Mar3
Pictures of an extraordinary session hosted by Northampton University DC. Margaret Ledwith, lecturer, inspired portuguese, american and UK change makers giving them some powerful tools (read: insights, knowledge and more awareness) to make a difference in the world.
Margaret is a story teller and started telling some stories about people who changed her way of living and doing things. After, she defined community development, underlined some basics, framed reality and asked some questions. Margaret deeply believes that 5-minute Dialogue may change the world and left some questions for us to experiment:
What are the daily freedoms that you assume?
What values underlie these assumptions?
How do they underpin your behaviour/actions/thinking?
Place these in a larger political context
How do these practices impact on society?
What principles and values inform these practices as ‘normal’?
Tell a different story inspired by alternative values
Does this offer insight into the way that power permeates personal lives along lines of prejudice?
How could these ‘little stories’ feed into collective narratives for change?
In the end of this DC Lecture, the groups from Lisbon and Cleveland stayed online to exchange experiences and do some networking. Portuguese elements from WACT – We Are Changing Together, started to introduce themselves to Cleveland students.
Feb27
Camilo Rebelo, 40, portuguese architect co-author of one of the biggest Paleolithic Museums in the world, came to DC to give a Lecture on architecture to a class of palestinian architects to-be. Camilo Rebelo brought photos and drawings of the Côa Museum, built in an immense and amazing landscape in Douro, in a region considered twice as Human Patrimony by UNESCO.
The DC room in Lisbon was full of architecture students and teachers from OPorto School (the Architecture School of Siza Vieira and Souto Moura, both Pritzker Price) who came to Lisbon for this lecture and a guided visit through Fundação Gulbenkian (where DC room is). This lecture has been a successful one and none of the palestinian students wanted to end the meeting. On the contrary, they kept asking questions and sharing experiences.
In the end of this session Camilo Rebelo and the palestinian students challenged each others to think how they can co-create a project and promised to keep in touch. During the session many other projects have been discussed and here is the link to Camilo Rebelo’s site, where these projects may be seen with more detail: www.camilorebelo.com
Feb26
More pix to show the ‘backstage’ of Wroclaw opening session. Zeina Soudi, Ramallah Dialogue Cafe manager, joined the session just to say hello and show how close we can be, regardless where we are.
Laurinda Alves, Lisbon DC manager, also joined this session five minutes after having the DC room full of architecture students. Immediatly after this Opening all those students met palestinian peers in Dialogue Cafe. We’ll post some pix and videos, too.
Here’s the link to a video of the opening: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wb1qp5O41o0
Feb26
The opening for Dialogue Cafe Wroclaw 26th Feb, 2013
Official launching this morning! Big opening in Wroclaw with Rafal Dutkiewicz, the president of the city, Andrzej Ociepa, the general director of Wroclaw Library, Jolanta Slowik, vice director, and a group of people (musicians and journalists included) who joined to celebrate the moment in Mediateka. Great moment!
Feb23
Second meeting between portuguese and polish musicians. Second Open Wednesday, to match new gens of musicians, authors and composers. Francisco Ferreira, 21, Capitão Fausto’s band bass player (the second in the picture, from left to right) exchanged experiences and ideas with Andrzej Strzemzalski and João de Sousa, a portuguese musician who lives and works in Wroclaw. They all want to know more about portuguese and polish bands and musical projects, and they’ll be back to DC in the near future. Tomorrow other elements of Capitão Fausto’s band are expected to participate in the third Open Wednesday’s session.
Feb21
Arts and Design students from London, Paris and Cleveland accepted the V&A challenge after the Olympics to re-think the Modern Museums role in society and create groups to discuss specific topics like Sports & Visual Arts, Advertising, Branding, Fashion and the representation of the male and female body Vs appropriation of the idealised body.
The first session, co-hosted by London, Paris and Cleveland with Lisbon just watching, has been a true share of ideas and knowledge. In the Victorian & Albert Museum room, London, the students started showing the evolution of the athletic bodies (Olympics icons) in the last centuries. In Paris some students linked to the Musee de L’Art Moderne / Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation started their presentation with some pix of Linder, contemporary provocative artist. In Cleveland students came from the Institute of Art / Case Western Reserve. During almost 2h, all the students debated controversial gender issues and gender identity, posed a lot of questions to each others, mentioning male and female conventional symbols and underlining questions such as “are we sexualizing or empowering women?”, etc.
The aim of this and other sessions is to generate new ideas for the future. Next session will be co-hosted by Lisbon-Rio-London to discuss “Designing Sports, Technology &
Transport – Cultural / urban / Lifestyle changes”
