Free House – A Model for Affordable, Zero-carbon Homes by Dark Matter Labs (SE) // NATURE-HUMAN

, , ,

The Free House project is a speculative idea for a new tenure model for housing; combining the concepts of stewardship, perpetual bond finance and zero-carbon construction. The project is aimed to build a single prototype house as a demonstrator of this new reality, with the home itself being represented as a digital autonomous organisation and held by a civic trust.

Agenda track: 1 Nature – human, 5 New models of economy & governance
Session type: New experimental models
Interaction level: Most of the time
Movement level: Some
Screen need: Needed all the time

The overall aim would be to create a new housing market for high quality, zero carbon homes that become cheaper over time. If successful, this housing model could create a new template for public housing provision – one that’s both genuinely affordable, materially circular, and civically governed.

We would like to especially invite housing activists, developers, designers, and socially minded real estate professionals to this session. Policy makers and administrators in housing and community wealth building. Property lawyers interested in new models of ownership and regenerative construction.

Dark Matter Labs is interested in designing and developing prototype housing models that create spatial justice; with housing and real estate representing one of the biggest barriers to climate and social transition we face. By starting small, and using the single house as a system demonstrator, the aim is to delve further into the design challenge that this represents.

After the festival, we’re looking for partners, funders, policy makers, legal experts and designers to help make this prototype house a reality; building a real world example within the next 2-3 years.

Dark Matter Labs is a multidisciplinary discovery, design and development lab behind Freehouse, working with partners, clients, and collaborators across the world to develop new working methods for system change.

Meggan Collins & Linnéa Rönnquist are both Strategic Urban Designers and Architects at Dark Matter Labs.

Twitter: @DarkMatter_Labs
Website: www.darkmatterlabs.org 

/1 Comment/by

Democratic Climate Model: Identifying shifts towards climate resilience by Democratic Society // NEW MODELS OF ECONOMY & GOVERNANCE

, , ,

The Democratic Climate Model is an innovation for climate action at a local level. This model takes a systems approach to pathways towards climate resilience, making explicit the relationship between design, power and social justice, and where inequity and citizen disempowerment weaken governance and climate resilience. 

Agenda track: 5 New models of economy & governance
Session type: New experimental models
Interaction level: Some
Movement level: Some
Screen need: Needed all the time

Our Model aims to foster higher quality democracies and more participatory approaches by sparking conversations with public sector leaders, civil society and communities on more just, inclusive, community-led approaches. It seeks to shift ‘climate innovation’ away from a tech focus, influence governance and policy, and help cities think about what ‘scaling up’ for more durable, longer term change takes.

It is positively framed around four categories of ‘conditions’ we see for climate resilience:

  • diversity of actors
  • participatory culture
  • resourcing
  • subject-matter expertise. 

The Model is developed through our partnership in EIT Climate-KIC for achieving carbon neutrality, which runs across more than 10 EU cities. 

During this workshop session we will showcase the use of our model to date in local contexts and discuss potential levers for overcoming the identified barriers to climate action.

We warmly invite change agents for climate action in their respective fields to this session.

By including different community members (experts across sectors, civil society organisations), we aim to shift the conversation to longer term debates and discussions beyond a project cycle approach. In this way, our model can incorporate a shift to more democratic processes and decision-making on climate action. 

Democratic Society a European international democracy organisation, supporting our cities and residents to ensure that radical climate transformation is a democratic not just a technocratic process. Through democratic design, organisational development and practical participation exercises, they are building long-term resident participation in all the decisions, plans and projects that affect them. 

Twitter: @demsoc
Website: www.demsoc.org 

/0 Comments/by

Mattereum – Governing the “Lean Green” Circular Economy by Vinay Gupta [UK] // NEW MODELS OF ECONOMY & GOVERNANCE

, , ,

For our collective future, we are trying to steer somewhere between “business as usual” and “degrowth”, envisaging a world where our living standards change remarkably little, but our resource use more than halves, through the “Lean Green Model”. To create this world, nothing can be thrown away or squandered. We will present a model in which physical goods are tied to information infrastructures, which ensure that they are reused, repaired, and resold over, and over, and over again by hundreds of different people before they are recycled.

Agenda track: 5 New models of economy & governance
Session type: New experimental models
Interaction level: Some – lots of discussions
Movement level: None
Screen need: Good to have

This project started from basic research on climate refugees and how to provision physical systems for food, shelter, water and so on as we start to have hundreds of millions of displaced people around the world. There is a deep relevance to these ideas beyond simply reducing our environmental impact.

