Wednesday Club - Minutes and any other business

Apologies: With half the gang in Cornwall at the Intersect it was a pretty quiet Wednesday in ARK. However its sometimes weeks like this that I prefer the most, as I get to speak to a small group in more detail about what we want to do or how we need to improve what we do. So what did I learn this week?

We need Minutes, or rather we need to record what we discussed each week in a informal manner. This can be a written, recorded, photographed or sketched. This is for those who didn't make it as well as all you people out there who are still deciding whether to come along or not. Don't worry we know its a scary thing, but take the plunge, say hello and get involved...we are actually quite nice people.....honest!

So what else happened this week? We discussed the best use of the meeting room and bar in the Cardiff Arts Institute for our meetings and this is what we concluded:

Upstairs meeting room works best:
For more formal Wednesday clubs - workshops/ projects discussions etc where the room is facilitated or lead. One of the conversations tonight was around the fact that although ARK has an informal structure, sometimes you need you need a chair or leader to keep things in check.

Downstairs bar works best for:For informal chats and catch ups, welcoming new people in a relaxed environment, like a personal warm welcome. It turns out although 'upstairs' is a great open space it can be a little intimidating for new people to walk into so maybe we need to take it in turns to meet and greet new people, tell them what we do first before introducing them to the bigger ARK picture. What do you think?

We want to develop the Skill Swap Barter Market. Firstly by interviewing everyone who has swapped so far to find out how it went. Secondly by deciding how we develop this idea further. So if you have recently swapped your skills we want to hear how it went....photos would be good too!

Can we organise a ARK school trip? We're thinking a weekend away to learn or develop new skills. Maybe we hook up with a similar group in the UK and where we run a 24hr project? What do you think?

Well that was it for this week, hope to see everyone back next Wednesday.

Lynsey

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...

Skills Swap and Barter Market

The Travelling Pantry
Last Wednesday a couple of ARK regulars, including me, attended the Travelling Pantry, a project development workshop run by Tessy Britton, developed as part of the Social Spaces project, and hosted in Cardiff by RSA Cymru. Rather than looking at what a community's problems are and then trying to solve them, Tessy's approach to developing community projects is about working out what assets and resources a community has and then developing projects based on these assets. These asset-based projects can then help to address the problems that the community are experiencing by bringing people together, which is the first big step to community problem-solving.

To pass on what we had discovered I gave a presentation (see the slideshow below) to people who came to thinkARK on Wednesday night, about the asset-based projects that Tessy had mentioned. One of them was Trade School, a Brooklyn-based initiative in which people offered to teach classes to students who bartered with teachers for class time. Classes taught included Foundations in Ghost Hunting, Portrait Photography and Making Websites with WordPress.



thinkARK Skills Swap Beta
Inspired by the example of Trade School, on Wedensday the 8th of December thinkARK Wednesday Club are going to be running a prototype 'Skills Swap and Barter Market' in CAI. So if there is a skill you want to learn or a service that you need come along and offer your skills and abilities in exchange. If you think there is a class you can teach, find some interested students and barter for your knowledge. If there is something to need doing, swap it for something you can do in return.

This will be a 'test' to find out what works and what doesn't, but should be a lot of fun.

Also, thanks to Kevin Hong of CS Studio for inviting us to the Travelling Pantry workshop.

CAN THE CREATIVE INDUSTRIES LEAD US TO A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE?

This was the question we were faced with yesterday, at Creative Industries ktn's event, near Tower Bridge, London yesterday. With the question itself being so important to a number of ARK members Wednesday club was a split affair. There was the usual 7pm meeting at Cardiff Arts Institute and then a satellite group of us attending the London event. The picture below is of the talkaoke table which is an interesting way of controlling this type of event. I have attached a video of the system.



The event's running order had some great names which you can find more information here The event itself was well run and I personally learnt a few new things. But as always I feel the real feeling about these events leaves me with is, helplessness and also a lack of action. Indeed for us at ARK we started it up to try and involve, engage and do. To the extent that we try and get people to make commitments to do and interact.

Creativity Network meeting - 5/5/10

After a recent blog post about creativity in Cardiff and Wales and networking, it has been suggested that a meet up to discuss a possible overall programme of events and looking into working together to show the strength and vibrancy of creativity in Wales and Cardiff could be looked at. As we have a regular meet up on Wednesday evenings at Cardiff Arts Institute we are hoping to be able to meet anyone interested in this subject from around 7pm next wednesday 5/5/10 to see if we can do anything together? If you are interested then please come along. Also if you feel someone else also should come to the meet up then please pass on the invitation.

thanks again and I hope to see you all next week

ARK team

Thinkpublic meet ARK

A quick thank you to Paul from thinkpublic who wrote a small piece on their blog about us, and they have also been very helpful in giving us a bit of advice as to how to move forward. Finally after a number of months of us trying, Paul has also managed to sum up what we do in one sentence.

"ARK is a weekly meetup of designers, artists and other interested people who share an passion for social design."

Bang on. I guess that we just need to expand peoples ideas of what social design is now.

Wednesday Club and the evolving face of ARK

We have been looking into the formation of ARK for a number of months now. ARK is an unusual beast as it is many things to many different people. With everyone getting something out of ARK's various guises we are trying to sum up ARK and it's activities, these are the very first steps.



