below try to express some of the items we discussed. But in basic terms we have divided the company up into ARK LAB which effectively uses social design within organisations and companies. these projects are hoped to help the thinkARK group with development capital for experimental projects that would not be possible without help from the thinkARK as a group and potentially through a bit of financial support.

We have been looking at a number of schemes that have a similar feel to what we are trying to get to:
openIDEO
wefund



We would really love to hear what everyone else thinks about the idea and what they would want from such a thing. You can see the website in it's current state here (ARK LAB) and the thinkARK section here

To recap on what was thought during the chat:

- We should look at the projects we have already done to look at process
- We need to be clear what we are offering
- We want people to feel like they can develop projects and ideas with us. they don't need to have something finished
- I'll let you decide the rest