An event that brings together diverse viewpoints on weaving, knitting, live coding, dyadic mathematics, generative music and digital making, in order to see how patterned sound and threads allow us to both sense the abstract and conceptualise the tactile. We will look for a rich view of technology as a meeting point of craft, culture and live experience.

The invited speakers will explore aspects of making, process, language, material and output in the relation to their own practice and related contexts.

The discussion will be lead by Bronac Ferran, Janis Jefferies, and David Toop, and practitioners include Alessandro Altavilla, Felicity Ford, Berit Greinke, Ellen Harlizius-Klück, Alex McLean and Becky Stewart.

There will be audio-visual interludes through the day, including a screening of Ismini Samanidou and Scanner’s film Weave Waves, commissioned for the Sound Matters exhibition in 2013 by Crafts Council, and a short performance by Felicity Ford.

The event will close with a live music performance from Leafcutter John, Matthew Yee-King and Alex McLean, exploring code, pattern and sound.

Curated by Karen Gaskill, Crafts Council
A collaboration between the Craft Council, ICSRiM (School of Music, University of Leeds), the Thursday Club (Goldsmiths), V&A Digital Futures and the Live Coding Research Network.
Made possible through funding and support by the Craft Council, Sound and Music, the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Centre for Creative Collaboration.

Book tickets

Urbanista.org, in conjunction with the Recode Gallery at Limewharf, continues its popular series of events with Rebooting the Masterplan, two evening talks and discussions investigating contemporary progressive masterplanning ideals and strategies, staged in collaboration with the Urban Design Group.

The conventional masterplanning model is dead, long live the masterplan! Reinvented as an adaptive multidisciplinary instrument closely related to the wide-ranging complexities of contemporary life, the masterplan, with its precise deliberations and processes, has gained a fresh significance. How change is managed is of pivotal importance, and the masterplan as a hands-on cultural framework which doesn’t alienate people, responding to urban environments as organisms in continual evolution, has the power to foster potentials and a better sense of ownership, along with a new resilience in the faces of multiple challenges.

Rebooting the Masterplan will be staged in two parts, on Monday 10 March and on Monday 12 May 2014:

Rebooting the Masterplan – Part 2

Speakers: Liza Fior, muf architecture/art, Paul Karakusevic, Karakusevic Carson, and David West, Egret West.

Venue: The Gallery, 77 Cowcross Street, London EC1M 6EL.
The entrance to The Gallery is at the end of the courtyard at 77 Cowcross Street.

Tickets: £5. Book here

Moderators: Lucy Bullivant and Thomas Ermacora

Twitter: @limewharf @clearvillageorg @Urbanista_org @termacora
@UDGUrbanUpdate @UDG_UK

Speakers:

Liza Fior, muf architecture/art
The architect Liza Fior was born in London where she practices as one of the founding partners of muf architecture/art, set up in 1994. Since 1994 muf architecture/art has established a reputation for pioneering and innovative projects – incremental urbanism, built landscapes and public realm, strategies and buildings, temporary and permanent. These address the social, spatial and economic infrastructures of the public realm, and muf negotiates between the built and social fabric, and between public and private in projects that have been mainly focused in East London, but not exclusively. Muf were winners of the European Prize for Public Space for Barking Town Square in 2008, and were nominated for the Mies van der Rohe Prize in 2010 and the Swiss Prize for Architecture (2012) for projects with limited budgets and briefs enriched by muf’s unsolicited research behind each of their projects. In 2011 muf won a RIBA Award for Barking Central, Public Realm Architect, and Making Space in Dalston with J&L Gibbons won the Landscape Institute President’s Award. Liza is co-author of This is What We Do: a muf manual (London, 2001). She has taught at the Architectural Association, the Royal College of Art and Yale University School of Architecture. http://www.muf.co.uk

