LAB Procomum: Creating a citizen innovation Lab to promote the commons

LAB Procomum: Creating a citizen innovation Lab to promote the commons

By Theresa FendNo Comments
LAB Procomum is a citizen innovation laboratory maintained by Instituto Procomum since 2017 in Santos, São Paulo State, Brazil. In partnership with Bela Baderna the Lab produced a short video capturing some of the core projects and stories. Find out what it's like to build a citizen innovation laboratory dedicated to the promotion of commons, to prototyping solutions to daily problems and improving people’s lives: https://youtu.be/kK_8VTZcXwo English and Spanish subtitles available. Originally published at Lab Procomum. ...
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Radio Amnesia: Support Indigenous Communication in Brazil

Radio Amnesia: Support Indigenous Communication in Brazil

By Theresa FendNo Comments
Amnesia is a network of free radios, web sites and itinerant radio experiences that believe in access to media production and content dissemination as a tool to achieve the fundamental rights of life in society, especially for indigenous and original communities. We aim to build a secure and private communication network for the thousands of indigenous communities and traditional people inside Brazilian territory, providing these communities with tools and training for private and secure communication. Furthermore, hosting platforms that can help to propagate local cultures, strongly characterized in their oral form since the pre-Columbian period in the Americas and during the later African diaspora miscegenation. So, it expects to actively contribute to the preservation of Brazilian indigenous practices and inheritances and to foster the safe dissemination of traditional knowledge and wisdom, ensuring South America’s native populations their right to freedom and expression. The Amnesia Network of Free Radios has been acting in indigenous and traditional communities in northeastern Brazil for eight years. Since...
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What’s Next: Outcomes from DOTS. The Impact Summit

What’s Next: Outcomes from DOTS. The Impact Summit

By Theresa FendNo Comments
At DOTS. The Impact Summit that took place in Nakuru, Kenya from December 5-7, we used the power of a gathering to co-create and kick off long-term projects that offer collaborative solutions to systemic problems in different localities. Here come some of the outcomes: Data Sensitivity (with Tactical Tech) Tactical Tech is an international NGO that engages with citizens and civil-society organisations to explore and mitigate the impacts of technology on society. One of their current flagship projects is The Glass Room: a multi-format interactive exhibition in several versions including the Community Edition. It has travelled the world to expose the data trails we leave and to increase public awareness and contribute to the dynamic education on this topic. In the Glass Room Community Edition, a pop-up exhibition explores how society is dealing with the growing dependency on data and technology. Tactical Tech, GIG and the organizations represented at DOTS created a joint strategy to develop a Global Hub Edition of the Glassroom...
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This was DOTS. The Impact Summit!

This was DOTS. The Impact Summit!

By Theresa Fend1 Comment
Climate change, economic inequality and political divisions are only becoming more pressing challenges in the whole world. As a network of networks, hubs and innovative individuals, we want to jointly implement change through concrete and tangible projects. At DOTS, we used the power of a gathering to co-create concrete projects that offer collaborative solutions to systemic problems in different localities. From the 5th to the 7th of December, over 60 people from all across the world gathered in Nakuru, Kenya for DOTS. The Impact Summit, hosted by the ​Global Innovation Gathering (GIG)​, and ​r0g Agency for Open Culture and Critical Transformation (r0g).​ The objective of the summit was to link various hubs, activists, entrepreneurs and innovators across the Global North and South that use technology to address such systemic challenges as Conflict and Migration, Civic Engagement, Healthcare, Data Protection & Digital Privacy, and the Sustainability of maker spaces. DOTS. The Impact Summit was a new, impact and output driven event...
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Job alert: Project and Communications Coordinator

Job alert: Project and Communications Coordinator

By Theresa FendNo Comments
Part time for 3 years; apply until January 5th. Would you like to shape global cooperation, advance citizen social science globally and raise awareness for participatory research? Then we look forward to your application! The Global Innovation Gathering (GIG) is a community of innovation hubs, makerspaces, hackerspaces and other grassroot innovation community spaces and initiatives as well as individual innovators, makers, technologists and changemakers. GIG is pursuing a new vision for global cooperation based on equality, openness and sharing. In January 2020, we will start implementing a 3-year project on participatory social science, as part of a consortium with 8 other partners in the EU Horizon 2020 funded project “CoAct”. The project aims to engage vulnerable citizens and local civil society groups in Research and Innovation initiatives. GIG will be responsible for the coordination of communication, dissemination and exploitation of project results (WP8, please see expert from the project proposal below). The objectives of our work in the project are to disseminate CoAct results and build a global sustainable Citizen Social...
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Ideas in Motion

