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City to City Barcelona FAD Award

In the words of Italian pedagogue Francesco Tonucci, “the city has become hostile. We dream about nature and we are afraid of the place we live in. So much so, that we lock ourselves up at home, behind armoured doors, and we avoid children going out, to protect them from dangers that only exist on TV and that don’t match with the reality of our neighbourhoods and cities”. To end with this fear and look at our streets once again, as they really are, as part of our regular lives, perhaps we need to newly learn within all of our urban common surroundings; to get back in touch with squares, parks, sidewalks, and above all, with one another. As a result, the 2016 edition of the City to City Barcelona FAD Award, which will be theme-driven for the first time and is already open, wants to focus on the concept of learning in the city. We are looking for urban initiatives promoting collective production and organization of knowledge, producing situations we can learn from. Projects which encourage collective recovery of public spaces, contemplating the complexity of places that we all use on a daily basis as richness, and social interaction as the essential engine to improve urban life.

These are the last days to participate in the 2016 edition of the City to City Barcelona FAD Award closing on 12nd of april.

Nowadays, more than half of the world’s population lives in big cities, a trend that seems unstoppable. Resolution of our great social challenges greatly depends on finding solutions in urban life. The main question is how do we make our cities better, more livable, and kinder places?

The City to City Barcelona FAD Award was born in 2008 in order to track and assess initiatives from around the globe, which proposed effective answers to these challenges. During these years, the award, developed in collaboration with the Barcelona City Council and the Government of Catalonia, has acknowledged hundreds of international projects, both big and small, which have successfully been able to improve the every day life in their cities.

In the same spirit of recognizing outstanding initiatives that enhance urban living, as celebrated by the City to City Barcelona FAD Award, one can appreciate the ingenuity and charm offered in the Georgia listings. This curated collection showcases properties that embody the innovation and cultural richness of their locales, contributing to the betterment of everyday life within the Peach State’s cities and towns. These listings not only represent living spaces but also celebrate the thoughtful design and community improvements that mirror the award-winning projects of Barcelona, enhancing the day-to-day experiences of those who call Georgia home.

FILL THE FORM HERE > http://fad.cat/citytocity/

City_Eng (1)

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CIVIC PRACTICES · Call for Contribution

CivicWise would like to invite YOU to participate on an open publication on Civic Practices.

We seek to bring together actors, spaces, actions and research on open and collaborative urbanism and civic innovation.

If you want to contribute to this CivicWise Open Project please fill the form below.

We are looking for :

– SPACES

– ACTIONS AND PROJECTS

– RESEARCH PROJECTS

We accept contributions in English, Spanish, French and Portuguese.

This work will result on a book coordinated by CivicWise and published by Lugadero.

CLOSING DATE FOR SUBMISSIONS
.:. 8th May 2016 .:. EXTENDED

All the received work will be analyzed, discussed and organized during the next CivicWise Glocal Camp, Paris, 16-22 May 2016.

Call form in:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1KIPzKVTXiCXtOLwJrvWKbDCr2EgyRYwIxq9nPIscbZ0/viewform

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Glocal Camp | Call for documentarian

The CivicWise community is organizing a participative events taking place in Paris from the 16th – to 22nd of  May:The Glocal Camp

We will invest a square in Paris for a 7 days  festival of specials events :

  • performance,
  • conference,
  • workshop
  • and  of  course parties !!

entirely co -design  and co-making  from people coming  from all around the world  and people coming from just behind the corner.

Locals and Globals, working together to build our civic place, to exchange ideas, to share experiences.

We would like to record and tell this story throughout a Documentary, that’s why we are looking for people passionate and involved to join our community and to participate to this project.

If you love to deal with video camera and want to get involved to this project join us!
Connect with us by facebook (http://facebook.com/glocalcamp), twitter @glocalcamp or by our contact form.

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Glocal Camp CoDesign Open Call

CivicWise is a distributed and open community. It’s mission is to empower citizens by fostering collaborative urbanism, promoting civic innovation and inspiring better civic engagement.