Paul Karakusevic, Karakusevic Carson Architects
Paul is a founding member of Karakusevic Carson Architects, an award winning team of architects working at the forefront of urban design and architecture focuses on delivering successful, sustainable neighbourhoods, mixed tenure housing and public buildings, reflecting their unique and local sense of place and the real needs of the communities involved. Karakusevic Carson Architects is appointed to both the HCA and LDA/GLA Design for London Urban design, Masterplanning and Architecture framework panels, and many others run by local authorities, housing and charitable trusts.Currently working on large scale regeneration and delivery of housing projects and public buildings across London, the practice won Housing Architect of the Year and New London Architecture Award 2013; and was shortlisted for London Planning Awards 2013, and two Housing Design Awards, 2012. Paul is also a design advisor to the HCA and Urban Design London, and is leading the HCA design review, the audit of the Design for Manufacture initiative and the technical audit/critique of several HCA schemes. http://www.karakusevic-carson.com

David West, Studio Egret West
David is a planner and urban designer specialising in urban visions and strategic framework plans who has pursued a passion for delivering place specific strategies and solutions. Since graduating from Manchester University and TU Delft, the Netherlands, his experience has been diverse and world wide. Previously at Alsop, he established and directed the BIG Architecture group which formulated a series of radical urban strategies that genuinely challenged conventional or ingrained thinking about places. Work at Alsop included theRotterdam Centraal Masterplan and the Strategic Urban Design Frameworks for New Cross Gate, Lewisham and Leicester, New Islington in Manchester and the multi-layered Bradford Centre Regeneration Masterplan. Setting up Studio Egret West with Christophe Egret in 2004, he led the practice’s creation of numerous sustainable neighbourhood projects including Evolution Gateshead (3000 homes), Middlehaven Docks (700 homes); Surrey Canal – London’s Sporting Village (a 2,500 home and 2,500 job development around Millwall football club) and Cambridge Sporting Village. He prepared the strategic framework plans for Holt Town, East Manchester, Maze Long Kesh in Belfast and South Shields Riverside in Tyneside. In London, David is currently leading the following projects as lead consultant/principal urban designer: The Old Vinyl Factory in Hayes (a mixed use regeneration project for 600 homes and 4000 jobs); The Millharbour Village Masterplan; The Stratford Town Centre Public Realm Strategy and a rejuvenating urban design strategy for Bromley town centre. http://egretwest.com

Moderators

Lucy Bullivant, Urbanista.org
Lucy Bullivant Hon FRIBA is the founder and Editor-in-chief, Urbanista.org. An author, critic, curator of exhibitions and conferences internationally, guest lecturer, consultant and expert witness in planning cases, she is also Adjunct Professor, urban design history and theory, Syracuse University in London, and an advisor to Institut pour la Ville en Mouvement, Paris and FRAC, Orléans. Her many published books include Masterplanning Futures (Routledge) which won the Urban Design Group Book of the Year (2014), New Arcadians (Merrell) and Anglo Files (Thames & Hudson). Urbanista.org is a new webzine of critical perspectives on contemporary urban design and its responses to social, cultural, political and economic forces globally founded in February 2013. Its incisive global radar senses and unfolds narratives, enabling Urbanista.org to operate as a unique media vehicle, including events and exhibitions internationally, in a field experiencing deep challenges. It been designed by &&&, London, a design agency reclaiming graphic design in the purest form as a powerful tool to intuitively communicate across all platforms. http://www.urbanista.org, http://www.lucybullivant.net

Thomas Ermacora, LimeWharf
Thomas Ugo Ermacora, founder and curator of LimeWharf futures gallery and artistic laboratory and founder, Clear Village, creative regeneration specialists responsible for many participatory placemaking projects. Current and recent collaborations with World Design Capital, Helsinki; Design Council, UK; Big Lottery Local Food Programme. RSA Fellow, and Contributing Editor to Urbanista.org.

Urbanista.org, in conjunction with the Recode Gallery at Limewharf, continues its popular series of events with Rebooting the Masterplan, two evening talks and discussions investigating contemporary progressive masterplanning ideals and strategies, staged in collaboration with the Urban Design Group.

The conventional masterplanning model is dead, long live the masterplan! Reinvented as an adaptive multidisciplinary instrument closely related to the wide-ranging complexities of contemporary life, the masterplan, with its precise deliberations and processes, has gained a fresh significance. How change is managed is of pivotal importance, and the masterplan as a hands-on cultural framework which doesn’t alienate people, responding to urban environments as organisms in continual evolution, has the power to foster potentials and a better sense of ownership, along with a new resilience in the faces of multiple challenges.

