New Geography of Living by Demos Helsinki & Dark Matter Labs [FI/UK] // HETERODOX INSTITUTIONS

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In this session, we will explore the possibility of a new way of living, something that overcomes the centre-periphery distinction and aims to create a language for a new aspirational way of living.

Session Type: New Narratives
Agenda Track: Nature-Human, Heterodox Institutions
Interaction level: Some of time
Movement: None 
Screen: Good to have 
Time: Friday 24th September 11–12.30 EEST 

In recent years, living costs have skyrocketed, while some neighbourhoods, areas, and even cities are becoming desolate. People are increasingly in competition while living among millions of neighbours. City centres are being drained from the spaces for connecting that previously have been the very essence of living. Cities are increasingly being built for capital, but it is unclear for whom these cities are built for.

Ultimately, we aim to reconceptualise what living in cities-villages-countryside could look like in the 21st century.

A compartmentalised model of urban core – suburbia – countryside does not work anymore, but we do not have a clear understanding of what can replace the monopolistic model of urban development. With the unforeseen infrastructure investment (stimulus and refurbishment in the Global North and new developments in Global South) we have a unique opportunity to reimagine economic geography.

Together, in this session we will be rethinking the language, models, institutions and forms of knowledge that inform geographical development. Demos Helsinki and Dark Matter Labs have been working towards developing a new geographical model for living that would unlock true alternatives for the futures of life in cities. But this work is still incomplete.

This session will be hosted by Johannes Nuutinen from Demos Helsinki and Jake Heitland and Juhee Hahm from Dark Matter Labs.

@DemosHelsinki, @DarkMatter_Labs

demoshelsinki.fi, darkmatterlabs.org

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Dr. Untitled – A Confessional Online Performance by MiklagardArts & Studio Kalleinen // HETERODOX INSTITUTIONS

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In this playful event we share the struggles of living up to our values and ideals. Dr. Untitled is the first part of a series of events consisting of online performances, one-on-one sessions with members of the Untitled Alliance and a grand offline finale at Untitled Festival 2022. 

Agenda track: Heterodox Institutions
Session type: New perspectives
Interaction: Some interaction but mostly just lean back
Movement: None
Screen: Have your audio on but having your video on is strictly forbidden for participants! Video and audio is used by the performers, so have your screen available.
Day: Friday 24 September 11.30-12.45 UTC |14.30-15.45 EEST

In our experiment we want to understand how individuals – who are part of the Untitled Alliance – manage to translate the goals and ideals of their daily work into their private life. Do you advocate a basic universal income but don’t know how to deal with your kids’ pocket money? Do you implement national citizens assemblies but cannot decide on the family vacation?  Are you a vegan eating meat in your dreams? Do you have occasionally brief moments of feeling like a hypocrite? Then this is the right session for you. In full anonymity we share cases about such dissonances. 

The presented cases – your cases – will be discussed by our peer-to-peer support network. At the same time each case will be fed into an immature human AI system called “Åsa and Max” that is particularly responsive to so called intention-behavior discrepancies. Our system – while still in its infancy – will unapologetically try to produce recommendations for each case. It nevertheless needs to be trained by providing feedback on the presented recommendations. 

This session is intended for professional “re-imagineers” who work day in and out on the transformation of society. 

Join us in trying to apply big picture ideas on a very small scale.

Disclaimer: This session requires no imagination.

As a next step we would like to schedule one-on-one sessions with individual members of the Untitled Alliance. In those sessions we would like to go deeper into some of the dissonances that will be introduced during the launch performance.

The Concept and facilitation of this session is organised by Ceyda Berk-Söderblom, Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen, and MiklagardArts is responsible for its production. Actors Max Bremer and Åsa Nybo feature in the session as well.

Studiokalleinen.net, miklagardarts.com

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How inclusive is your future narrative? By ALT-TOPIA // CIVIC IMAGINATION

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We are concerned about climate change and rising sea levels. Research and new innovations are helping us fight climate change. We are imagining a future with architecture adapted to rising sea levels. We are projecting cities which will withstand climate change. But in the present, there are parts of the world where people experience floods and drought every year. As we are scraping to fight climate change, it is already a daily part of many lives. In this future narrative, where do these people stand?

Agenda track: 3 Civic imagination, 4 Heterodox institutions
Session type: New narratives 
Interaction level: Most of the time (through conversation and miro board)
Movement level: Some (placard writing: what is your ‘inclusive future’?)
Screen need: Needed all the time

Imagine a new social housing policy where rooftop activities and functions are included to improve social life and cohesion. On the other side, there are dense cities where people have limited open space, so they use rooftops extensively for gardening, playing, drying clothes and gathering. One is structured implication and the other one came from the need. How do these two narratives go side by side?

