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#Covid Creatives Toolkit: Mutual aid for digital spaces

In these times of social distancing, as a global pandemic transforms every aspect of our lives and relations, two things are becoming very clear: First, we simply cannot proceed with business-as-usual. Everything must, at least temporarily, change. Second, we are at our most resilient when we come together to share knowledges about how to make those transitions in ways that foster solidarity - even if our circumstances make this extremely challenging. Today, I am happy to announce the launch of the #CovidCreativesToolkit, a set of carefully-curated mutual aid resources, ideas and pathways for creative practitioners (including artists, makers, curators, designers, hackers, educators, facilitators, etc) who find themselves needing to migrate their practice onto digital spaces and places. The kit's 7 sections are intended to support different aspects of this journey, from digital gathering to digital well-being. This kit is rooted in collective and open co-creation. It has been brought to life thanks to the insights of 20+ creative practitioners around the world, who have come to it with diverse perspectives from their work across community, arts, technology, academic and cultural sectors. It is also a living document, and as such it will continue to get commented on, modified and remixed as we learn together. As Arturo Escobar puts it in Designs for the Pluriverse, in designing tools (from objects to spaces to discourses) we are also creating new ways-of-being. It is our hope that this kit's way of being in the world is one of care, mutual respect and encouragement - to keep creating, and together! Please enjoy, distribute widely, share what you think, and join us... bit.ly/CovidCreativesToolkit #CovidCreativesToolkit

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Auf Wiedersehen und danke, Berlin!

After a breathless 4 months of living in Berlin for a sun-drenched summer, I have a lot to reflect on, and even more to be grateful for. The process of moving, even temporarily, to a new country can be quite daunting, especially for those of us not blessed with the freedom-of-movement of Europeans. However, I can now attest that it is also a very good teacher - one that reminds us that the communities that matter to us in life can take on many forms, many of them not as geographically or temporally bound as we expect.

As many others have already discussed more eloquently than me, Berlin is in an especially vital moment in its history, one which is defined by rapid transformation, as capital and foreign investment reshape urban topographies according to their own visions of what the future should look like. It is also a period, however, where key community movements are gathering, their networks fostering solidarities of a different kind, from #FridaysForFuture to Kreuzberg's Bizem Kiez. They are fighting for a different Berlin - one that is heterogeneous, diverse, affordable and even a bit utopian. And they are not giving up. For this reason and many others (from the city's many spaces and networks of refiguration such as Anarche that continue to provide refuge for alternative modes of living against all odds; to the many bikes that almost outnumber cars in some neighbourhoods; to the empassioned sticker dialogues that still cover the city's surfaces; to the pan-European, anti-facist, pro-diversity, post-capitalist and environmental justice movements that continue to make themselves heard) I have left Berlin enriched, full of learnings - including a new language! - and a renewed sense of hope.

I have many people, communities and spaces to thank for this. Here are a few of them: First, IRI-THESys Humboldt-Universität where I was lucky enough to be Visiting Scholar in human-environment transformations this summer - and especially my wonderful office-mates Sören and Sascha, and folk like Tim, Olof, Cecile, Laurie, Jules, Jörg and others who went out of their way to in many little moments to invite me to lunches (und laufens!) and generally make sure that I felt welcomed in what would have otherwise been quite an intimidating group of great minds; second, the many other inspiring thinkers and practitioners involved in academic spaces like the Refiguration of Spaces group at Techniche Universität, Humboldt-Universität's CARMAH and Dept of European Ethnology and Institut für Musikwissenschaft und Medienwissenschaft, Berlin Open Lab, and Geographisches Institut Universität Bonn such as Sabine Heishler, Michelle Christensen, Florian Conradi, Sharon MacDonald, Stefan Höltgen, Phoebe Moore and Daniela Rosner, who invited me to speak at their departments, made time for me to ask them endless questions about the intricacies of academic life in Germany, and thoughtfully considered my proposals for a new phase of international research that I piloted in China this summer with a wonderful team of makers and academics ; and third, the friends new and old who joined me for adventures in Berlin's finest not-academic spaces, from Cashmere Radio to Kater to the Temple - Anna, Michael, Tadeu, Geoffrey, John, Lara, Magda, Nadia, Bernie, Ross, Kahlym, Leon, Jihyuck, Rommelo, Patrick, Dave, Chris, R00tkate et al - glad to have enjoyed some beautiful moments in utopie-gartens und Waldsees mit dir.