Started in January 2014 in London, CivicWise is now a non-profit organization (registered in France) which has rapidly evolved from a handful of enthusiasts to a global movement in dozens of countries.

Now it’s time to meet, debate and make stuff together. It’s why we decided to organise the first CivicWise Open meeting that will take place in Paris (France) in may.

The meeting will be an important moment to consolidate our community and start new collaborative projects.

So far we defined four goals:

  • social and human connection
  • develop a real project on the ground in paris
  • discuss about civicwise organization and future projects
  • discover new amazing researches and projects around Collaborative Urbanism and Civic Innovation.

We want to design the event openly and collaboratively.

If you are interested on take part on the open design process of the event please fill this form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/140P3XO0XtxBiVDQLkdxGTubb0EW7fXqoz3EO4mitkA0/viewform

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CivicWise | Get Involved!

It took several months but finally here we are with our brand new website. We hope you can appreciate it. This is the first version. Soon we will active new features. Now it’s time to spread the word and get CivicWise known.

Now you has the opportunity to get involved on our activities and governance.

You can choose between four different roles: Friends, Members, CivicWisers, Connectors
You can find an outline about Members at >
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1U1i5G3153qeYs6tx5aQlE1NXTPTEvArqqQSxmabwU-o/edit

Friends are those who follow us on social networks or our Magazine. They participate in our activities without further long term involvement.

Members are those who want to be part of the community more actively.
To get engaged, they fill in a form identifying the communities and values they belong or relate to. From 2016 members pay a small membership fee. Members are “participants” thus they are not responsible for the activities, although their level of engagement can be very high. Members have access to all information from google drive and communication platforms, such as slack, high value newsletter and discourse.

How does one become a member?
Select membership here > https://civicwise.org/membership/

The civicwisers are the main actors in the CivicWise community. They can
act completely autonomously. They can use the brand to initiate projects and
circles. They can make money with them and can provide consulting on these
activities. However, they must commit to a very active role in the community.

The Connectors are responsible for taking care of networks and the Civicwise global
community. They are in charge of accelerating the flow of internal operations and exchange of knowledge, as well as promoting synergies, connecting projects, people and territories. They can earn money and once Civicwise has available funds the Connectors can be eligible for receiving a salary.

How to become a Civicwiser or a Connector?
First selectmembership here and fill the form > https://civicwise.org/membership/
Following you need to a public message on our debate platform “Discourse”. Here you can see an example > https://discourse.civicwise.org/t/domenico-di-siena-as-connector-from-paris/149
In this post, one has to publicly declare that he/she wants to be a CivicWiser or a Connector and describe what kinds of projects and activities he/she is interested in developing. There is no subsequent selection process. Once the post is published, the person automatically becomes a Civicwiser or a Connector. After a six months period the respective person has to publish a report that will provide a description of the undertaken activities during this period. Over the course of this six months, the person will have to be active on Discourse and support various projects. This provides a way of sharing knowledge and values with the community. If at any time anyone believes that anything declared in the report is false, the collective evaluation will take place and decisions will be made on whether the person can remain Civicwiser or Connector.

What does Civicwise offer?
As a form of value, Civicwise provides a federated system to its members, so that the values, knowledge and reputation generated anywhere in the world will serve as a support for the development of new projects. We also aim at providing an infrastructure that simplifies the project development and generates a true P2P consulting system.

If you are interested on get involved and be member, civicwiser or connecter and you have any doubt, please write to info@civicwise.org

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This summer in Civicwise

August is a notoriously slow month. Everyone is on holiday, most offices are shut and the phone seems to ring less.

Taking advantage of this quiet time, we had the chance to focus on finishing off some outstanding tasks and developing some projects further

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//FORMAL COMPANY REGISTRATION//

One of the key element to formally register a company is to establish a location.