At Mattereum we have defined and developed an end-to-end ecosystem that brings security and trust to the intersection of distributed commerce and trade of physical assets.

The Mattereum Protocol combines a precise definition of the state and properties of assets in the Mattereum Asset Passport which sets out the unique nature, or non-fungibility, of the asset, together with legally binding mechanisms for dispute resolution. This enables NFTs to be securely linked to the ownership of physical assets for the first time.

The long-term potential of this technology can help untangle the legal grey area that exists between “smart” online contracts and physical contracts.

This capability to extremely securely bind information to matter gives us the ability to take completely new economic models, including shared ownership and complex financialization, and implement them on top of the material goods of the day. Almost any policy objective, from carbon taxes to a shared economy can be implemented: it is the bedrock for all other kinds of political experiments.

We invite circular economy activists and blockchain people asking for more meaning and substance in the blockchain world to this session. Together, we will run through the “lean green” model, and look at some concrete early examples, running on the Ethereum blockchain.

After the festival, we would be very happy to work with anybody working in the circular economy space, and have cheap turnkey systems they could use for prototyping and proof of concept work.

Vinay Gupta is Founder and CEO of Mattereum. He is a leading figure in the blockchain space, having coordinated the release of blockchain platform Ethereum in July 2015. He is also the director of the Hexayurt Project, a 20 year old volunteer effort working in the refugee shelter space. Mattereum is an impact-driven venture capital-backed technology enterprise with a new protocol for digital trade. Mattereum was founded in 2017, and is based in London. The organisation is setting out to change the world by redefining the relationship between physical assets and distributed digital commerce.

Twitter: @Mattereum
Website: mattereum.com

/0 Comments/by

Imagination to Legislation: Powerful Perception Shifts to Build Imaginative Capacity and New Systems by Phoebe Tickell // NATURE-HUMAN

, , , , ,

Rather than seek answers to “what is right” externally to ourselves, Moral Imaginations invites a discovery of purpose and morality by directly cultivating imaginative explorations of our moral sense, deepening empathy and igniting prosocial creativity. The potential to build civic movements, local solidarity and networks of action from this place is exciting and under exploration.

Agenda track: 1 Nature – human, 3 Civic imagination, 5 New models of economy & governance
Session type: New experimental models
Interaction level: Some
Movement level: None
Screen need: Possible to use audio only

This discovery is conducted through radical perception shifts and development of connection to humans and non-humans across the past, present and future. Important to our work is building on existing bodies of work such as narrative therapy and associated narrative methodologies, theatre and the arts, deep ecology practices, contemplative practices, futures thinking, and embodied complexity methodologies. Such practices lead participants to experience an expanded sense of meaning and deeper connection to their core values and purpose.

This session will run in two parts. In the first part, we will introduce people to a growing body of work and approach to use powerful imagination exercises with groups to shift perception towards more than human and deep time perspectives. Moral Imaginations is a collective, community and toolkit of approaches that was born out of the pandemic when people were craving an experiential connection to the possibility of better systems and a better society.

During this first part, participants will be able to experience an immersive collective imagination exercise where they connect to future generations. You will need a good internet connection, but video is not necessary, although preferred.

The second part of the session will be hosted as a collective imagining session around the potential for imagination to inform legislation and policy. We hope to attract those with policy-making experience and those who seek to innovate policy. 

Together, we will brainstorm and develop ideas on how the power of imagination could be harnessed to shift policy on the local, national and international level. This will be a participatory exercise and will be co-hosted with partners who are developing such thinking in their own work and projects.

We invite political and social entrepreneurs, civil society leaders, policy-makers community leaders, movement builders, artists, activists, and local change-makers to come join us at this session. Jointly, we can use our imagination to open up new avenues for change.

After the festival, the next step will be to work out how to bridge the potential of imagination with legislation and the development of new and promising policy.

Moral Imaginations is a project that develops, designs and delivers rigorous imagining for moral futures. They develop and work with imagination exercises to develop empathy, meaning, agency, belonging and a connection to what’s important. They label themselves as a “feel thank” – A think tank, but for feelings. Moral Imaginations works to combine rational, strategic approaches to change with approaches that draw on intuition, imagination and the cognitive sciences to work at the level of feeling to affect inner change in people across local communities, organisations and policy.