And now, writing this in the U.K., from a nation in crisis that is yet to determine the shape of its own future, and having recently submitted my PhD thesis on the potentials of digital spaces for making and learning to transform the traditional logics of public museums, I hope to use the next phase of my career to work with many more spaces and communities of resistance, transformation, and hope like these - because our world needs them more than ever. Es ist nur der Anfang, Berlin - und vielen danke!

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Journal of Peer Production Issue 12: Makerspaces and Institutions!

I am very happy to share that after 2 years of hard work in collaboration with an inspiring crew of hackers, makers and thinkers around the world, Issue 12 of the Journal of Peer Production is launched, co-edited by Adrian Smith and myself.

Makerspaces are now subjects in a plurality of institutional advances and developments, catching the imaginations of a wide variety of organisations and other actors drawn to a buzz of enticing possibilities. Depending upon the nature of the encounter, they have become cradles for entrepreneurship, innovators in education, nodes in open hardware networks, studios for digital artistry, ciphers for social change, prototyping shops for manufacturers, remanufacturing hubs in circular economies, twenty-first century libraries, emblematic anticipations of commons-based, peer-produced post capitalism, workshops for hacking technology and its politics, laboratories for smart urbanism, galleries for hands-on explorations in material culture... not forgetting, of course, spaces for simply having fun.

What kinds of hybrid arrangements emerge through these encounters, and what becomes of the occupied factories for peer production theory? How are institutions reshaping aspirations for autonomous, even democratic, fabrication and experimentation – aspirations that were – and are – important parts of makerspace narratives? And what do these encounters mean for institutions, whether in education, culture, business, development or some other sphere; how are they too evolving through their exposure to grassroots and community making practices?

This special issue has been a real labour of love, exploring institutional developments in all their complexities through 13 research articles (each of which have been peer reviewed and revised through the Journal’s particularly transparent process, which makes all steps of the academic review process public) and 7 practitioner contributions from key leaders working in the field.

In ending, here are two pieces I'd like to share, the first exploring early empirical findings from my doctoral research, and the second introducing the aims and findings of the special issue.

Braybrooke, K 2018, ‘Hacking the museum? Practices and power geometries at collections makerspaces in London’, Journal of Peer Production no. 12, pp. 40-59. Available at: [HTML] [PDF]

Braybrooke, K & Smith, A 2018, ‘Liberatory technologies for whom? Analysing a new generation of makerspaces defined by institutional encounters’, Journal of Peer Production no. 12, pp. 1-13. [HTML] [PDF]>

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two new articles: making, hacking, technomyths + machine ghosts

I'm happy to share two articles recently published about unexpected encounters between machines, hackers and makers for the Digital Culture & Society Journal and Furtherfield.

The first is the 1st article I've published in a peer-reviewed academic journal, so it was extra exciting to get a copy of the journal in the mail with my name in it. Called "Genealogy, Culture and Technomyth: Decolonizing Western Information Technologies, from Open Source to the Maker Movement", Tim Jordan and I explore technomyths surrounding Western information technology movements, from maker cultures and hackspaces to Open Source and Web 2.0. Using a materialist geneaological framework and applying it to non-Western case studies, from One Laptop Per Child in Peru to jugaad making in India to shanzai copyleft practices in China, we suggest that a heterogeneous set of global cultural practices have been homogenized by Western actors. From the conclusion: "By looking closely at the maker movement as a technomyth through comparisons to other practices, and then comparing this analysis to the Open Source and Web 2.0 myths that came before it, we argue that not only do enthusiastic, zeitgeist-like proclamations about internet and information-based technologies exist (something often noted), but that these hypes take particular forms, framing societal possibilities through culturally-unique perspectives to innovation itself. Here it is important to underline that we are not arguing that nothing is new. Instead, in each of the technomyths we have explored, we have noted that there are specific technological origins, practices, economics and social interactions that are recognized -- and many that are not. Our point here is that new technosocial practices are continually being channeled by influential technomyths that frame, direct and disseminate practices in their own mythical images. Here's the article for those with academic logins [here] - or, please [email me] if you'd like a pre-publication copy. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

The second article, which I wrote for Furtherfield with Emma O'Sullivan, is called "Hunting the Machine Ghosts of Brighton", and outlines our experiences in organising a psychogeography tour as part of the excellent Haunted Random Forest Festival. On the tour, we unveiled machine entities hidden within seemingly idyllic urban landscapes across Brighton, from peregrine falcon webcams to always-listening WiFi hotspots. We were joined by an eclectic and inspiring group of locals, who also joined us in facilitating nodes and building activities for the tour. It was fascinating to explore a city through its machines and its forgotten ghosts - and it was certainly an experience I won't forget. I'd like to give a big thanks to the editors and peer reviewers at Digital Culture & Society and Furtherfield for their guidance and support in getting these writings out into the world. I look forward to the continued conversations yet to come from them, human-based, bot-based and otherwise! ;)

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a few thoughts on kindness, truth and tuk tuks.