Rebooting the Masterplan will be staged in two parts, on Monday 10 March and on Monday 12 May 2014:

Rebooting the Masterplan – Part 1

Speakers: Darryl Chen, Hawkins\Brown, Dominic Papa and Jonathan Woodroffe, S333 and Dann Jessen, East.

Venue: Limewharf, Vyner Street, London E2 9DJ.

Tickets: £5. Book here

Moderators: Lucy Bullivant and Thomas Ermacora

Twitter: @limewharf @clearvillageorg @Urbanista_org @termacora
@UDGUrbanUpdate @UDG_UK

Speakers

Darryl Chen, Hawkins\Brown
Darryl Chen leads the urbanism and research studios at Hawkins\Brown, a London based architectural practice formed in 1988 by Roger Hawkins and Russell Brown, and has been instrumental its developing its urban design and masterplanning approach. Working for both the private and public sectors, Darryl has delivered strategic frameworks, planning documents, town centre masterplans, and development feasibility studies often at the place where planning strategy and architectural form meet. He has led large-scale regeneration projects for the London Boroughs of Hackney and Enfield, as well as well as supported projects including the Peabody Estate in Clapham and The Wharves in Deptford, and is currently working on the Sanhe Metro Station Masterplan and Nordic City, Chengdu, China. His work rejects current orthodoxies in order to explore the perverse and underrated as source material for a provocative urban practice. It spans community-based geo-engineering, self-incarcerating eco-villages and the possibilities of a productive dystopia. Darryl also is a co-founder of thinktank Tomorrow’s Thoughts Today. www.d-chen.tumblr.com, http://www.hawkinsbrown.com

Dominic Papa, S333
Dominic Papa has 20 years of experience working on large-scale, urban design and architectural projects. He is Director and co-founder of S333 Architecture + Urbanism, founded in 1997 in Amsterdam and now based in London. The office’s first completed project, a mixed-use housing project in Groningen, the Netherlands, won international recognition and positioned S333 at the leading edge of contemporary urban design. He has led a research team exploring the contemporary conditions influencing the success and failure of intense forms of housing and urbanism in Britain, and is currently producing a document on family housing guidance for a London borough.He is developing new initiatives responding to the urban transformation through the knowledge economy in Europe and the Far East; contributing to the international development forum INTA. He has been a member of the RIBA Housing Group advising on policy and is a Building Environment Expert and London Panel member at Design Council CABE and is also a regional panel member for the West Midlands. In 2013 he was made chair of Islington Design Review Panel. Recently he has been part of a small team from the UK advising the federal government of Brazil on evolving their housing policy to deliver more sustainable urban areas. http://www.s333.org

Jonathan Woodroffe, S333
Jonathan Woodroffe co-founded S333 Architecture + Urbanism in Amsterdam in 1997, an award-winning architectural practice with an international reputation for delivering innovative buildings, masterplans and mixed-use environments. He has over 20 years experience of working on large-scale urban and architectural projects. He has been responsible for strategic regeneration plans, masterplans and large-scale urban visions in the UK, France, Spain, Norway, Latvia, USA, Russia, Kenya, Singapore and China. As a member of INTA Jonathan has participated in panels reviewing the future of the metropolis of Bordeaux (2010), the redevelopment of La Reunion’s main port area (2011) and the organisation of NCTU’s new university campus in Taiwan (November 2009). He lectures regularly and has taught at the AA and at the Academies van Bouwkunst in Tilburg, Rotterdam and Amsterdam. He is currently leading a master programme at the Bergen Architecture School researching urban intensification in the city, and is also currently contributing to the 2014 XXL Design and Research Workshop at TU Delft. http://www.s333.org/home.1.html

