SDG's in English and French

Here’s a two-pager (or one page double sided) showing the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals in English and French with the flashy graphics and short text descriptions.

UN SDG Game in English and French (PDF) (.ODT)

…This is for use at the Ingenium Innovation Challenge /hackathon on March 5, where I am moderating a panel discussion about engagement with the SDGs. (I’ll use this printout in a game we’ll play at the opening of the hackathon.)

"Digitality" references for MuseumNext and Computers In Libraries

This week I’ll be speaking at the MuseumNext Green Museums Summit and Computers In Libraries (two separate conferences) about “digitality” and climate action in the cultural sector.

Here’s the gist of it: The climate emergency asks museums, libraries, and other heritage, knowledge, and memory institutions a series of tough questions about their purpose and relevance in society. How big can they work? Who do they involve? Who do they serve?

Compared to the scale and speed of the climate crisis and the mind-blowing scope of what we must accomplish together in the next 10, 20, and 30 years, what can the cultural sector do?

These questions are hard to discuss within the cultural sector. Though the humanistic, prosocial values in the sector are strong the sector’s institutions, in particular, are wary of disruption and have evolved to think in conservative, risk-averse ways. But the climate emergency acts like an X-ray or lie detector on institutional thinking, revealing gaps between values and practice that might go unnoticed when working on smaller concerns.

One of those gaps has to do with digital. Digital is currently a blind spot in our thinking about climate action, and in both of these talks I’ll argue that the museum and library sectors are operating with a confused and outdated concept of digitality that impedes our ability to think clearly about the kinds of impact we are obligated to create. An updated concept of what “digital” means in the 2020s — new tools, new skills (and learning to appreciate neglected old tools and skills) and a new understanding of the digital public sphere are all needed to help us find a new direction and unlock new capabilities within the sector and in the communities we serve.

But (or perhaps, and), going there — having a solid conversation about what digital is and can do requires us to question some tightly held assumptions about trust, disruption, and power.

Below are links to slides, references, and other useful/relevant information cited in the talks.

I’ll post slides transcripts from these talks ASAP.

Resources mentioned in the talks

Updates

General intro stuff from first 10 minutes

European climate and recovery initiatives

The European Commission has put €1.8 trillion on the table for the next 6 years’ work on The New European Bauhaus, pandemic recovery, and European Green Deal.

  • New European Bauhaus
    A new EU initiative launched in 2021 to be the cultural front-end for the European Green Deal. “The New European Bauhaus initiative calls on all of us to imagine and build together a sustainable and inclusive future that is beautiful for our eyes, minds, and souls. Beautiful are the places, practices, and experiences that are: Enriching, inspired by art and culture, responding to needs beyond functionality; Sustainable, in harmony with nature, the environment, and our planet; Inclusive, encouraging a dialogue across cultures, disciplines, genders and ages.”

  • Pandemic recovery
    €807 billion for 7 priority areas, including cohesion, resilience, natural resources/environment.

  • Green Deal
    Targets 55% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, and by 2050: “economic growth decoupled from resource use”, carbon neutral, and “no person and no place left behind”.

Workshop notes (Digital, Culture, and the Transformation of Europe)

Farhad Manjoo: “A bag of mixed emotions”

Why Tech Is Starting to Make Me Uneasy, Farhad Manjoo, 11 October 2017.

“In 2007, when Mr jobs unveiled the iPhone, just about everyone greeted the new device as an unalloyed good. That's no longer true. The state-of-the-art, today, is a bag of mixed emotions. Check might improve everything. And it's probably all so terrible in ways we're only starting to understand.”

Reactions to Trump withdrawing the US from the Paris accord

Pew Research

I cranked through about 10 years of Pew Research Center reports in trying to figure out the evolution of our concept of digitality over the years. The first link, Visions of the Internet in 2035 | Pew Research Center, was particularly useful for gaining some insight into how “experts” conceptualize the role of information technology in society. That being said, I was dismayed, but not surprised, to see so few mentions of the climate emergency in any of these reports. Overall, these Pew reports reminded me of how essential and empowering the Internet is in so many people’s lives.

Here are a handful of the most useful reports. The full list is on this spreadsheet.

“Cataloging projects”

I put this spreadsheet together after reviewing 1000 pages of my own notes on digitality, 30+ reports from the Pew Research Center from the last 10 years, and notes from our November 2021 workshop on cultural-sector climate action.

There are three tabs

  • References lists 323 digital-related sites, apps, technologies, concepts, patterns, phenomena, and attributes that I’ve tagged, subjectively, with some adjectives like prosocial, civic, empowering, and dangerous.

  • Sorted by tag count shows each tag on its own column, and then a list of all the digital-related things that have that tag. You can hover your mouse over each cell to see a note and link (if there is one)

  • Link to sources shows a list of 89 articles, books, and references mentioned on the References tab

The empowering side of digitality

The Dark Side

Disruption Theory

Books, Articles, Videos

A big long list of relevant resources in this spreadsheet here, and a handful of the most relevant below.

Notes from Digital, Culture, and the Transformation of Europe

I’ve just posted the report (slides here, and embedded above) from our climate-action strategy workshop Digital, Culture, and the Transformation of Europe, held on November 18-19, 2021 in Leiden, the Netherlands.

