Grants/WE SHARE - Platform4 Sharing Festival
Describe the project you are proposing as clearly as possible in just five sentences.
A festival based on the idea of sharing (culture, knowledge, ideas, information infrastructure). We will focus on this theme through a wide range of activities, and thereby put large emphasis on Creative Commons as well as other open and/or flexible licences. The program will include lectures, workshops and performances from renowned individuals from both Denmark and abroad that have adopted open licences into their work (musicians, designers etc) and whose activities include sharing as a central element.
Detail the tangible project output (e.g., paper, blog post, written materials, video/film, etc.; this would be in addition to the final written report that successful grant recipients will be expected to deliver to CC at the conclusion of the project).
Our organization, Platform4, is a non-profit venue with a large community of volunteers, of which a large segment (20+ people) constitute a media/documentation group that works in writing, video and still photography. This group will document this festival - before, during and after. Another in-house volunteer group, our pr-group, will head the marketing campaign with outreach to social, local and national media, as well as organize street level pr-activities in Aalborg and Copenhagen.
Describe the community you are targeting. How would the project benefit the community?
Platform4 is a user-driven multi-purpose venue that experiments with new technological and digital elements in combination with artistic and creative genres ranging from music, theater, contemporary art, design, architecture, performance and more. Focus is not only put on providing audience and users with experiences, but also on creating an optimal framework for budding creative projects and product innovation. For this project, our primary goal is to target a broad audience aged 15-40 years including both those who normally frequent our venue, but also a more mainstream based audience in order to ensure broad attention to the theme.
The idea is that our approach will benefit the community in two ways: For one, by gathering the entire Danish community of open licensing artists, activists, advocates and other central figures, thereby creating coherence among these relatively dispersed actors. Secondly, by purposefully spreading a positive message towards the theme of sharing among citizens by creating a major scale event that will serve as one of the prime events of our 2011-season, thereby attracting large-scale media attention (which many of our previous festival has shown).br />
Our relationship with the community is three-fold: 1) Our venue, Platform4, has a reputation of bringing forth new ideas, new artistic currents and new ways of thinking and organizing, and we would like to use this platform as leverage for putting focus on sharing in general. 2) Christian Villum, one of the two project managers of this project, is also the official Public Project Lead of CC Denmark (since May 1, 2010), and furthermore runs the CC-pioneer record label Urlyd, which was the first label in the world to release a physical album (lp / cd / dvd), while backed by the national collecting society KODA (see CC blog news entry - http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/7988). The album was 'Small Arm of Sea' by female artist Tone. Several more releases under the CC/KODA trial is under way as well as a series of CC-related outreach projects (ao. hosting the CC Salon in Copenhagen twice every year, first one having been held in May 2010). 3) The second of the two project managers of this festival, Christos Kontogiorgas, is the first individual that adopted a CC licence into his work (super8 film+designs) in Greece (in 2006), almost one year before the official presentation of the CC licences in Athens, in 2007 (by Lawrence Lessig himself). Though now residing in Denmark, he continues to act as a strong member of the online communities evolving around open web ideologies and activism.
We believe that this combination and our combined personal and professional networks makes us apt in creating a highly dedicated and competent festival that will gain large attention among media, creatives and audience.
Experience-wise, we have held hundreds of festival, concerts, workshops, development projects, events etc. on a professional level during the laste 12 years, so we feel fully equipped to develop and host a festival of this theme.
How will you measure and evaluate your project’s impact - on your main participants? Other contributors? On the larger community?
We will pay close attention to the feedback from the 30 participants (artists, lecturers etc), as well as keep in touch with them for smaller follow-up events (maybe in collaboration with Aalborg University, that we are affiliated with). Also, through social media, we will establish a network where future users can connect with the participants from the festival (and from future festivals) in an alumni-type connection.
How many participants do you expect to be involved in your project? How will you seek and sustain their involvement?
We plan to invite approx. 30 participants (artists, workshop-directors, lecturers etc.) from Denmark, Scandinavia and Europe. We plan to cover travel, accommodation, catering and a small stipend for their involvement.
Moreover, we normally pull in between 300-550 people in the audience per day when hosting large-scale music/video/art-festivals in Platform4. This will give the festival an expected attendance of 800-1600 people through the course of the festival.
If all goes well, we will surely consider making it an annual event.
Describe how your project will benefit Creative Commons' mission to increase the amount of creativity (cultural, educational, and scientific content) in "the commons".
By showcasing talent, ideas and actors that encourage and appropriate the power of sharing through open licensing, the festival will serve as a platform in the process to reach more creative individuals through the attention to the theme it will create. While a 3-day event may not tangibly cause the addition of more works being added to the commons, we believe outreach towards more people serve the same effect in the long run.
Describe what technologies and tools your project will use. What kinds of technical skills and expertise do you bring to the project? What are your technical needs?
With this project being an event, our use of technology and tools will mainly consist of communication devices. Both at the event itself, where workshops, presentations and performances will take place, but also for pr and marketing of the event.
We bring a large pool of organizing experience into the project.
Our technical needs will be small. We have our venue ready (Platform4, a multispace) - with most necessary technical equipment already present, as well as all permits in place (permanently).
What challenges do you expect to face, and how do you plan to overcome them?
It will clearly be a challenge to raise more funds, and also a challenge to create the exact program (must match the calendars of participants etc.)
How do you plan to sustain your project after the Creative Commons funding has ended? Detail specific plans. How do you plan to raise revenue to continue your efforts in the future?
As mentioned above, we are aware of the opportunity to make this an annual event. But perhaps more significantly, we are hoping that the festival will ignite creative communities that seek to work on projects that encourage sharing. We have an in-house co-working space, and we plan to make everyone on the audience aware of the opportunity to obtain a workspace, free of charge. The running of Platform4, a non-profit venue, is financed through aid from the local university, from running our own small café and through heavy fund raising.
How can this project be scalable, or have a scalable impact?
It would clearly be possible to scale up in the coming years, should this first round be a success.
What resources and support do you expect Creative Commons to provide to your project to ensure its success (if any)?
We would be thrilled if some sort of exposure on the international CC site would be possible - or at least on the mail outs that describe upcoming CC related events.
Describe how your organization currently communicates with its community members and network partners. (100 words)
Through many channels: Social media, our website, local+national+international media, mobile devices (sms) etc.
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