Ideas in Motion

By Geraldine de BastionNo Comments
GIG founder Geraldine de Bastion and Annemarie Botzki, Co-Founder/CEO at Rocsun, write about innovations, open technologies and ideas like a climate solutions network as part of their reflections for the "Extinction Rebellion" movement that is currently engaged in their International Rebellion in more than 60 cities across the globe. Emission: net zero. That means a complete change of our way of life.  And yet: Nothing less than that was decided in 2015 by the Paris Climate Conference. But: Who will build this world, a world without emissions? When will we begin? And where is the plan how to reach this survival goal as quicky and fairly as possible? Courageous revisions of the global energy and economic system are necessary. Society‘s goal can no longer merely be growth and profit maximization, but must rather be ecological and social justice and stable living conditions. Radical as it may seem, this is not the first time a society has had to readjust. What helped during such social...
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i4Policy Task Force Meeting

i4Policy Task Force Meeting

By Theresa FendNo Comments
After the convention of hubs organized last year by i4Policy, during which innovation community leaders from across Africa co-created the Africa Innovation Policy Manifesto, the first meeting of the Africa Innovation Policy Task Force took place at Impact Hub Kigali in Rwanda.  i4Policy is a pan-African movement gathering over 140 Innovation Hubs from 43 African countries. The 21 members of the Task Force include several GIG members: Sheila Birgen of iHub, Kenya; Markos Lemma of iceaddis, Ethiopia; and, Jaiksana Soro of Platform Africa, South Sudan & Uganda. Jon Stever of The Office & Impact Hub Kigali in Rwanda hosted the meeting and convened the task force as lead of the i4Policy secretariat. I was invited to take part in both the 2018 and 2019 events as an observer - and I did observe history in the making! https://twitter.com/i4policy/status/1127263908551692290 After three intense and long days of co-creation to update the Manifesto (one evening ended after 3am!), the Task Force presented a new outline of...
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Meeting your neighborhood friends, activists and makers – open:fora at r0g Agency

Meeting your neighborhood friends, activists and makers – open:fora at r0g Agency

By Theresa FendNo Comments
Together with Open Source Ecology Germany e.V., and with the support of the Guerrilla Foundation and GIGgers in Berlin we from r0g Agency held our first open:fora 'street meet' … a rather spontaneous artistic and cultural action intended to complement the week of re:publica. At a time where we felt that cultural activism and open culture is being subverted by a growing political rejection of societal freedoms we ran a series of thematic events and cocktails bringing our friends and colleagues from the open tech and culture communities, artists and social activists together to zoom in on specific projects and stories we are working on. It was a great opportunity to meet new and old friends and get their feedback on new initiatives, such as the Migrant Media Network (MMN). Based on our #defyhatenow initiative in South Sudan, MMN, conceived by our colleague Thomas G. Kalunga, focuses on social media as a peacebuilding and migrant information system. Piloting with Ghanaian...
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GIG @ Communities & Technologies

GIG @ Communities & Technologies

By Victoria WenzelmannNo Comments
The biennial Communities and Technologies (C&T) conference stimulates scholarly debate and is a prime venue to disseminate research on the complex connections between communities and information and communication technologies. #comtech2019 aimed to also connect academia and practitioners - an endeavor that GIG as a network and many members obviously relate and can contribute much to! Already in 2017, some GIGers participated in C&T in Troyes, as Oliver Stickel from Fablab Siegen had initiated a workshop around 3D printing and digital fabrication for education and the common good. This year’s C&T took place in Vienna from June 3rd till June 7th, and many GIG members participated in various roles. Regina Sipos and me organized the workshop Critical Making For and With Communities with the goal to facilitate and further exchange between researchers, practitioners and activists in the fields of critical making, social and digital innovation, participatory design, and community management. It was a very fruitful exchange between people working in...
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Calculative Making: The Fear of Failure in Kenya’s Makerspaces

Calculative Making: The Fear of Failure in Kenya’s Makerspaces

By Theresa FendNo Comments
When I first entered a makerspace in Nairobi in 2016, I was surprised that most people were sitting in front of their computers. My imagination of a messy makerspace where everyone tinkers with 3D printers and materials to build clumsy prototypes was disenchanted. A makerspace is a collaborative workshop equipped with tools and machines to process various materials. Contrary to the origins of makerspaces in hacker and do-it-yourself cultures that are aimed at an anti-capitalist appropriation of mass-produced goods (Maxigas 2012), the contemporary global phenomenon of emerging makerspaces focuses predominantly on entrepreneurial workplaces providing access to digital fabrication machinery like laser cutters, Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machines, and 3D printers. Nairobi’s first makerspace – the epicenter of my three-year ethnographic research - joins the chorus of celebrating digital machinery for the development of cutting-edge prototypes to attract investment. On a state level, developing and innovating technology is seen as a path-breaking driver of national development in Kenya and as a historic moment for...
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