Drumbeat/events/Festival/program/Bank of Common Knowledge HowTo
- Contact: Olivier (olivier at platoniq dot net)
- Team:
- Hosts: Platoniq
- Proposed 'space' or theme: Local tent at the square
Summary
Bank of Common Knowledge (BCK) is a project initiated in 2006 by the catalan organization Platoniq in Barcelona, a collective platform for knowledge exchange and mutual education. BCK is organized as an open source model of knowledge transfer, a laboratory for inventing and trying out new forms of production, education, organization and distribution, involving new roles for producers and receivers, experts and amateurs, teachers and students…
BCK turns the model of coordinated common production typical of free software in the framework of a project of cultural production into practice by using dynamics of co-operation, process documentation and responsibility shared by the participating members.
The Market of the Bank of Common Knowledge attempts to cover a wide range of topics and materialize them through free workshops and manuals. A gathering of transgressive and generous experiences by individuals and communities who put into practice various forms of autonomy in daily life.
Those exchanges are recorded and published online under a copyleft license in order to guarantee that knowledge keep on circulating.
BCK methodologies have derived such into innovative experiences lived in secondary schools from Seville and in several NGOs from Yogyakarta (Indonesia); or Ideazoka, the market of ideas addressed to cooperatives produced in collaboration with the University of Mondragon (Basque Country); or the creation of urban labs in collaboration with CitiLab-Cornellà... All of them are radically complementary ecosystems sharing a single value: the productive commons.
What do you want to achieve? (goal)
We propose an open session where the bank of common knowledge methodologies are shared and tested. Feedback and networking with other projects is a key to make the project grow
Who should come? How many? For how long? (audience)
educators, policy makers, CC crowd, local coops, cultural agents. Educators should specially have a look at the Bank of common knowledge experience in junior schools. Have a look at the report here http://goo.gl/auBl and the documentary here:http://www.youtube.com/bankofcommons#p/f/9/42ZvvuWu0ro
How many? From 15 to 30
For how long?
50 mins
What will they do when they get there? (activities)
The session delivers an expanded manual of how to build a bck node, which can also inspire educational initiatives to build and "shake" communities of cooperation. They'll be first asked to play the "social Tagging Game", one of the dynamics that has rised from the necesity of apllying the concept of folksonomy, a form of common categorization by means of designations and key words in a space without hierarchies or predetermined family relationships when starting a new BCK node. This game, and other games which will be shown, belong to a series of methodologies and experimental strategies intended for the establishment and dynamisation of a local Common Bank of Knowledge. The game series is called P2Pedagogy and includes different exercises, in which methodologies of free software, P2P systems and social networks are explained or applied to processes of collective organization, production and common learning.
What will you / they have at the end? (outputs)
An idea of how to adapt the techniques of peer-to-peer media sharing to peer-to-peer education, allowing discrete chunks of information to be broken down and passed on via a network of volunteers. That's lesson 1 of The Bank of Common Knowledge project.
Additional background and context
Platoniq is an international non-profit organization made up of cultural producers and software developers based in Barcelona since 2001, pioner in the production and distribution of copyleft culture. Since 2001, they carry out activities and projects such as Bank of Common Knowledge, Youcoop or Burn Station where the social uses of ICTs and networking are applied to enhance communication, self-training and citizens organisation. Their work generates innovative software applications and methodologies, in addition to an extensive free-licensed audiovisual archive on the Internet.
This collective has been associated to the Center for Contemporary Culture of Barcelona since 2003. During the last years, their project Burn Station (2004) has been awarded by the Transitio Festival (Mexico DF) and by the Transmediale Digital Culture Festival (Berlin). It has also won a mention of honour in the UNESCO Digital Arts Awards.
Platoniq's project have been presented at innovation congresses and digital culture festivals and have been set off in organisations such as the Basque Mondragon Group and several educational spaces around Europe, Asia and Latin America.