In just a few days now, I'll be disappearing into the backwaters of India for a few weeks with my spirit-mate, on an insane 3,000km adventure Rickshaw Run in a decaying tuk-tuk covered with cyber terriers, starting in the South of the subcontinent and ending -- with a bit of luck -- in its North.

While packing fairy lights, disco balls and "terrier space cowboy" bandanas today (only the essentials!), I found this beautiful little e-shred, from the glittering and wryly gorgeous pseudo-documentary 20,000 Days on Earth by Nick Cave, is perhaps one of the best descriptions of this year's PhD process (and any other kind of intensive life exploration) that I've seen.

There are, indeed, complicated truths (and also non-truths) that lie beneath the words we read and understand, ane the experiences we have -- myths within myths, ideas within ideas, memes within memes. After making a small request to my closest family and friends to donate to the Syrian White Helmets this Christmas instead of giving me presents, which caused a wonderful outflowing of support and thoughtful reflection from some very kind souls, and also a process of healthy debate and even more rabbit holes of truths, lies and all the grey, shimmering things in between, this has become especially apparent. Sometimes, the act of trying to grasp the inherent sense of any of the things we're supposed to be understanding about the world can truly feel like attempting to catch one's breath whilst drowning.

But there are also expansive, subtle joys inherent in this kind of process, this hunting of monsters, this seeking of truths, this experiencing of the unexplainable. In the case of doing my PhD, for example, there remains an abiding sense at the end of this year of the priviledge of it all. My colleagues and I have been handed a rare opportunity to sit, think and gather new knowledges -- and then, if we're extra lucky, share them with our worlds in ways that matter. Together yet alone, those lucky enough to go on adventures of mind and experience (whether they may be doctoral students, tuk tuk drivers or rockstars like Nick Cave) do so because they hope to forge new-yet-old pathways through socialities, experiences, cultures, theories and ways of being that change things for the better. And when then shared, these experiences can, in their own little orchestrations, reverberate for many years across the collective consciousnesses that define our humanity in ways we have yet to understand fully.

That's where I think there remains real beauty to be found in our messy, confused world -- in the small moments of understanding, exploration and realisation that each of us share throughout our lives, bringing in their wake small moments of light. As the ever-inspiring Dougald Hind, founder of Dark Mountain, puts it in his staggering analysis of the histories hidden within recently-apocalyptic political events that have beset the West:

"[Small individual acts are] also history, though [they don't] get written down so much: the small joys and gentlenesses, the fragments of peace, time spent caring for our children, or our parents, or our neighbours. These tasks alone are not enough to hold off the darkness, but they are one of the places where we start, one of the models for what it means to take responsibility for the survival of things that matter deeply."

Here's to many more complex unearthings of monsters, imaginations, unexplainables and especially small kindnesses in 2017.

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PhD Fieldwork, Day 1: A Researcher in Residence at the Tate (^.^)

Today is a big day in the web-wolf glitter land that is my PhD. After a crazy and wonderful year of reading, discussing, traveling and (over!)thinking everything there is to think about spaces for digital making, cultural institutions, methodologies and open creative practices, I start the pilot stage of my doctoral fieldwork at the Tate Britain, situated within the ever-colourful Taylor Digital Studio as its new Researcher-in-Residence. I have consent forms ready from the University of Sussex, about a thousand web broswer windows open on the Tate's computers, a T4 file full of community photos and about 20 pages of to-do's - and yet, it feels no small task to get started.

