On Saturday I went to Melbourne to facilitate the running of a participatory workshop organised by Clubs Project Space , called Sustaining Practices.

The first activity was a speed dating session, in which 2 minutes was allowed for blah-blah-ing about what your particular concerns were. I used a dinger to shift them along to the next date. I made a 9 minute mp3 recording of the dating. It’s loud and fun! You can listen to it here [9 min, 4mb, mp3].

The Clubs crew sent out the following info before the event, to encourage participants to bring along ideas which would shape the course of the day:

In order to facilitate the day, there are a number of things we request that you bring:
a distinctive cup and plate that you can easily recognize,
a pen, and more importantly
your proposition and/or question, and/or issue, and/or ideas, and/or responses, and/or information which will form the basis of the discussions for the day.

From our initial planning CLUBS has identified 4 areas of potential interest that may orientate this discussion and the responses that you bring. These include notions of exchange, structure, dissemination and networks.

exchange
including fields connected to the economies of practice such as: alternative financial arrangements including: barter, subscription, trusts, not-for-profit organizational structures, Australia Cultural Fund, fund-raising, philanthropy, etc. As well as the possibilities of exploring ways of redirecting money towards artist initiated projects from benefactors and patrons or accessing funds from ethical corporate sources.

structure
including fields concerned with the physical support of creative practice such as: building, architecture, landscape, environment, food production, resources. How might we develop more multiple, sustainable situations and sites, which support sustainable practices? What do we need in order to do this? Do non-institutional small scaled situations, such as, lounge-rooms or social clubs, open up other possibilities?

dissemination
including fields involving the discussion of ideas such as: websites, recording technologies, blogs, wikis, writing, journals, conversation, theory, publication development and other related skills.

networks
including fields that generate connections and sustain dialogues with other groups of people nationally and internationally. Groups such as 16beaver, notanalternative, camp for oppositional architecture, Copenhagen Free University, etc are models for consideration