Many people are relentlessly working towards automation of industries. The garment industry is one example of this. To ease up fast fashion and make the fashion industry more sustainable, people are leaning towards automation. Now think about the female garment worker who works on an hourly salary, earns for her family and is empowered by her economic freedom. What will happen to her in the age of automation? How will she fit into the narrative of future industries?

We like to imagine future narratives, but sometimes we don’t even realise we’re leaving out some parts of the world. This is a call for an inclusive place, to discuss the future we are imagining, who and where in the world we are imagining for and affecting, and how inclusive or exclusive that narrative is. In the end, we only have one world, and our future narratives cannot remain isolated imaginations.

A conscious future narrative is more desirable than an exclusive one. We believe that narrators should declare their perspective, position and context when they are proposing a new future narrative. We must consider inclusiveness, and how we will impact others not included in our narratives. For a sustainable future world, an inclusive narrative is key.

Are you a thinker practicing towards the future? Are you a narrator of the future world? Do you have a story, imagination, vision for the future? The session is inviting people who want to have a conversation, discussion and exchange for an inclusive future. 

With this inclusive narrative we aim to give a conscious nudge to the future thinker. When we talk about the future, we are hoping to consciously think about whose future we mean by this. We hope to build a conscious group or a platform where we express not only the ones we are including but also the one we are not including and why we are doing so. Through more connections and interactions, we want to build an inclusive platform and an inclusive future. 

ALT-TOPIA is a research and design platform/studio for practicing alternative realities through different approaches and scales, from detail to speculative world-building, which can generate innovations and projections for inclusive future wellbeing in the face of converging crises and complex challenges.

Sadia Humayra Mounata is the founder of the practice ALT-TOPIA. She is a speculative architect and researcher living and working in Germany through freelancing and collaboration in different projects, such as: Digital Unforgeting: Future of Archives, the Future of Post-Death, and Empathy Playground. 

Linkedin: linkedin/sadia humayra
Twitter: @sadia1302
Website: alt-topia.com

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Good hair day gathering

Subversive Care as a Practice for Belonging: Prospects of Community Care by Akunna Onwen [FI] // CIVIC IMAGINATION & ONTOLOGICAL POLITICS

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A sense of belonging in the communities that surround you is an elemental human need. In this session we are imagining community care as a practice for belonging. 

Agenda track:  3 Civic imagination, 2 Ontological politics & 4 Heterodox institutions
Session type: New narratives
Interaction level: Most of the time
Movement: None
Screen need: Possible to use audio only

Belonging and even just existing in a marginalized body can be challenging or even dangerous. Safer spaces, working on “from us to us” principles for marginalized people are still quite rare. Exclusion has a large effect on society and individuals. 

Care is a concept that we are familiar with. Community care and healing as a tool for communities to survive and thrive in spite of discrimination and racism is more unknown. Community care and belonging have transformative potential as they do not focus on the individual but the community around the individuals. 

Good Hair Day celebrates afro hair and Afro-Finns’ wellbeing through hope and joy, and will serve as a case study of community care and community organizing for this session. Good Hair Day uses community care as a form on anti-discrimination and antiracism focusing on the community needs and wants. I myself have been for long intrigued by belonging and the sense of belonging and explored the topic through a personal and academic interest. The community organizing work through Good Hair Day has only deepened the interest.

We welcome everyone who works with or is interested in communities, marginalized communities or wants to reflect on the changing concepts of community, communality and belonging in this world in flux. The session gives you the means to build community care practices in your own work, as well as the connections enabling these practices.

Akunna Onwen (@akunnaon) | TwitterAkunna Onwen is an expert working on issues of equality and equity. Currently Onwen is working for the Anti-Racist Forum of Finland as a project manager developing a hate crime online reporting tool and a network around it.

Good Hair Day collective is an antiracist movement that tackles racism with joy and hope and Afro-Finnish community care.

goodhairday.fi  @akunnaon

 

Good Hair Day group by Sam Boateng

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At the theatre by Jussi Helsten Helsinki Marketing

Casino Égalité – diversity and democracy in arts by sortition? by Rasmus Slätis [FI] // HETERODOX INSTITUTIONS

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Casino Égalité is a dream of strengthening solidarity and sharing within the cultural scene. By celebrating chance and the luck of the draw, the idea is to give art and artists space(s) in which to be unexpected and uncontrolled. Sortition could be a way of governing such spaces to strengthen the feeling of equality, where responsibility and possibility go hand-in-hand. This session contains deliberation, gambling and redistributing.

