This exciting project is an attempt to restore a sense of commonplace and a better understanding of each other’s narratives in order to build a better future. Some stories can get lost forever so archiving the conversations and interviews on video is important for the community and for future generations. This project is a combination of creative oral history with civic lead journalism using video as a tool to capture stories, travel on time to the past, to the future and maybe come up together with new solutions to old problems.

The challenge of bringing people together to share stories is minimized by the opportunities ahead to allow genuine individual and collective voices of expression to emerge. We all need the time to talk and listen to eachother’s in order to co-create alternative visions for the future beyond stereotypes, especially under challenging socio-economic circumstances and uncertain futures for all. Learning from each other’s narratives is a gift but where do we start our journey?

Tulse Hill in South London and St Martin’s Estate in particular are spaces where historically the friction between local public and private service providers has shaped the life of residents going through the ups and downs of community lead activism and the determination to have their voices heard. We work closely with High Trees Community Development Trust, an organization providing adult learning opportunities and ongoing service to the wider community. One of the sucessful stories of the neighbourhood.

Let’s explore our collective wisdom!

To know more about it check our microsite   www.creative-generation.org.uk

In partnership with Dreamstake we have been running monthly events at Club Workspace in Clerkenwell since last August. BIG BANG NIGHTS are networking events using films to trigger open discussions or crowdversations, an open platform to enable collective, constructive and meaningful discussions. In the case of BIG BANG NIGHTS the overall theme is culture, creativity and innovation for social change. For each night we launch a topic based on the issue that the film is touching. Our role as curators and facilitators is making sure that the content is exciting and challenging enough for people to join us in.

Crowdversation 1: Creative Communities
Crowdversation 2: Arts and Health
Crowdversation 3: Culture, conflict resolution (West-Eastern Divan Orchestra)
Crowdversation 4: Older people and financial inclusion
Crowdversation 5: Corporate Memory and urban futures
Crowdversation 6: Co-creativity and collaboration (BOW workshop)

The crowdversations start from the issues on the film and then we move swiftly to new territories depending on the contribution of each individual with questions and opinions recorded live on camera shot by any person next to the speaker in the crowd. It is not a Q&A as we know it or a panel discussion. It is a many to many conversation.

The event finishes with drinks where people have the chance to interact at another level but already in tune with others as we promote active participation during the discussions. It works because it is niche and small, worthwhile chit chats that can lead to new personal and business relationships.  We are also experiementing with new ways of integrating online media with the offline experience as a full circle before and after the event.

We have launched a LinkedIn group open to anyone interested in the big theme. You can join here www.culturalsocialresponsibility.org We also encourage for the events the participation via twitter using the hashtag bigbangnight to enable a level of interaction with anyone willing to put forward any question or remark before the event.

On Monday the 19th we celebrated the first series of BIG BANG NIGHTS with a tester of our flagship programme of co-creativity in action, the Balloon Orchestra Workshop and had a crowdversation on creativity and collaboration with the participants after their amazing performance.The winning team was the Fab Five with their piece tidal waves. Check out our audio channel on soundcloud. It was the best way to say thanks to all who has supported us during 2011 and celebrate the new year with excitement!

Read this blog post about it written by our unconditional fan Ben Goldsmith from Workspace Group.

Balloon Orchestra Workshop (4) Tidal waves / winner! by Big Bang Lab audio

Este video refleja el trabajo de campo realizado por los participantes del taller de comunicación Ideagora impartido por Sergio López Figueroa en la ciudad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria , durante las jornadas de Implosión Cultural el 19 de Marzo de 2011. La captura de información tuvo lugar durante una visita a uno de los mercados de la ciudad. Esta práctica de trabajo es totalmente independiente y las opiniones de los entrevistados y entrevistadores ha sido libre y espontánea.

El video es una muestra piloto del modelo de captación de información colectiva, creativa y participativa Shared Voices utilizando medios audiovisuales y diseñada por Big Bang Lab. Para obtener una idea general de los resultados recomendamos complementar este video con la escucha de las entrevistas capturadas en formato de audio que han sido editadas en segmentos para su mejor difusión por internet.

Este trabajo no es el resultado de un proyecto de la oficina de la capitalidad cultural 2016 o de la alcaldía de Las Palmas de GC. Este vídeo se puede acceder para visualizarse exclusivamente desde una página web como testimonio del trabajo realizado. No será posible la copia y difusión en otros sitios o canales de distribución.

Más información sobre el proyecto y candidatura de Las Palmas de GC capital cultural 2016 laspalmasgc2016.eu

More important for us is the opportunity for us to allow people to engage and contribute to this collective effort and become local and global ambassadors of Global City Symphony. We are looking for individuals interested in social change in the context of the city and the role of culture to bring the city alive and change the approach to tackle other aspects neglected in the development or urban planning agenda. We are confident people will connect with the vision and mission of the project using language skills by translating content to another language, but also taking ownership of the project to engage with and become future volunteer ambassadors.

visit us now!

Multilingual Ambassadors   http://multilingual-ambassadors.wikispaces.com

We work with charitable organisations, mainly -but not exclusively- in the health and arts sector in order to measure the impact of the video in their training, events or to asses fundraising strategies or stakeholder engagement. Moreover our facilitation process involves making sure participants interact with each other, shooting or recording and making it happen. We at Big Bang Lab are not lazy, but facilitators in search of quality of information. Last Summer I had the opportunity to work with the Otakar Kraus Music Trust, a fantastic charity working with children with autism and other disabilities by helping them with one to one music therapy. The children were engaged searching new sounds and exploring their inner creativity.