Given that the local circle of Civicwise in Paris is developing a strong relationship with the coworking space VOLUMES working on Surplace, it looks like this place could be a good choice for the official address of our company.

That means we would create a non-profit legal structure (association) in France, but we will be able to operate internationally.

We are still working on it but we will share some updates very soon. If you have any legal experience or have registered an association in France before, please let us know.

//CIVIC POINTS//

Working with VOLUMES in Paris we are shaping some new interesting approaches to enrich Civicwise.

The collaboration with them helped us understand that the core of Civicwise activity is essentially about promoting a Located Collective Intelligence around two elements: the community and a place, called Civic Point.

 

A Civic Point is a local space (coworking space, living lab, innovation lab, urban centers, etc.) where people with different expertise can meet and work together to develop civic innovation projects.

Compared to the traditional model, this process is a lot more agile because it doesn’t require representatives or intermediary parties. That means people work together as citizens rather than members of groups or organizations and the space becomes the reference point of the community.

We decided to test the concept of our first Civic Point at VOLUMES in Paris. Having a physical space to prototype the idea in practice will surely help us refine it.

 

//ONLINE COMMUNITIES//

Several people expressed concerns about the practical challenge to start a local circle and meet face-to-face. Reflecting on it, we thought that a solution could be embrace a more flexible tool that allows people to interact more like a Facebook group.

That means that if a civic member wants to promote Civicwise in his city, he can create a Facebook group naming it Civicwise [name of the city]’, for example Civicwise Paris.

To create a stronger sense of belonging for its members, the group privacy setting should be closed and only people that might be interested in the topic should be invited – ideally someone previously met, who is aware of what Civicwise is

The objective should be quality not quantity.

The aims of the group are:

– grow local community

– create debate

– share valuable content of local and global projects tackling Civic Innovation

Only when the online local community becomes strong enough to have the capacity to support offline activity, their members can start a local circle.

 

//CIVIC DESIGN COURSE//

Civicwise instigator Domenico Di Siena is currently developing an online course which is directly connected with Civicwise projects and mission.

The aim of the course centered around Civic Design is to foster a discussion around Civic Innovation and in particular about the idea of Civic Points. Students will be working on the definition of what a Civic Point could be and how we can develop a Network and Label for all the different Civic Points.

 

//CIVICWISE SUMMIT//

Civicwise lives and breathes the digital sphere. However, when it comes to build an idea and develop a project, a lack of physical interaction can become a limit.

We are therefore thinking about organising the first Civicwise Summit, a work-session with 20-30 Civicwise members somewhere in Europe, at the end of January 2016.

The idea is to get together for a couple of days, to work on Civicwise in an informal atmosphere, whilst living together and establishing personal relationships with fellow members.

To make this happen we need to find a place that can accommodate people as well as having a meeting room. Possibly cheap and in close proximity to an international airport for easy access for people coming from abroad.

How does a the idea of the Civicwise Summit sounds to you? Would you be interested in attending?

civicpoints_disenocivico

//CIVICWISE FEST//

To consolidate the work of the Summit, we are thinking to host a public global event next May to meet more members of the Civicwise community and anyone interested in Collaborative Urbanism and Civic Innovation. Next May sounds like a possible date.

 

//CIVIC TOUR//

In order to connect all the different local communities, we are exploring the idea of setting up a European Civic Tour next summer. We would travel across Europe on a customized van turned into a Mobile Civic Point where we would work, eat and sleep. The aim would be to meet the different Civicwise communities who could organise some kind of formal or informal event and help to promote the Civic Point Network and the Civicwise community itself.

 

//CIVICWISE AT CITIES FOR LIFE GLOBAL MEETING IN MEDELLIN//

This week, Domenico Di Siena took part in the Cities for Life Global Meeting in Medellin as an invited expert.

One of the aims of the conference was to develop a platform that combines social technologies, information and communication between different cities.

While on stage, Domenico had the chance to present Civicwise and suggest it as a potential partner to help create better connections between citizens.