Agenda track: 4 Heterodox institutions
Session type: New experimental models
Interaction level: Some
Movement level: None
Screen need: Good to have
Day: Friday 24 September

The initiative, which goes under the working title Casino Égalité, aims to create a new cultural oasis for the independent theatre scene in Helsinki and to work as an experiment of an alternative way of governing, tackling the challenges of meritocracy, hierarchy and lobbyism. 

This venture has two exceptional features it wants to experiment on: governance by rotation of responsibility and sharing of resources between institutional and independent players. The goal of both is to allow for greater diversity of approaches in performance arts.

The field of performing arts is often not really lacking infrastructure nor material resources required for production. The problem is rather that the resource distribution is asymmetrical, leaving out the ever growing pool of theatre freelancers. There is a substantial workforce of artists hungering for the opportunity to create and present their art, but they have very limited possibilities to do so. Access to resources is regulated by a set of opaque requirements difficult to decode and held aback by rigid structures. Getting the chance to produce one’s work is often not a question of skills or passion, nor even the luck of the draw.

The whole venture of Casino Égalité is based on exactly that – the luck of the draw, namely; governing by sortition. From selecting the productions of the upcoming season to the curation of additional programmes; to appointing administrative and technical staff; all is based on the rotation of responsibility, selected through sortition. This means that the topics and aesthetics of the productions and additional programming are liberated from conformism to trends and cronyism. It also means that the artists and ensembles creating these have no pressure to have impressive résumés or charming personalities.

Instead, the pool of professionals engaged in the (serious) play of Casino Égalité all have equal responsibility for managing the venture, and equal possibility to produce and realise their artistic work, regardless of status, merit or charisma.

By practicing sortition as the principal modus operandi, which is not a new invention as a democratic practice (see previous examples here or here), this cultural oasis would on a broader spectrum function also as a laboratory for an alternative way of governance that tackles the challenges of meritocracy, hierarchy, bias and lobbyism. These phenomena undermine both diversity in the arts, as well as from a broader societal point of view threaten belief in change through elections and representative democracy.

This session is for everyone who enjoys culture and arts, indeterminacy and gambling, art practitioners, institutions and funders. The aim is to gather unexpected perspectives and connections to further develop the initiative. Also, the session hopefully awakes the pleasures of sharing and gambling and gives a glimpse of the possibility of sustainability without austerity to the participants.

Rasmus Slätis is a Finnish theatre maker engaged in acting, teaching theatre and trying to make spaces of freedom for artists and art. Having been based in Berlin the past decade he has recently returned to his hometown, Helsinki.

Twitter:  @rabbeson
Website: www.rasmusslatis.com

Some links on sortition as a democratic practice:
Voting undermines the will of the people. It’s time to replace it with sortition.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/oct/14/voting-undermines-the-will-of-the-people-its-time-to-replace-it-with-sortition

The Irish citizens assembly chooses representatives by lottery not election.
https://www.buildinganewreality.com/the-irish-citizens-assembly-chooses-representatives-by-lottery-not-election 

What if We Selected our Leaders by Lottery? Democracy by Sortition, Liberal Elections and Communist Revolutionaries
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/dech.12651 

Brett Henning: What if we replaced politicians with randomly selected people?
https://www.ted.com/talks/brett_hennig_what_if_we_replaced_politicians_with_randomly_selected_people?language=en

Photo by Jussi Helsten, Helsinki Marketing

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RegenerativeGovernance-ImageByJessicaPerlstein

Regenerative Governance – An experimental simulation of decentralised organisation by Bloom // HETERODOX INSTITUTIONS, NEW MODELS OF ECONOMY & GOVERNANCE

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In this session we will be organising a simulation experience of a DAO (decentralized autonomous organization). This done by playing a game to learn peer-to-peer governance. This game is based on 13 years of real world R&D, finding and experimenting with replicable solutions in over 200 cities around the world. The session relies strongly on audience participation and interaction.

Agenda track: 4 Heterodox institutions, 5 New models of economy & governance
Session type: New experimental models
Interaction level: Most of the time
Movement level: Some
Screen need: All of the time
Day: Thursday 23 September

Prior to the DAO simulation in the session, Kiwi child-friendly city expert and curator Hannah Mitchell will be hosting a meditation session.