I was very happy to interact with them, their carers, parents and siblings and co-create a video for web. This will help OKMT to create awareness and show the intangible value to potentially new funders. In particular I was touched by the open and positive attitude of parents in relation to their childrenʼs condition which we hope will touch other families in similar situation, show to supporters their value with an insight or sample and promote strategically to engage other donors and future funders!

For a full article click here http://www.bigbang-lab.com/pdf/ThePower_sharedvoices.pdf

www.vimeo.com/bigbanglab

Shared Voices www.sharedvoices.net is a consultancy and video for web production and facilitation service from Big Bang Lab designed for research, fundraising, advocacy, evaluation, promotion or stakeholder engagement purposes in order to increase funding, customers, membership and improve best practice It is about capturing genuine inputs no matter who holds the camera or ask the questions. For some this is anarchy for many it is open democracy as its best!

Summary: Following a 2009 Delhi pilot, Big Bang Lab presents Global City Symphony, a digital media project using music, archive media, participatory documentary and silent digital films to connect disadvantaged communities around the world. A future creative learning and knowledge sharing platform in a network of seven cities will allow citizens to creatively express issues affecting their lives and the future of the cities.

Big Bang Lab designs and delivers uniqueindependent collective creative audiovisual productions combining the re-use of archive media across thepublic and corporate sector promoting digital silent cinema with live original music, participatory videoproduction, creative oral history and digital inclusion programmes.

Do you want to learn more about Big Bang Lab’s vision and achievements? watch this video now!

GLOBAL CITY SYMPHONY Following the production of the first pilot in Delhi as the outcome of aCultural Leadership Award (Delhi City Symphony) Big Bang Lab’s director is developing a global citizenshipproject connecting disadvantaged communities worldwide by providing hands on training and capacity buildingprogramme using local resources in seven cities worldwide in order to allow communities and artists todevelop new ways of connecting with each other and expressing their views about the future of their city,engaging neighborhoods in the creative and knowledge transfer process.

This project is Big Bang Lab’s cultural social responsibility framework, an alternative to corporate CSR, lookingat creating cultural and social capital in each city establishing the first social innovation model towards liveablecities by creating value from the intangible assets and empowering communities through information,participation and positive civic activism.

This is a working model of community participation through media,cultural heritage engagement and a review of a more ethical distribution on wealth based on new Intellectual Property agreements. We are planting the seed to sustain a programme for the future creative-cultural socialentrepreneurs and a new paradigm of collaboration and convergence.

We are looking for a £83,000 R&D sponsorship grant for a breakeven by March 2012.

Funds will be used for:

• R&D to produce 7 pilot projects • Clearing copyrights for use of archives • Development as an open source video platform and beta website • Staffing: 7 Big Bang Lab community engagement agents and 1 DirectorFuture plans include: • Development of a consortium in each city involving 35 private, public and civic organizations  • Audiovisual production for web distribution channels and social networks • 280 individuals from 7 countries and a team of 28 cultural leaders

What can  you do right now ?

• Watch our promotional video here!  Global City Symphony
• Watch  Building Fragments“, the making off  Delhi City Symphony

JOIN OUR GLOBAL CITY SYMPHONY FACEBOOK GROUP

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Global-City-Symphony/120800231284342?ref=sgm

SIGN OUR PETITION on Change.org   www.change.org/bigbang-lab

LEARN MORE ABOUT OUR WORK on our Vimeo channel www.vimeo.com/bigbanglab

Music soundtrack composed and performed by Javier Infante, from Gran Canaria javierinfante.com

The Canarias Government, Organization of Ibero-American Status for Education, Science and Culture (OEI), Interarts Foundation and Spanish Agency of International Cooperation for Development (AECID) organized the 7th Euro-American Campus on Cultural Cooperation, which took place in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (Spain) from the 30th of November until the 3rd of December in 2010. The theme of the meeting was “Culture, Cooperation and Local Development.
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Video de entrevistas colectivas co-creadas por participantes del VII Campus de Co-operación Cultural organizado por Interarts en Las Palmas de Gran Canaria durante Noviembre – Diciembre 2010. Visite la página de Euroamericano, VII Campus de Cooperación Cultural alturl.com/​x32tx

To watch other videos produced by Big Bang Lab for conferences visit the channel Shared Voices

They all participated together in a Summer Music Club in August 2010 supported by the Aiming High programme in Hounslow, London.

We took the opportunity to interview some of the parents to learn about the programme and the impact of music in their children. Some parents shared some open views about unconditional love and the power of non verbal communication that will inspire other families with autistic or down syndrome children.

We are sure you will be as inspired as we were during the making of this documentary by listening to the music created with joy by the children.

We discussed briefly over the lunch break issues of sustainability, artists in the community, new creative opportunities as well as accessibility to a diverse range of cultural experiences especially to young people. The question of new emerging socio-economic models in the cultural setting including social entrepreneurship remains open and relevant.

As discussed over the past two days, we agreed on the challenges faced by policymakers at a local, national and international level to respond with new ideas to an open and dynamic environment in a global digitized and urbanized world, facing big social and environmental challenges.

What is your big idea? Share this video and ask the same question to your peers!