Week Twelve : Further Research on Engagement

Participation is essentially at the heart of what I am trying to achieve through this contemporary marketplace. Collaboration in the community for the community. At present there is an emergent culture emphasising such participatory urbanism although it exists predominantly in the virtual realm.

TEDxCity2.0 is one such insurgent idea. The City 2.0 website (which I touched on earlier) is a platform created to surface the myriad stories and collective actions being taken by citizens around the world. It draws on the best of what is already being discovered by urban advocates and adds grassroots movers and shakers into the mix. TEDx was created in the spirit of TED's mission, "ideas worth spreading." The program is designed to give communities, organizations, and individuals the opportunity to stimulate dialogue through TED-like experiences at the local level. At TEDx events, a screening of TEDTalks videos--or a combination of live presenters and TEDTalks videos--sparks deep conversation and connections. TEDx events are fully planned and coordinated independently, on a community-by-community basis.

Similar to this Engaged by Design is a platform which enables dialogues and actions between a diverse range of disciplines around sustainability and design through creative outputs and workshops. It aims to empower partners and collaborators to generate meaningful change through opening conversations & providing by space for reflection.

In imagining this emerging future and in keeping with what I envision as valuable to the community of Paddington and indeed Brisbane at large I would suggest that this collaborative initiative could represent the physical manifestation and facilitation of such models. Thus while threads of traditional consumption and exchange would remain opportunities for deep and meaningful dialogue would also be supported. The question thus is to consider how?