Please comment below

Wednesday Club - 17/03/10

We have had a lot of interest in ARK recently with a number of people asking what we get up to. I tried to take some photos to give you an idea. We had a great turn out this week and have managed to create two strong groups to concentrate on the train inquiry for Assembly Wales and also the dead spaces project which one response will be the pop-up store/mini festival.


The two groups discussing the projects.


More detailed discussions about the train project.


More detailed discussions about the dead spaces / pop-up shop project.

Some happy snaps from last weeks talking

We are trying to document the Wednesday club's and what happens. The problem is we are always pretty busy doing the workshops and chatting about the projects and what everyone has been up to over the last week or so. Not ideal but below are some images from the idea break out session we got involved in.

Facebook discussion on Train Stations

We have been working hard on a train inquiry for Assembly for Wales, to broaden the discussion we have started a chat on facebook which you can see here Also if you are interested in any other social design ventures we hold get togethers every Wednesday at Cardiff Arts Institute from around 7pm.

We have a mascot

Laura came across this on the weekend and it is totally perfect for ARK. Just needs a lick of paint and I think it will be our very own cow, which will hopefully aid people finding us on the night.



Going pink

Empty shops update

Cardiff city centre has a number of empty shop spaces and so we thought ‘wouldn’t it be great to use them?’

My own particular interest is in design, performance and theatre and so I expressed an interest to my fellow ARKies in setting up a project to turn an empty shop space in Cardiff city centre into a place for performance, storytelling and exchange. At the moment we’re working on finding an empty shop to do the project in, as well as gathering a group of people who would like to take part. A few Wednesdays ago we had a session to come up with ideas for the project and to discuss how it could take shape and some really interesting ideas came out of it.

Then there’s an exciting week ahead – lots of meetings, discussions and visits, including one to the Brixton Village project which I’m really excited about.

I’ll keep updating as things develop, but if anyone wants to get involved come along on Wednesday or get in touch. We’ll be the ones sat around the cow…

Language, openess and journeys

Over the last few months we have steadily built up new ARKies, many have come to the Wednesday meetings others kept in touch through email and online media. What seems to come up more and more often recently is why not as many people as we would like come to chat and discuss on Wednesday. To this end we have had a bit of feedback that ARK is a bit intimidating and possibly the language used is confusing. Also there is a small issue of knowing who the ARK group is and so who to approach on the evening. With all of this feedback in mind we have come up with a few ideas to help:

FINDING ARK:
1. ARK endeavors to be in the Common Room of Cardiff Arts Institute from 7pm every Wednesday (This is only a start time and even if you can't make it at that time come later as we regularly are still talking well into the evening). If for any reason the room is closed (this week for example CAI were putting up an exhibition), then we will be down stairs generally about 5 or 6 of us some with laptops, others with notepads straining to hear each other :-)

2. Social design is a huge topic and can potentially touch a huge variety of people through there interests. With this in mind instead of just reading mine and Lynsey's Blog's we have decided to add other authors to the blog so you can get a feel for the variety of interested ARKies have. For me personally I think that everyone has something they are particularly interested in exploring, ARK is just a place to explore this further.

3. Following on our cow/bull theme. We are looking to bring a pink toy bull as a mascot. So look out for this when in CAI.

4. If you see me at the bar on a wednesday and I am looking through some coins. I'll have an SA Gold or Cranberry Juice (depends how late it is )

5. Think that is it but if someone else has any experience of setting up groups or wishes to feedback their thoughts let us know by commenting below.

Wednesday 17th February - Tea & empty shops

hello its wednesday again and if you want to join us we will be downstairs from 7pm so feel free to pop over and say hello. If its a little noisy we will head upstairs to the games room so check there too.

This week we will be planning a visit to Brixton Village to check out what they have created and hopefully we can post some photos for everyone to see. Plus we will be chatting about our 'Communi-Tea' project where we are hoping to organise a lazy afternoon tea crawl in Cathays.

some come along say hello and have a chat

Snow ARK

Well i am determined to make it to wednesdays ARK meeting tonight in the CAI, although i am going to head in early and leave early just to make sure i don't get stuck in town. So if anyone wants to join me before the usual 7pm meet up i will there from 5pm probably with a lovely hot chocolate in my hands to warm me up!

Story Telling

Just come across this True Stories Told Live via Russell Davies blog and thought it fitted in quite nicely with one of the the re-occurring themes at the ARK meet ups of telling stories to share knowledge, ideas and experiences. One of the ideas last night was to turn one one Wednesday night a month into a knowledge sharing night, maybe kicking off with a quick 10 minute presentation by an Arkee on any chosen subject followed by an open  discussion on that same subject. The presentation doesn't need to be formal and you don't need to be an expert it just needs to be something interesting! It also fits quite nicely under the Pop-up education idea which proved popular at the launch and Julian dubbed it the 'Academy' so maybe we can trial one soon?

We are moving our wednesday club

Just to let you know we are moving this week to Cardiff Arts Institute, which used to be incognito opposite the museum. So if you are keen on coming along we will see you all at 7pm.