This month Philippa Davies joins ARK and GeekSpeak Cardiff for a joint event to talk about digital projects for community glue and growth. You can expect a quirky mix of technology, psychology and an infectious approach to creating ‘glue’ that really sticks!
Passionate about digital inclusion and community building, Philippa set up and co-runs non profit organisation www.fyinetwork.co.uk and blogs about content, creativity and low-cost technology at www.mindhive.org.uk .
Come along, 7pm, upstairs in 33 Windsor Place.
http://geekspeakcdf.tumblr.com/ is a group that runs monthly meetups, sharing web/social media skills in 3rd sector. You can find them @geekspeakCDf
It's Sunday and I think I have finally recovered from from an amazing week of Trade School. I have learnt so many things: how to repair chairs, knit scarves for mice, how to bind my own notebooks, the Polish word for flip flops (it's Klapki) and most of all I have learnt how generous and sharing you all are! I met lots of lovely people and I'm really hoping we can do it again. A massive thanks to Laura (the unsung hero) for getting it all off the ground. It was touch and go finding a venue (thanks to www.indycube.biz) but it all worked out in the end.
So here are a few photos so you can see what we got up to: http://www.flickr.com/photos/32555040@N02/sets/72157631724463879/
A big thanks too, to all the amazing teachers and to everyone who attended. Hope you come back next term.
It would be good to hear your thoughts to on the project and how we move it forward so don't forget to pop along to Wednesday Club too.
So, we have lots of people wanting to run classes, lots of volunteers, lots of people wanting to attend...now all we need is a venue that is:
- free and/ or cheap to hire
- open until 9pm during the week
- big enough for 10-20 people and room for props/ equipment etc
- accessible for the elderly, pushchairs, wheelchairs etc.
- fairly central in location or easy to get to
We are currently looking at www.loudounsquare.org.uk and Cathays Community Centre plus the www.cardiffdesignfestival.org potentially has the upstairs of an empty shop available. Different pros and cons so any suggestions welcome
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?
Last week whilst walking round London I was pleasantly surprised by this simplicity of this beautifully lit tunnel. Firstly I noticed the internal architecture of the tunnel and somehow the gently changing coloured lights made the tunnel feel safer and accessible. It is also a great example of how litter free spaces make public spaces more desirable to walk though.
Following our weekly wednesday club meeting last night on the theme of pervasive gaming and how ARK could use games to influence human behaviour I thought I should do some research as its an area I know very little about. So to kick things off here is a few things I have found so far:
As you know the last few months we have been busy working on the empty shop project - ARKADE which has basically been created by huge amount of good old fashioned community spirit.
While I was scanning the web for interesting companies and case studies for ARK I came across this fantastic site called Service Design Hub run by user experience consultant Suze Ingram. The hub is described as "a place to find blogs, articles, papers, books, links and videos about service design."
PHEW! This week was a quiet week for ARK with time to relax and chat with new ARKee Noel, or as i later called him Leon (as Laura pointed out my mind must be working backwards!) I think this just summed up how we all felt after some pretty intense workshops the last few wednesdays to get the National Assembly railway consultation project finished.
Why not come along to our meeting on Wednesday evenings and see how you can get involved! Click here to view our calendar.