After the festival, Bloom will be hosting the first Bloom Womb cohort. This program seeks to bring to real-life the experiences gained in the DAO simulation.

Bloom Womb is a two-month in-depth introduction to regenerative cultures. It utilises a short syllabus, and a weekly meeting to engage and encourage deep connections and support among peers. At the end of the two-month period, there is a real-life weekend where participants near each other physically carry out a part of their goals or interests together. This program tangibly supports Untitled participants in following through on gems from their Untitled experience. It also builds deeper connectivity between our communities, and would support Bloom Network in starting a small revenue stream to continue bootstrapping our collaborative efforts.

Bloom is a grassroots international community of people and projects working toward regenerative cultures, founded in 2008. Local Bloom hubs around the world grow participation in practices such as food security, local economies, celebrations of diversity, and art as cultural transformation. There are tens of thousands of solutions for climate restoration and social equity all over the world. However, they are invisible to the general public and disconnected from one another. Bloom aims to connect people and existing initiatives, locally and globally, to build capacity together and inspire a billion acts of regeneration.

@ourbloomnetwork
bloomnetwork.org

Illustration by Jessica Perlstein / Bloom

Photo by Bloom

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Universal Basic Mobility by Robin Chase [US] // CIVIC IMAGINATION & HETERODOX INSTITUTIONS

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At any given movement, 50% of the population cannot get into a car and drive somewhere. Yet this lack of mobility by so many people appears invisible to most of us, including planners and policymakers. Freedom of movement is a key human right for a more equitable future. 

Agenda track: 3 Civic Imagination & 4 Heterodox institutions
Session type: New perspectives 
Interaction level: Some
Movement level: None
Screen need: Possible to use audio only
Day: Thursday 23 September at 16-17.30 UTC | 19-20.30 EEST

The transition to EVs alone will not meet our 2030 climate goal of a 50% reduction in CO2 output. We need a transportation paradigm shift to introduce meaningful change: one founded in equity and opportunity, as the young, the poor, and Black people have the least access to a car, and.

In this session we will be imagining a mobility network that requires no government license or money to participate: A baseline of real autonomy for everyone. Everyone is welcome to join us! A diversity of ages and life experiences are needed to consider this basic human right.

Together, we need to find a narrative that makes this invisible/lost true freedom of movement salient and desirable to everyone, not just liberal, or urban, or green, or progressive populations. How do we tell reveal this story and the benefits in a way that encourages others to tell their stories and build/maintain momentum? and carry it to those deciding on which infrastructure and green investments are to be prioritized.

Robin Chase is a transportation entrepreneur. She is co-founder and former CEO of Zipcar, the largest carsharing company in the world; as well as co-founder of Veniam, a network company that moves terabytes of data between vehicles and the cloud. Her recent book is Peers Inc: How People and Platforms are Inventing the Collaborative Economy and Reinventing Capitalism. Her current passion is working with cities to maximize the transformation possible with the introduction of self driving cars.

@rmchase

robinchase.org 

 

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Living Change: grief as an overlooked force by Louise Armstrong [UK] // HETERODOX INSTUTIONS

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For those who are looking to enable a just and regenerative world, it is critical that we find ways to be closing the regenerative cycle.

Agenda track: 4 Heterodox institutions & 1 Nature – human
Session type: new perspectives
Interaction level: Most of the time
Movement level: None
Screen need: Needed all the time
Day: Friday 24 September, 11 am EEST | 8 am UTC

We are comfortable creating the new, but often skirt around the loss, closure, ‘release’ and death phase of change – even though they are an inevitable and necessary part of any change process.

It is essential we know how to work with these powerful forces as we continue to adapt to and live during a global pandemic, increasing impacts of climate change and as our regimes and ways of being crumble around us.

This session will be offering a series of metaphors and framing that help us to work with grief and loss in a tangible way. We will also spend some time witnessing and sharing with each other and experiencing the power of grief-tending practices.

This session is especially for those…

  • who know they haven’t processed grief and changes experienced throughout the pandemic and beyond.
  • who want to connect to what is really important to them and are unafraid of the intimacy of life.
  • who are open and curious.

The custodian of this session, Louise Armstrong has experienced the transformative potential of tending to grief and is committed to supporting a shift in the culture and practices through which we frame and work with loss and grief as a part of the cycles of change. This festival session is partly a test of the potential of this type of space and offering in supporting those living and working towards transformative change

Louise Armstrong enables and supports those committed to living change and who are running ambitious system-altering work and collaborations. She does this through emergent facilitation, system-change coaching, power-informed practices, process design, visual thinking, pattern spotting and navigating complexity. She has formerly worked for the Forum for the Future.