The goal of the workshop was to determine if, how, and to what degree the cultural sector (very broadly defined) can contribute meaningfully to the social, economic, and environmental transformations required by the climate emergency.

The word “culture” gets thrown around a lot in climate policy circles, and many of us, as cultural professionals, are outraged by the climate emergency and want to take action. But what can the cultural sector actually do for the climate fight?

Some clear themes emerged through our two-day workshop and the weeks of thinking and dialogue that followed. I’ll list a few below as a preview, as one does, but the depth and complexity of the ideas (and more) really come to life through the words of the participants themselves, as shown in the report.

  1. The Big Frikin’ Wall — With a nod to the remarkable Kathy Sierra, much of the cultural sector seems afflicted by, metaphorically speaking, a Big Frikin’ Wall that stands between the world of safe, established practice and the world of urgent work that needs to be done. Working through, around, or over this wall will require a combination of strategic thinking, bold and enlightened management, well placed incentives. If we do not work through the Big Frikin’ Wall we are not likely to make significant progress on the climate emergency, as a sector or as a society. (See slide 38)

  2. Local, bottom-up approaches — The importance of local, bottom-up action was a persistent theme throughout the workshop. Participants emphasized that they felt many organizations wanted to be more involved in campaigning, movement-making, and local action but don’t know how to start. Training in these techniques might be a smart investment for the sector. (See slide 56)

  3. The role of culture — Participants offered a variety of opinions about the role of culture in society. Is “culture” a social good? A tool that serves power? An expression of identity? An entertainment medium? A tourist industry? A human right? The term culture is used in a variety of sometimes contradictory ways, even within the same sentence. A shared understanding of what we mean by “culture” would help us have more productive discussions about how to use it as a tool for positive change. (See slide 70)

  4. Digitality — It is hard to imagine how we will win the climate fight without an enlightened and strategic use of digital platforms; and it is easy to imagine losing the climate fight if digital is ignored (or worse, subverted). But a concept of digitality — what it means to live in a society that is infused with digital — is notably absent from the cultural strategies emerging from initiatives such as the European Green Deal and the New European Bauhaus. The cultural sector must develop a concept of digitality to match its ambitions for participating in climate action or effecting social change. (See slide 69)
    - - Note that I’ll be speaking about a new concept of digitality at Computers in Libraries and the MuseumNext Green Summit this month.

  5. The need for solidarity — Workshop participant Tom Pravda, Co-founder of Avaaz, asserted that the social problems caused by the climate crisis may prove to be more of a problem than the climate crisis itself. “We need to be working in ways to build human solidarity — a sense that we are in this together,” stated Tom. “Only by cooperating are we going to be able to tackle this problem.” (See slide 17)

I am happy to say that a number of clear, actionable initiatives arose directly from this workshop, including a sector-wide training initiative, a proposal for Horizon Europe funding, and a radical “incentive prize” competition. These, in addition to the remarkable work already being done by workshop participants.

Concept development is underway for these new initiatives, and I’m also working to organize a follow-up meeting in Europe and similar workshops in the Americas, where the cultural-sector issues are different but the will to make a difference is likely to be the same.

Finally, as I’m writing this I’m aware that the COP26 conference in Glasgow was taking place as we were planning this workshop, and the IPCC’s grim sixth climate report was issued 2 days ago as I was finalizing the report. Meanwhile, the world is still afflicted by the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia has invaded Ukraine. If we believe that the cultural sector, however defined, has the potential to inspire and educate people, build solidarity, and transform lives for the better then there’s a lot of work to do.

Many thanks to everyone who participated (listed on slide 6), including our supporters and GoFundMe contributors who pitched in to defray travel and lodging expenses for participants. And of course many thanks to my co-conveners Meta Knol, Director of the Leiden 2022 European City of Science, and Harry Verwayen, Director of the Europeana Foundation, who stepped boldly into the void to help make this workshop a success.

Climate action workshop November 18-19 in The Hague

I’m bootstrapping a climate action workshop for museums and cultural-sector organizations, November 18-19 in The Hague, Netherlands.

The goal of this workshop is to determine if, how, and to what degree the cultural sector (broadly defined) can contribute meaningfully to the social, economic, and environmental transformation of Europe and the rest of the world.

On the agenda are the following questions:

  • What are the goals of current efforts to catalyze change in cultural organizations?

  • What is the relevance of the New European Bauhaus, European Green Deal, and pandemic recovery initiatives?

  • What is their “track record” and future potential regarding civic impact and societal change.

  • What is the role of digital, “digitality” (the fact of living in a digital society), and the digital public sphere in all of this?

  • And what can we do, now, to move the needle regarding climate change and social justice?

We’re certainly not the first people to take a look at this question, but with the COP26 United Nations Climate Change Conference happening in Glasgow; recent/ongoing terrible news about the climate emergency; rising calls for museums and other cultural organizations to take a stand on social justice issues; and the announcement of the New European Bauhaus initiative and the ongoing European Green Deal and pandemic recovery initiatives (all of which call on “culture” to play an active role in the transformation of Europe) this seems like a good moment to gather a diverse set of cultural professionals and activists to see if we can find a new vision for the cultural sector.

We’re raising funds through GoFundMe to help defray the cost of travel for participants, and we have two great non-profits providing space and logistical support (and moral support too).

Watch this space for details and let me know if you have questions or would like to be involved.