Stacey Pottinger shares how she finds hope in community and connection.
Over the past couple of weeks I have had the pleasure of reconnecting with the partnerships we funded through last year's Studio Innovation Fund and, at a time when it is easy to focus on social, political and personal division, I have found some genuine hope.
All of our Residents at The Studio work to use, create and/or disrupt creative technology for social good in some way, which for me always makes it an exciting place to be.
But being involved with the three partnerships, offering reflective and reflexive practices to the teams to consider their journeys and the value of their work has offered me a unique perspective.
They are all very different from each other on the face of it.
- James Levelle and Joseph Lavington developed a prototype of an app which will help connect volunteers with community, often climate and social justice focused projects and activities using their very own AI character
- Jenny Ford and Nick James have developed and successfully trialled new processes and methods for using existing tech to enable building users and owners to understand and make the best use of their spaces
- Jack Stoddart of Ramshaklicious and Rhiannon White of Common Wealth Theatre in Cardiff R&Dd a new live show incorporating community-led stories alongside new uses of existing tech and live theatre to explore 'The UnTruths'.
Despite the obvious differences, and the different digital technologies adopted (equipment and software), all of these projects seem to me to rely on the same 'human' or non-digital technologies...
- Storytelling: Telling stories, listening to stories, sharing stories – whether that is through theatre, film, data or the written word.
- Community: Every one of these projects relies on, relates to and has been created with, for and alongside a specific community of people.
- Place: In relation to people and community; whether they are enabling people to feel proud and rooted in their location, helping people explore their buildings and spaces or consider how they can support the place they live in both locally and globally.
- Power: Every single one of these projects plays with and examines power dynamics, whether it is new use cases for old/existing tech, ensuring people can tell their own stories and question the stories other people tell, or empowering themselves to make change – incremental or enormous.
And finally...
- Connection: Not only would none of these projects have worked without the partnerships and without the wider communities, but they all offer solutions to disconnection, loneliness and disenfranchisement. They all offer ways for us to connect with each other – to tap into something bigger than ourselves.
And that, for me, is a cause for celebration and for hope.