Dann Jessen, East
Dann Jessen is a Director of East architecture, landscape, urban design alongside Julian Lewis and Judith Lösing. He has taught at University of East London, Accademia di Architettura in Mendrisio, Switzerland, is a senior lecturer at the Cass School of Architecture and has recently been appointed research fellow at the Royal College of Art. He has extensive experience of developing ideas, design and research as well as management and project implementation on a wide range of building, landscape and urban design projects. Recent projects include East’s contribution to the International RiverCity Gothenburg Masterplan Workshop, the Renewal of the Urban Renewal Amsterdam-based research project led by TU Delft, the West Croydon Interchange public realm project (building on East’s West Croydon Masterplan) and Park House hotel and apartments at West Ham Lane in Stratford which won a New London Award last year. http://www.east.uk.com

Moderators

Lucy Bullivant, Urbanista.org
Lucy Bullivant Hon FRIBA is the founder and Editor-in-chief, Urbanista.org. An author, critic, curator of exhibitions and conferences internationally, guest lecturer, consultant and expert witness in planning cases, she is also Adjunct Professor, urban design history and theory, Syracuse University in London, and an advisor to Institut pour la Ville en Mouvement, Paris and FRAC, Orléans. Her many published books include Masterplanning Futures (Routledge) which won the Urban Design Group Book of the Year (2014), New Arcadians (Merrell) and Anglo Files (Thames & Hudson). Urbanista.org is a new webzine of critical perspectives on contemporary urban design and its responses to social, cultural, political and economic forces globally founded in February 2013. Its incisive global radar senses and unfolds narratives, enabling Urbanista.org to operate as a unique media vehicle, including events and exhibitions internationally, in a field experiencing deep challenges. It been designed by &&&, London, a design agency reclaiming graphic design in the purest form as a powerful tool to intuitively communicate across all platforms. http://www.urbanista.org, http://www.lucybullivant.net

Thomas Ermacora, LimeWharf
Thomas Ugo Ermacora, founder and curator of LimeWharf futures gallery and artistic laboratory and founder, Clear Village, creative regeneration specialists responsible for many participatory placemaking projects. Current and recent collaborations with World Design Capital, Helsinki; Design Council, UK; Big Lottery Local Food Programme. RSA Fellow, and Contributing Editor to Urbanista.org.

The 2013 FoST Summit featured twenty-two visionary speakers, but the public were only able to sit in on roundtable sessions with three of them. So, FoST decided to bring the speakers back for a weekly series of conversations via Google Plus Hangouts. We will be screening these conversations in the LimeWharf Hall and encourage you to invite your friends and colleagues to join over lunch. The Hangouts will be professionally facilitated, in many cases by the same facilitators who helped guide the discussions at the summit.

FEB 19
John S. Johnson
Founder and Executive Director, Harmony Institute, and Cofounder, Buzzfeed
Measuring Media’s Impact
How Mobile Is Transforming Reading and Writing
Further info and programme

Curated by Thomas Ermacora in collaboration with Lucy Bullivant, Urbanista.org. Presented as part of the Space for Ideas & Urbanista.org/Recode discussion series

Key speakers:

Mitchell Joachim, Co-Founder, Terreform One
Richard Reynolds, Founder, Guerrilla Gardening
Paul Smyth, Founder, Something & Son and FARM:shop

‘Metabolic Cities’ is a joint thematic evening in the Space for Ideas and Urbanista.org/Recode event series hosted by LimeWharf, and will investigate potential conceptual frameworks for the interaction between the built environment and ‘living’ technologies.

‘A number of research teams around the world, academic institutions and material science companies are influencing the future of the fabric of the built environment’ says Ermacora. ‘In deploying speculative, unfinished technologies need a chance to mature in a real setting, they are helping to define ways in which architecture, urbanism and planning the future of cities will happen. ‘

‘This event is an opportunity for selected practitioners involved in different arenas of the urban realm to talk about how they see the interaction between the living and the inert in the not-so-distant future closer to 2050, and for the audience to intervene in these far-reaching discussions.

Will cities become more organic? Places where the buildings are grown, with skins functionally integrating energy generation and food production, for which there is no such thing as the distinction between nature and the building? Are there real prospects for a symbiotic relationship between synthetic and organic biology in urban environments of the future?

