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...

Developments for the market

Welcome, welcome, welcome!

Bring and share is all about creating a place where people with a skill to offer can hook up with people with a skill in need and vice versa. It could be anything that interests you, from juggling to video production to art appreciation. Have a look at our ideas if you're not sure... Meanwhile, here are a few tips on making it work for everyone.

1. The basic unit of exchange is one hour, of your time or someone else's.
2. Give freely – it works best if you offer something you really enjoy doing.
3. Bring and share is based on trust and common sense – so please keep fairness in mind.

Need a bit more detail? Just ask your welcome host...

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The areas we are looking at so far:

- computery things
examples:

I need to learn how to use Word. How do I get started on Twitter and Facebook? I can teach people about (legal!) music sharing.I'm offering word-processing skills training.

- in the kitchen
examples: Can someone help me make perfect cakes? I'd love to learn about Indian cooking. I know how to make flawless souffles. My speciality is French cuisine.

- green fingers
examples: Anyone know how/where I can keep bees? I'd really love to grow my own vegetables. I'd like to share my appreciation of permaculture. I know exactly where all the best blackberries/apples/sloe berries/nut trees are.

- health and happiness
examples: I need to find better ways of chilling out. Can anyone help me manage my time better? I'd like to teach yoga classes. Climbing is the best thing ever – I want to pass on the passion.

- DIY dilemmas
examples: Can anyone help me put up a shed? I'm a whizz with the power tools.

- arts and crafty stuff
examples: I'd like to start going to Cardiff's museum and art galleries. Film has always fascinated me. I'd love to share my knowledge with others.

- the business world
examples: How can I turn my hobby into a solid business idea? I can give people top tips on business success.

Quick thank you to Clare for the words, Laura for the words and everyone else for contributing to the testing out last week.

A year in the life

Always good to show the developments of the group.

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.

Travelling pantry example projects

View more presentations from areyoulaura.

Story telling/animation

Animation but feels like a brilliant way of doing some kind of storytelling or experience?

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.