@moral_imagining, @solarpunk_girl, @liamckavanagh, @lai 

moralimaginations.com, phoebetickell.com 

 

/0 Comments/by

Humble Governance – The Colorado Experiment by Demos Helsinki & RadicalxChange // NEW MODELS OF ECONOMY & GOVERNANCE

, , ,

Our liberal democracies have traditionally based their legitimacy on a stance of near-omniscience and self-righteousness. Unfortunately, in a world of high uncertainty and continuous crisis, such a position leads to political stalemate. This impedes our society’s ability to change at a time of great transformational need.

Agenda track: 5 New models of economy & governance
Session type: New experimental models
Interaction level: Most of the time
Movement level: None
Screen need: Needed all the time

Many of our governmental processes work against solving long-term solutions to the global and complex challenges we face. They are remnants of a bygone era of linear predictability. Humble Governance is a new stance adapted to the 21st century. which could fully unleash the still hindered energy of governments, politicians and civil servants to actively solve these issues.

Humble Governance is a new but tested approach that fosters political and societal trust despite political disagreement, and enables ambitious reforms under current conditions of uncertainty.

Using a current real-life case from the US State of Colorado, we invite you to jointly explore what innovative solutions, benefits for citizens, and challenges can come from humility.

Together, we hope to be able to develop first-hand understanding of this new governance paradigm and ideas on how to share, implement and adapt it globally.

The session is hosted by Demos Helsinki, and based on work co-developed with RadicalxChange.

Vincent Lassalle has been a practitioner, a consultant and a writer on organisational innovation and societal change for over a decade. He is the author of Bridge Builders: Learning from those ushering the future of society, a personal essay following a year-long international study on post-industrial transition.

João Sigora is works on Governance Innovation at Demos Helsinki. The core of his everyday work involves experimenting with new approaches to governance and building public servants’ capacity for reimagining and co-creating desired futures.

Demos Helsinki is a globally operating, independent think tank. We conduct research, offer consultancy services, and reimagine and experiment futures with a global alliance, Untitled.

RadicalxChange (RxC) is a global movement for next-generation political economies, founded by Glen Weyl in 2018. We’re committed to advancing plurality, equality, community, and decentralization through upgrading democracy, markets, the data economy, the commons, and identity. The RadicalxChange Foundation is a nonprofit dedicated to advancing the RxC movement, to building community, and to education about democratic innovation. RxC connects people from all walks of life – ranging from social scientists and technologists to artists and activists. 

@DemosHelsinki, @RadxChange

demoshelsinki.fi, radicalxchange.org

/0 Comments/by

Tech narratives and the collective good by Bethnal Green Ventures & Future Narratives Lab // New models of economy and governance

, , ,

A fierce debate rages over the most effective ways to tackle the problems that our use of technology is causing for democracy, equality, and society as a whole. Built into the terms of these debates are a series of unhelpful assumptions that constrict imagination and undermine the perceived viability of truly radical approaches. 

Agenda track: New models of economy & governance
Session type: New narratives 
Interaction level: Some
Movement level: None
Screen need: Good to have
Day: Thursday 23 September

In this session we will interrogate concepts including data privacy, tech for good and the narratives deployed by big tech companies, to explore the individualising and extractive narratives that underlie the way that technology is thought about and discussed today.

Through group discussion we will work together to unpack the common foundations of these approaches, and explore more constructive alternatives, as the basis for practical steps that can help us reimagine our relationship with technology.

This session should be of interest to people working in technology as a founder, funder or policy maker, or anyone looking to improve the impact of technology in the world today.

Milly Shotter is Brand & Communications Manager at Bethnal Green Ventures, Europe’s leading early-stage tech-for-good VC firm. Milly has a background in creative production and communications. 

Daniel Stanley is Founder & CEO of the Future Narratives Lab, a nonprofit initiative that works to analyse societal narratives, design new alternatives, and create strategies to spread them. He has a background in community organising and social psychology, and is Creative Director at strategic communications consultancy Cohere Partners. 

@dajastan @narrativeslab @millyshotter @bg_ventures

 

bethnalgreenventures.com & futurenarrativeslab.org

/0 Comments/by

From S curve to X curve of transitions: Innovating & killing the old by DRIFT // NEW MODELS OF ECONOMY & GOVERNANCE

, , ,

Transitions are fundamental changes in culture, structure, and practices in societal systems. They involve a ‘creation vs destruction’ duality that is inherent and crucial to the process of generating new alternative practices and structures. Simultaneously, we need to be questioning, destabilizing, and breaking down existing unsustainable practices and structures to make place for the new. We will apply our approach collectively to the food transition, which is aiming for a food system that is nature-positive. There are some major questions we seek to answer: are we already see transition patterns, what needs to grow or be transformed and what needs to stop in order for this process to work?