Why can’t questions around sustainability be treated in a less formalistic, technocratic way but instead in a fashion which integrates with the processes nature? Wouldn’t today’s anthropocentric cultures therefore have a better chance to evolve, breaking the boundaries between architecture and nature? What are the prospects for a more sensual urban environment that doesn’t generate an opposition between what we build and where we come from?’

Tickets:
You can buy tickets for individual talks (£8/£5 students) or get a discount by purchasing a membership for all 8 talks in the Space for Ideas series plus an additional social event (£50/£30 students).
Your ticket includes some light food & drink.

Book tickets here

Space for ideas is an event series co-created by LimeWharf, GoodPeople, CIVA, and The Exponentials. The evenings explore a variety of topics, and we are striving to create a perfect balance between inspirational talks and collaborative discussions. Our collective mission is to create a platform where good people can connect, learn, explore and make good ideas happen. Space For Ideas website

Thomas Ermacora is a thought leader and futurist working mainly as a creative director and social entrepreneur in the fields of design, new media, food and disruptive technologies. He is the founder, architect and curator of the victoriawharfprojects.co cultural innovation gallery and Clear Village strategic urban regeneration specialist agency.

Mitchell Joachim, PhD, is a Co-Founder of Terreform ONE. He is an Associate Professor in Practice at NYU and EGS in Switzerland. He was formerly an architect at Gehry Partners, and Pei Cobb Freed. He is a TED Senior Fellow and has been awarded fellowships with Moshe Safdie and Martin Society for Sustainability, MIT. He was chosen by Wired magazine for The Smart List: 15 People the Next President Should Listen To. Rolling Stone magazine honored Mitchell in The 100 People Who Are Changing America, and his many awards include AIA New York Urban Design Merit Award, Victor Papanek Social Design Award, Zumtobel Group Award for Sustainability and Humanity, History Channel Infiniti Award for City of the Future, and Time Magazine Best Invention with MIT Smart Cities Car. Dwell magazine featured him as The NOW 99 in 2012.
http://terreform.org

Richard Reynolds has been guerrilla gardening for nearly a decade, transforming neglected patches of his local community and writing about similar activity around the world. His book On Guerrilla Gardening (Bloomsbury, 2009) charts activities across 30 countries and 360 years. His accidental activism is part of a loose global movement in which he plays a leading role sharing inspirational stories and stoking motivation.
http://www.guerrillagardening.org

Paul Smyth is an engineer and designer and the founder and Director of Something & Son, Co-Create Consulting and FARM:shop, all established in 2010. FARM: shop is London’s urban farming hub, indoor farm and café, created with Sam Henderson (now running a successful farm in Dorset) to excite and inspire city dwellers to grow their own food and make an income doing this. It cuts carbon and reduces waste by using the latest agricultural innovations in aquaponics, hydroponics, vermiculture and greenhouse design.
http://farmlondon.weebly.com/farmshop.html

Curated by Michael Norton

It is ideas that change the world. From lending money to the poor to dealing with gang violence, social entrepreneurs have been inventing solutions to the problems they find in their communities and in the wider world. These are often “impossible people”, people with a vision who are determined, passionate, persistent, risk taking who are prepared to give it a go. Their ideas often appear impossible – completely new and sometimes counter-intuitive ways of doing things which they have invented.

This evening will show how impossible people with impossible ideas can change the
world. It will feature three extraordinary and very different people who make things
happen:

• Geoff Mulgan, currently Director of NESTA, the foundation promoting innovation, as a young graduate founded DEMOS, which became the leading think tank of the late 1990s pioneering such ideas as The Third Way. He then led the Young Foundation as a worthy successor to Michael Young.
• Annys Darkwa, herself an ex-prisoner, founded Vision Housing to rehouse prisoners on discharge. Her staff are also ex-offenders and their mix of shared experience and compassion is resettling a growing number of offenders who are becoming ex-offenders.
• Kofi Oppong is co-founder of Circle Sports, an award-winning social enterprise which trains unemployable young people for jobs in sportswear retailing.

These three people will share their journey and their secrets, and they will challenge you to do something to make a difference to the world with your own impossible ideas.