@louise_a
louise-a.medium.com 

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What if we as employees were a pivotal force in sustainable transitions? by Service Union United PAM // NEW MODELS OF ECONOMY & GOVERNANCE

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According to research, climate change is a truly shared worry among citizens. We have looked for the solutions to come from consumers, from regulators, from investors. But as climate change keeps increasing and biodiversity diminishing, Service Union United PAM thinks we need to expand agency to tackle this issue. Employees – those same citizens that worry about climate change – are a resource too modestly harnessed for this work.

Agenda track:  4 Heterodox institutions & 5 New models of economy & governance
Session type: New narratives & New experimental models
Interaction level: Most of the time
Movement level: Some
Screen need: Needed all the time
Day: Friday 24th, at 2 pm–4 pm EEST | 11 am–1 pm UTC

The role given to us as employees in the story of climate change is to be worried of jobs vanishing. But what kind of a force could we as employees be? How could we strengthen the collaboration of employees and companies in progressing sustainable transitions?  What would employee-driven sustainability work look like? What kind of asset would that be to the companies? How would that contribute to our feeling of rewarding work? And how could we experiment on this?

The Service Union United warmly welcomes you to explore these questions together. You can be an employee or employer of any field, a citizen, an activist, an entrepreneur, a student, a researcher, or artist – a person curious about fair and sustainable transitions, climate change, or  the future of work and rewarding work.

The fruits of the session are a starting point for developing concrete experiments for PAM and potential partners to take forward.

PAM logoWith its 210,000 members, Service Union United PAM is the biggest trade union in Finland. They represent people employed in the private service sector. So next time in Finland you visit a store, a restaurant or see your office cleaner, say hi! They are likely to be a member of PAM. Service Union PAM wants to be a strong, relevant, modern union for years to come and that is why it is one of the founding members of the Untitled Alliance. This session is a continuation of the rewarding work theme PAM explored at Untitled Festival 2020.

@pamliitto  pam.fi 

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Potential of anti-rival thinking to transform economies by ATARCA // HETERODOX INSTITUTIONS

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The world economy is increasingly based on data that increases in value when shared and combined with other data. However, our centuries-old economic models and structures fail to recognise this value-creation process, causing markets for anti-rival digital goods to wither.

The idea of “anti-rival” is a concept that describes goods not fitting into the dichotomy of rival or non-rival goods. Anti-rival goods can be shared or used exclusively and gain value the more they are used. They are embedded in the development of new technologies and especially DLT. If successful, they could have implications for our economic systems and thinking, interaction and the sustainability of communities.

Agenda Track: 3 Civic imagination, 4 Heterodox institutions and 5 New models of economy and governance
Session type: New narratives
Interaction level: Most of the time
Movement level: None

The ATARCA project invites you to the session to imagine together new metaphors for data and discuss social, political and economic impacts of the implementation of an anti-rival economy. The aim is, via identifying the roles and nature of data in our economies and societies, to explore the potential of an anti-rival economy at large: how could it foster more fair and sustainable socio-economic structures and what kinds of policies are needed to enable that?

The new narrative challenges our fundamental understandings of how value is or can be created in data economy and how (infra)structures, culture and attitudes need to change in order to grasp the potential of new economic thinking.The involvement of citizens, activists, policymakers and researchers alike is central to grasping as many dimensions of this challenge as possible. We welcome everyone to the session, which consists of an orientation, discussion in small groups and wrapping up together.

A series of follow-up dialogue sessions will be organised in ATARCA. The discussions at the Untitled festival and other dialogue sessions will feed into the development of the project’s policy recommendations. 

ATARCA is a collaborative project designed to create a scientific foundation for anti-rival compensation and governance technology. As their early work strongly indicates, economic structures and institutions need a fundamental reform to fully leverage ICT and digital resources. Through participatory designs, prototyping and interventions based on action research and data analysis, ATARCA’s members will design, implement, and deploy and analyse initial anti-rival systems. ATARCA has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme.

This session will be facilitated by: Dr. Ville Eloranta, Aalto University, Johannes Mikkonen, Senior Policy Expert, Demos Helsinki and Research coordinator Atte Ojanen, Demos Helsinki

ATARCA has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme.

@ATARCA_EU
atarca.eu 

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