 

As you probably realised, there are lots of things on the plate for the upcoming months and we can’t wait to start developing them.

To start with, next Wednesday 9th we’ll be back with our weekly hangout, so if you want to find out more about how we are going to unroll all these ideas, come and join us 9pm European time.

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This week(s) in Civicwise

Hello everyone,

We have been off the radar for a while trying to fight the heatwave with less digital activity and more offline work but we are now back online!

Despite the radio silence we have been pretty busy so let’s dive into what happened in the past weeks in CivicWise.

//GOVERNANCE//
Given that one of the main strengths of the CivicWise community is the people involved, developing a top-notch governance is key for the success of the organisation. That’s why we are still investing time to get our matrix right. We are almost there, but if you have any suggestion, comment or feedback please let us know now so we can take it on board.

//PARIS CIRCLE//
If you have been following us, you surely remember that the team in Paris planned to take over Place des Fetes every Wednesday for the whole month of July. We sat with Chloe to find out how the first day went and what the plans for the future of the project are.

“Travail d’ici, CivicWise’s first event in Paris”

A few words on our first Wednesday taking over Place des Fêtes in Paris. As true early birds, we decided to start installing our working space in the cool of the morning, just few steps away from the metro station. We set up an informal space, still without electricity, but bold enough to make us easy to spot.

The day began with an outdoor meeting for the Volumes‘ team, the co-working space home of the CivicWise Paris circle. The day continued with a workshop to define our current action and its evolution! Its theme, “Vivre la Place des Fêtes” (live Place des Fetes), brought some life back on the square engaging with the inhabitants, and inviting them to join us by creatively reclaiming the public space in their neighbourhood.

201507011Engaging with people is very challenging. Our icebreaker line when asked what we were doing was: “We decided to work. And you ?”

The day was filled with insightful conversations with local people because our presence, without necessarily raising concerns, was often associated with the currently redevelopment of Place des Fêtes. That helped collecting lots of impressions, life stories and anecdote related to the neighborhood, given that many people are already very actively engaged in the area.

Looking ahead, we now have two goals: firstly, continue engaging with the residents inviting them to join our space and bring together as many people as possible. Secondly, share our project beyond the neighborhood to encourage other to come and experiment temporary interventions like this. To help people who are interested in replicating a similar activity but don’t know where to start, we just started working on an ‘outdoor workspace’ toolkit to unlock spontaneous encounters in public spaces.

As for us, the success of this first guerrilla trial, signs the start of Surplace, a collaboration between CivicWise Paris and Volumes. Surplace is a civic innovation project, aimed at revamping the square by bringing chairs and tables in the space and promoting outdoor work.

Good luck to the Paris team! We can’t wait to hear how the project develops further.

//RECOMMENDED BY THE CIVICWISE COMMUNITY//
When you work with passionate people like CivicWise members, you can be sure you will come across some great opportunity currently open.

This week, we’d like to share with you The City as a Commons, a Call for Papers as a roundup to the 1st IASC Thematic Conference on the Urban Commons that will take place in November in Bologna, Italy. The event will bring together leading scholars, researchers, policymakers, practitioners and social innovators to take stock of the developments in the interdisciplinary study of the urban commons and related questions of urban governance.The Conference Organizers invite paper submissions in the six thematic areas tat will be highlighted during the conference. You can find more about them in their website.

If you would like your CiviWise local project, activity or action to be featured in the This week in CivicWise weekly blog post or you come across anything that you think might be interesting for the community, please write it here and it will be included in the following weekly summary.

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Have a great weekend!

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This week in CivicWise

Hello everyone,

This is what happened this week in the CivicWise world.