The second half of the evening will be in small groups around specific themes. Participants will all be invited to come up with “impossible ideas” which will be put into an “ideas bank”. Each group will be asked to present one idea, explain the problem to be solved, their idea for solving it, and three immediate steps they would take to put it into action. Participants will then be invited to collaborate to take some of these ideas forward.

The six themes will be:
• Health and wellbeing.
• Engagement and employment for young people.
• The big society of active and cohesive communities.
• Offending behaviour, crime and punishment.
• Older people in an aging society.
• Environmental awareness and action.

Book tickets here

What do human rights mean to you? Is social justice achievable? What is the interplay between social justice and advances in technology and global connectivity? This big picture day will focus on the topics of social justice and human rights, with a view to examining their role in an increasingly interconnected and online world. We will welcome speakers and workshops that seek to rearticulate and challenge notions of what human rights and social justice mean. We also want to hear from people who can speak about practical projects that confront these issues in a real way.

Key Challenges
1. What are human rights anyway? Are they still fit for purpose?
2. Both human Rights and many social justice movements are misinterpreted and misrepresented in the popular press. How do we translate and communicate human rights and social justice for the new century?
3. Does Web 2.0 expand the opportunities for true, meritocratic participation, or does it just change the shape of the table? Are we seeing new groups rise to prominence in new ways, or are the same people being heard? And what implications does this have for the most vulnerable and disenfranchised groups?
4. Is ‘clicktivism’ – online activism and its associated petitions a way of bringing activism to the more silent majorities, or does it break down the cultures of solidarity and horizontal cooperation in traditional social movements, reinforcing the vertical relationship between citizen and state?
5. Is respecting and protecting the rights of others a peertopeer responsibility? If so, how and by whom should the rights, responsibilities and opportunities of citizenship be communicated and defined?
6. Through new trends, particularly in institutionled campaigns, has the nature and role of the individual been coopted and distorted?

Outputs
Along with participant directed focus, one of the questions we hope to address through discussion and workshops is how do we tell a story of human rights that rescues it from the media. This and other themes will be captured and collated through blogs, popplets and a mash up of activist and techie collaboration on project ideas.

Book tickets here

Speakers:
Jan Matern, Emerge Venture Lab
Andy Gibson, MindApples
Toby Blume, The Archer Academy
Octavia Hirst, Thinklings & Skillab
Louis M M Coiffait, Pearson

‘I never let my schooling get in the way of my education’ Mark Twain. Learning is the foundation of everything we do. It plants the seeds for innovation. It enables us to build successful and enlightened lives and organisations. However, surprisingly, when people talk about the future of education the question ‘How do we learn?’ is rarely asked.

Every one of us is born with an abundance of curiosity and creativity. Given the right conditions, we all have the potential to ‘fall in love’ with learning. We have the technology. We have the information. We have the networks. And yet very few people come out of the education system with a passion and a love for learning. The purpose of this Space for Ideas event is to start re-imagining learning for the digital age.

Book tickets for this event here (£8/£5 students)
You can also get a discount by purchasing a membership for all 8 talks plus an additional social event (£50/£30 students) here

Your ticket includes some light food & drink.

Space for ideas is an event series co-created by LimeWharf, GoodPeople, CIVA, and The Exponentials. The evenings explore a variety of topics, and we are striving to create a perfect balance between inspirational talks and collaborative discussions. Our collective mission is to create a platform where good people can connect, learn, explore and make good ideas happen. We welcome you to join us on this adventure.

Space for Ideas website

The internet has made our lives more interconnected and mobile than ever before. We are seeing the emergence of collaborative consumption and a new economy based on trust and reciprocity. On the other hand the internet is also making us profoundly disconnected. A growing body of science is showing what we already feel deep in our gut: we’re more isolated than ever before. Somehow we’ve allowed our relationship to gadgets and things to overtake our real-world ties.

