Creative Communities for Sustainable Lifestyles
Submitted by miaosen on Mon, 03/24/2008 - 23:11.
SIX provides a new platform to exchange the topics on social innovation. I'd like to open this forum topic in place of my research group to start some discussion on it.
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- by miaosen
CCSL introduction
The 10 Year Framework of Programmes on Sustainable Consumption and Production, usually called Marrakech Process, is a programme led by the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) and by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA). Its aim is to catalyze and guide the transition to a more sustainable global economy.
Within the Marrakech Process, the Task Force on Sustainable Lifestyles is an initiative supported by the Swedish Ministry for Sustainable Development. Its specific goal is to develop and implement sustainable policies to change consumer behaviour and to promote more sustainable lifestyles.
In this framework, the Creative Communities for Sustainable Lifestyles (CCSL) project has been established to build on the results of a recently concluded European research called Emerging User Demands for Sustainable Solutions (EMUDE). This research was funded by the European Commission 6th Framework Programme. Its main aim was to explore the potential of grass roots innovation and pinpoint emerging patterns of sustainable living.
The Creative Communities for Sustainable Lifestyles (CCSL) project dealt with grass roots innovations in everyday life and their implications in terms of promoting sustainable lifestyles. In particular, it compares European experiences with those in emerging countries, especially among their growing urban populations.
Examples of European social innovation are: production activities based on local resources and skills; the promotion of healthy, natural eating; self-managed services for the care of children and the elderly; new forms of exchange; alternative mobility systems to replace the monoculture of individual cars; socialising initiatives to bring cities to life; networks linking consumers directly with producers, etc.
CCSL focused on three aspects:
(1) the nature of the groups of people who generate these innovations (creative communities);
(2) their role in promoting new and sustainable lifestyles ( promising cases) and
(3) the possibility of making these promising cases more accessible, effective and replicable, (enabling systems).
The project is part of the Task Force on Sustainable Lifestyles, within the United Nations 10 Year Framework of Programmes on Sustainable Consumption and Production, usually called Marrakech Process. CCSL ran from October 2006 to November 2007.
Miaosen Gong
PhD Candidate, Dis-Indaco
Politecnico di Milano
From Social Innovations to Creative Communities
Thank SIX for this exchange platform. Herewe would like to promote some discussion on Creative communities as agrassroots social innovation in everyday life, and it is based on a researchproject CCSL we have done last year.Social innovation refers to changes in theway individuals or communities act to solve a problem or to generate newopportunities. These innovations are driven by behavioural changes more than bytechnology or market ones and they typically emerge from bottom-up processesmore than from top-down ones. Observing what have happened before and are happening today as experiences, It is easy to foresee the occurrence of a new,large wave of social innovation (Young Foundation, 2006).As a matter of fact, in its complexity andcontradictoriness, contemporary society can also be seen as a great laboratoryof ideas for everyday life: ways of being and doing that express a capacity toformulate new questions and find new answers. That is, exactly what we justdefined as social innovations: changes in the way individuals and communitiesact to solve some problems or to exploit new opportunities (Laundry, 2006;EMUDE, 2006). For instance: groups of people who re-organize the way they livetheir home (as in the co-housing movement) and their neighbourhood (bringing itto life, creating the conditions for children to go to school on foot;fostering mobility on foot or by bike). Communities that set up newparticipatory social services for the elderly and for parents (such as theyoung and the elderly living together or micro-nurseries set up and managed byenterprising mothers), or new food networks fostering producers of organicitems and the quality and typical characteristics of their products (such asthe Slow Food movement, solidarity purchasing and fair trade groups). (Formore, and more detailed, examples see: http://www.sustainable-everyday.net/cases).Behind each of these promising cases thereare groups of people that have been able to imagine, develop and managethem. A first view shows that theyhave some fundamental traits in common: they are all groups of people who cooperatively invent, enhance and manage innovative solutions for new ways ofliving. And they do so recombining what already exists, without waiting for ageneral change in the system (in the economy, in the institutions, in the largeinfrastructures). For this reason,given that the capability of re-organizing existing elements into new,meaningful combinations is one of the possible definitions of creativity, thesegroups of people can be defined as creative communities: people whocooperatively invent, enhance and manage innovative solutions for new ways oflivingOur researches include that Creativecommunities and their initiatives illustrate the real possibility ofreorienting the evolution of present society in the direction of a sustainable knowledge and network society. Therefore, promotion of this kind of social innovation could be a viable strategy for sustainable development. Ezio ManziniDis-Indaco, Politecnico di Milano
Bringing ponies back into inner cities.
I want to bring ponies back into the community, but this conflicts with the current perception of ponies as the prerogative of the elite. Ponies can be invaluable in local deliveries and recycling because the whole community comes out to get involved because people like ponies.
Ponies cut across all national and religious boundaries, are cheap and easy to run and I am trying to establish a pilot project in Birmingham, or indeed anywhere
that will let me.
Simon
Horsepower measures work, ponypower measures pleasure.
Loving ponies isn't a genetic trait of middle class girls exclusively.