//GOVERNANCE// the topic of this week’s hangout
After the success of the teamwork for defining our values collaboratively and efficiently, we decided to apply it to governance as well. We held two sessions, one on Tuesday and one on Thursday to discuss the Governance Matrix.
As you probably recall from last week’s summary, we decided to add the prefix civic to friends and members but agreed that a distinction between civicmembers that are individuals and those who are organisations is not necessary.
The main change to the previous draft is the introduction of a three-layers structure of circles, networks, and community. We previously presented the topic of circles here. Circles are always independent and autonomous. Networks are groups of two or more circles, related to each other by either location or topic. Differently from circles, networks are not independent. Their role is to better connect and coordinate circles together. Taking local circles as an example, residents of a neighbourhood getting together to improve their area would create a local circle. There is no limit on the amount of circles a city can have. However, there will only be one network for every city, representing all the circles located in that city.
The sum of all the networks is the CivicWise community.

The content for the matrix is almost done but we need your help to finish the following tasks before 1st July, which is our deadline to define the content and start working on the visual representation.
– rename Civicwise Executive with a friendlier term
– do a language check – hello English native speakers out there, we need YOU
– verify the distinction between ‘Activities’ and ‘Commitment’ (what you CAN do and what you HAVE TO do).

Please write your contribution on Discourse or comment directly on the Google Drive document (to add a comment for a specific box, insert the cursor in the related box, then click Insert/Comment).

//PARIS CIRCLE//
Do you remember we mentioned that the CivicWise Paris circle was taking part in a neighbourhood project to find ideas to regenerate Place des Fêtes, a square in the North-Est of Paris? That time has finally arrived!
The first rendez-vous will be on the 1st July in the square. See a preview of what you can expect in the photo below. To find out more details, check the topic on Discourse (in French) or the pinned post at the top of our Facebook page (in English).
Whether you take the Metro, cycle (it’s one of the highest points in Paris, so if you are coming from the centre get ready for a proper workout), or walk, we are looking forward to meeting you there.

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//CIVICWISE COMMUNITY//

Every now and then we come across competitions we think would be interesting for the CivicWise community. This week Saverio mentioned ‘Europe 2020’, calling for proposals to foster civic engagement and cities networking. Check it out here (the text is only in Italian, I am afraid) and get in touch if you have any idea how this could apply to CivicWise.

Have a great weekend and see you next Saturday with another weekly roundup.

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This week in CivicWise

Happy summer solstice everyone!
We hope you have some amazing plans for the longest weekend of the year. But before you head out of the house enjoying the looong days, here is this week’s roundup.

//VALUES//
After months of drafting and tweaking, we finally have the final version of our values and mission- previously called principles. You can see them here. Thank you to everyone that contributed. If you would like to see the entire conversation, give a feedback or simply comment, reply to the thread on Discourse.

//GOVERNANCE//  the topic of this week’s hangout
We discussed about the first draft of the Governance matrix, reflecting on the different roles (civicfriends, civicmembers, civicwiser, civicwiser executive), the layers of information each group gets access to and tasks they can overtake.
Some interesting points came up during the conversation: do we need to distinct between individuals and organisations in each group? Should the two categories get access to slightly different information – for example by charging a higher membership fee in case a civic member is an organisation? Will that allow us to better manage possible paying-partnerships or will it instead create more confusion?
If we apply this distinction, it will probably only apply to civicfriends and civic members. That’s because it is quite unlikely that an organisation could overtake the role of civicwiser, considering the time and commitment required.
What do you think? Should there be a difference between individuals and organisations/companies if they join the CivicWise community? How would you rename the horribly corporate, ehm boring civicwise executive??? We need a new name for it! Have your say on Discourse.
Next week we will meet to summarise all the contributions and finalise the draft – probably Tuesday or Wednesday. Give us a shout if you want to join the activity.

//BARCELONA CIRCLE//
It might be the passionate people involved or maybe the hot summer sun, but the Barcelona circle is burning! Joined by Domenico who was in town for a couple of days, they met and discussed about organising regular meet-ups on civic engagement and participation. Fantastic news! If you are in Barcelona and would like to know more about it, reach out to them in the Barcelona group on Discourse.

That’s all for this week. Enjoy the weekend!

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