Speakers:
Anton Chernikov, Founder & Lead Explorer at The Exponentials
Benita Matofska, The People Who Share
Severine Balick, Founder at MyGoodness
Richard Tyrie, CEO & Founder at GoodPeople
Juan Guerra, CEO & Founder at StudentFunder

In this Space for Ideas event we will be exploring the following questions:
Is digital really making our lives better?
What are the limitations of digital technologies?
How do we blur the boundaries between offline and online, and start to convert online activity into real world action?
What does the future of the sharing economy look like?
How is crowd funding and crowd sourcing going to change the way our society works?
Can we gamify doing good online?
How can we use technology to make business and the world of work more social?

Book tickets for this event here (£8/£5 students)
You can also get a discount by purchasing a membership for all 8 talks plus an additional social event (£50/£30 students) here

Your ticket includes some light food & drink.

Space for ideas is an event series co-created by LimeWharf, GoodPeople, CIVA, and The Exponentials. The evenings explore a variety of topics, and we are striving to create a perfect balance between inspirational talks and collaborative discussions. Our collective mission is to create a platform where good people can connect, learn, explore and make good ideas happen. We welcome you to join us on this adventure.

Space for Ideas website

Key Speaker: Michael Norton

Chaired by Amone Gbedemah, Trustee, International Centre for Social Franchising and Senior Executive, Vodafone Group

This event will start with a welcome by the session chair. This will be followed by a presentation by Michael Norton setting out the idea of The Last Mile, showing examples of Last Mile solutions and proposing the idea that this become a framework for viewing and developing solutions to the problem of poverty both in our own
society but also in the developing world. About 30 minutes including case studies.

This will be followed by six discussion groups each tackling a different theme which will review the problem and develop ideas or approaches for solutions. Each group will then feed back its ideas. About 30 minutes for the discussion and 30 minutes for feedback and comment.

The six breakout groups will consider these topics:

In the UK:
• Fuel poverty: access and pricing of electricity and gas to poor consumers, plus energy saving solutions which reduce the need for these.
• Wellness: health and well-being when poor diet and unhealthy lifestyles create a divide between well-off and poor people.
• Educational opportunity where attitudes and financial pressures mean that this is not seen or available as a route out of poverty for many.

In the developing world:
• Hunger and poor diet, where the poor have poor and insufficient diets, but also the least access to nutritious food at affordable prices.
• Access to basic health services and medicines, which are often inadequate, unaffordable or unavailable, and confused by a faith in folk medicine.
• Housing and shelter in crowded cities, which despite these problems offer poor people economic opportunity which is just not available to them in rural areas.

Book tickets to this talk here (£8/£5 students)
or get a discount by purchasing a membership for all 8 talks plus an additional social event (£50/£30 students). Book membership here

Space for ideas is an event series that explores the interface between the arts, technology and social enterprise. We strive to create that perfect balance between inspirational talks and collaborative discussions.

Space for ideas was co-created by Limewharf, GoodPeople, CIVA, and The Exponentials. Our collective mission is to create a platform where good people can connect, learn, explore and make good ideas happen.

Space for Ideas website

11am – 5pm October 12th and 13th

The next Big Picture Day is on NewNomadism and the Lifestyle Hackers on Saturday & Sunday October 12-13th at LimeWharf. This event will be run as part of the Transeuropafestival organised by European Alternatives. European Alternatives is a transnational organisation promoting democracy, equality and culture beyond the nation state.

Sign up here

The ground is shifting, the landscape is changing and new migratory patterns are on the rise. As the first effects of austerity are felt, the necessity to dramatically rethink the social and geo-spatial infrastructure that underpins our everyday existence has never been so vital.

Lifestyle hackers are facilitating the birth of the New-Nomad and the emergence of these new nomadic classes may propose more than a coping mechanism for economic reactionaries – the hacking and protocolization of ones lifestyle could in fact point to an entirely new way of existing in the world. As new services such as AirBnB, Bitcoin and Task Rabbit are introduced into the built environment of the mainstream , our options for how the game is played expand – right now they’re expanding exponentially.

This event’s primary focus will be on those who are choosing to live differently, examining the culture that is being built, the facilities created and how we might collectively advance its development.

This is our chance to reset the narrative about what is happening, and perhaps emerge with some new ideas about what to do next.