Agenda track: 5 New models of economy & governance
Session type: New Perspectives
Interaction level: Some
Movement level: None
Screen need: Needed all the time

The X-curve is a visual tool that underlines transition dynamics. It is based on scientific insights into the ways in which complex systems fundamentally change in nature. It provides a starting point to explore the transition dynamics present in each domain. Working with the X-curve is an intuitive and flexible way to create shared transition narratives and understanding of complex societal challenges in heterogeneous groups and empower people to change

In this session, we will introduce the transition perspective and jointly be exploring this tool to understand how it can be utilised to support transitions in society.

We invite anyone to join us who is interested in systemic change, and understanding how we can break down the old and build in a sustainable and systematic manner.

The goal of this session is to provide participants a tool that they can use themselves to hopefully accelerate transformative changes in their own context, as well as that it will help DRIFT to improve the tool. By collectively discussing the food transition as an example, we hope to establish new connections as well as more engagement with this theme.

Derk Loorbach is director of DRIFT and Professor of Socio-economic Transitions at the Faculty of Social Science, both at Erasmus University Rotterdam. Femke Coops is a master student in Industrial Design at Eindhoven University of Technology and a graduate intern at DRIFT. Mayte Beekman is working as a quartermaster at the Design Impact Transition (DIT) Platform, an Erasmus University initiative aimed at enhancing the transformative societal impact of the university by using a design approach. Derk, Femke and Mayte work together on bringing together design and transitions and transforming the role of research for societal transitions.

Twitter: @drk75
Website: drift.eur.nl

/0 Comments/by

Making Better Group Decisions by RxC Voice // NEW MODELS OF ECONOMY & GOVERNANCE

, , ,

In order to take on the challenges of our time, we need to get better at making decisions as groups. At RadicalxChange, we are developing tools for group decision-making that can help identify stakeholders or impacted persons, facilitate liquid networks of trust, surface shared values or ideas, and steer groups toward consensus rather than disagreement. We have brought some of those tools together in an end-to-end decision-making platform we call RxC Voice.

Agenda track: 5 New models of economy & governance
Session type: New experimental models
Interaction level: Some
Movement level: None
Screen need: Needed all the time

We believe that inclusive, productive deliberation is paramount to a healthy democracy. In order to make this possible for large groups (e.g. cities) and digital communities (e.g. blockchain communities), we need to design digital platforms on which group members can engage in conversations that move toward consensus rather than divisive argument.

In this session, we will discuss the components that make a successful decision-making process. We will also be running interactive demos with innovative democratic tools and share findings and anecdotes from experiments with governments, social movements, blockchain communities, and more. Finally, we will be discussing next steps for the RxC Voice project and democratic innovation and imagining radical futures of deliberative democracy and community self-governance.

This session is for anyone interested in exploring tools for more successful deliberation at scale, digital democracy, or decentralized decision-making. If you think we need to update the platforms on which groups discuss important decisions and issues for healthier democracy, then you will enjoy discussing this project with us.

We hope that our session will inspire you to experiment with new democratic tools such as RxC Voice, Pol.is, and Quadratic Voting. These tools have already impacted the way that many groups deliberate and make decisions, including governments, DAOs, corporate boards, social movements, and more. We hope you will contact us if you would like to pilot RxC Voice with your group, collaborate with us on the project, or fund our efforts.

When our deliberative tools fail to surface the shared values of a group, democracy suffers and lapses into authoritarianism or plutocracy. We hope you will join us in rethinking the ways that constituencies express their wants and needs to each other and to their leadership.

RadicalxChange (RxC) is a global movement for next-generation political economies. It advances plurality, equality, community, and decentralization through upgrades of democracy, markets, the data economy, the commons, and identity.

Alex Randaccio is a Project Developer at RadicalxChange, leading development of RxC’s suite of experimental governance tools. Jennifer Lyn Morone is RadicalxChange Foundation’s CEO and a multidisciplinary visual artist, activist, and filmmaker. Her work focuses on the human experience with technology, economics, politics, and identity, and the moral and ethical issues that arise from such systems. Her interests lie in exploring ways of creating social justice and equal distribution of the future.

Twitter: @RadxChange
Website: radicalxchange.org

/0 Comments/by
RegenerativeGovernance-ImageByJessicaPerlstein

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

, , , ,

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

/0 Comments/by

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

, , , ,

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 

 

/0 Comments/by

Contact us

untitled@untitled.community