“…increase the chaos. In terms of probability enhancement, it’s now considerably less likely that you will achieve economic success via internal promotion and hard work than it is through serendipitous encounters with people who need your skills. If you do not live somewhere with sufficient economic dynamism to provide an appropriate level of chaos, then move. End of. Economic nomadism has been the story of mankind for all but a tiny fraction of the last million years. And lastly…

Obey the law, ignore the rules. “ – Gordon White :: There Is The Rescue Mission And The Salvage Mission

Speakers:
Vinay Gupta introduces Big Picture Days & Introduction to LimeWharf for Thomas Ermacora in absentia.
Elf Pavlik – Living #Moneyless and #Stateless
Ben Vickers – Bad Nomadism: What I’ve learnt from my incompetencies
Steve Wheeler – Songlines and Sheeptracks: Nomadism as Navigation
Alex Fradera – Lifestyle Improvising
Brett Scott – Open Source Finance Hacking
Williow Brugh (Video Skype Q&A)

Sign up here

Apologies however this event has unfortunately now been cancelled.

To book for other events in this series, please check:
Space For Ideas Website

The next Space For Ideas event will be Tuesday, 15 October 2013 from 18:30 to 21:30

The Last Mile: a new perspective for exploring poverty and possible solutions.

Key Speaker Michael Norton
Chaired by Amone Gbedemah, Trustee, International Centre for Social Franchising and Senior Executive, Vodafone Group

Further information and booking here

The micro-urban scale, redefined through decisive alliances, is potentially a most resilient social, urbanistic phenomenon. With the introduction by central government of Localism, and the equally catch-all concept of Neighbourhood Planning, potentials for new modes of participatory placemaking become pronounced. Supported by fast emerging crowdfunding platforms dedicated to the support of new public space and amenity projects, they inevitably challenge the norms of long standing legislation-driven procedures of making community environments, which have been largely top-down. Defining and marshalling in a versatile way social value entails a range of speculative processes and playful activities subversively departing from tired old ways of doing things. What, then, is today’s ‘social city’? And how can new methods of urban design and planning influence and enable it as a force for positive change on all levels?

The evening will be a quick-fire series of polemical short talks, by Liane Hartley, co-Director, MEND, a consultancy helping communities and organisations with the social impact of change, on localism and social value, Thomas Ermacora, founder/curator of LimeWharf and founder/creative director, Clear Village, on the making of LimeWharf as a new community hub in east London, Priya Prakesh, founder of Changify (supporting community change projects via mobile phone), Niraj Dattani, who focuses on Sport & Play projects at Spacehive, the world’s first crowd funding website devoted to civic projects, Julia Thayne, writer and researcher on how politics affects city development, and Daisy Froud, AOC Architects, culturally engaged architects, urban designers.

Arrive 18:20 for 18.50 start.

After the talks we will have a convivial dinner prepared by WharfKitchen. £8 in advance, £10 on the door.

Book tickets: talk only £4, talk plus food drink £ 8 details here.

17 Sept – Dries Verbruggen & Unfold are working with local ceramists all day tomorrow printing.

18 Sept: 6-8pm in Adhocracy. Adhocracy London new participants: Billy Smith, Bicycle Wind Turbines; David Monnier, Safe Water Trust and Kelly Snook, GluvTech will be here to socialise and discuss issues relating to maker movement plus personal projects.

Open to all makers/public/anyone who wants to come along!

Free. No booking necessary

#Stacktivism is a term that attempts to give form to a critical conversation & line of enquiry (infra-spection?) around infrastructure & the relationship we have to it.

The #Stacktivism Big Picture Day hopes to bring like minded individuals together who want to have a deep and critical conversation around the neutrality of our infrastructure, its politics, our interaction to it, who owns it and if/how we can regain control?

The day includes talks from Vinay Gupta, Jay Springett, Paul Graham Raven, Nathan Koren, Priya Prakash, Ilona Gaynor and Benedict Singleton from The Department of No, Sophie Thomas, and Georgina Voss. The afternoon session we hope to devote time to collectively prototyping ‘infrastructure fictions’.

Please register online, details here.