As a part of the study I'm undertaking with the Tate and other cultural institutions in the UK, my aim in hanging out, messing around and geeking out at these spaces, in addition to implementing more formal qualitative methods like participant observation and interviews, is to engage with the situated knowledges and actor-network theories of Donna Haraway, Bruno Latour, Doreen Massey and other great thinkers as a user myself - not as an "objective" researcher, seemingly removed from the environments I am actually an active part of. This is because when we make things in a space like the Tate's Digital Studio together, we all become connected - whether we happen to be a computer, a workshop participant, a gallery curator or an observer. We all help make these sites what they are. Without these interactions, a makerspace is just a conglomeration of infrastructures, plaster and walls alone, without meaning or identity.

This project's data collection starts, perhaps fittingly, with making. From September to December, I'll be spending my Fridays in the Studio, collaborating with other PhD and researcher groups and with the Tate's excellent Digital Learning team members, while playing the role of both researcher and designer through a few different hands-on projects. The first intervention I'll be working on is SPACEHACKER, an evolving artwork that I'll be launching as part of MozEx, an exhibit curated by the Tate and the V&A as part of this year's Mozilla Festival in London. SPACEHACKER implements critical and speculative design models by asking participants to sketch out their imaginaries of a digital space that members of their community would feel welcome at. For those interested in getting involved (I'd love collaborators on this project!), I'll be presenting it along with a few other (mega talented!) MozEx artists in this public pop-up at the Tate on October 10th-11th.

Community making at a workshop entitled "Wandering Ruins" in 2014.

I'm really looking forward to getting started. In the meantime I'll be heading to Johannesburg for a few days, and am wondering whether there are any similar-minded initiatives that merge culture with digital learning and making in their communities (any ideas? Please let me know!), and I'll also be chatting about ideas like these on a panel entitled "Who is the digital revolution for?" in Brighton at the end of this month for those who are in town. Summer may be winding down and the days of sun getting shorter, but it's shaping up to be a great autumn.

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With love from Barcelona: A year of PhD making, thinking + fun.

A little while ago, I wrote my first public Medium post 6 months into my PhD at the University of Sussex, describing the experience of taking a crazy leap of faith, moving from Vancouver to London and leaving a full-time job in tech to do so. A whirlwind year later, I now find myself past my first doctoral upgrade as a somewhat official-feeling PhD candidate, many amazing conversations, eureka moments and unexpected travels(!) later. So, without further ado, here is my new piece on Medium about that first year. My hope is that posts like this will give others the extra encouragement they may need to take the plunge and dive into the research they're passionate about. I know it helped me a great deal when I was considering my next move.

And in a word, it's all been amazing. Highlights have included seeing Bruno Latour discuss his thoughts on gaia (and blow out a birthday cake!) after presenting my first-ever academic paper at this year's Society for the History of Technology meeting in Singapore, where the always-inspiring Sally Jane Norman and I also organized a digital artifact workshop in this glorious psychedelic rainbow room at the city's new ArtScience Museum, heading to Santa Cruz with Sussex Humanities Lab colleagues for this digital media exchange to play with Arduinos while meeting a group of talented art/tech practitioners there, and generally getting to hang out back in the UK with fascinating humans (and libraries!) in Brighton, Oxford and London while learning everything I could about theories of spatiality, making and community.

I'm writing this today from beautiful, sunny Barcelona, where I've been lucky enough to attend this year's excellent 4S/EASST "Science and Technology By Other Means" conference on scholarship from EASST and the Sussex Digital Humanities Lab. In addition to being a discussant about "careers by other means" at its Doctoral Day, I also presented a paper I've submitted to Digital Culture & Society with Tim Jordan which critically examines key technomyths about the maker movement as part of an excellent panel convened by Adrian Smith, Maxigas and other great thinkers in this space entitled "Digital Fabrications Amongst Hackers, Makers and Manufacturers: Whose Industrial Revolution?".

While presenting to a packed room of STS scholars was one of the more intimidating(!) moments of my academic career so far, the resulting discussion and ideas I received from such an engaged (and thoughtful!) audience made all the stress 100% worth it. I'm very grateful to everyone who came to listen and provide advice. Moments like these, where you get to share your research with the makers, hackers and thinkers who have helped inspire it the first place, are especially wonderful ones. Here's to more beautiful memories in the sun (and studio) for all of us!

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Building (critical) futures of making and peace in Northern Ireland...

Belgium's heartbreaking terror attacks lie heavily on my heart today, as I'm sure they do for many others. In these moments, it can be easy to lose hope for a more peaceful and multicultural future. And yet, reminders of local peacebuilding efforts in neighbourhoods around the world continue to emerge when we look for them. Here's a small example.

Last week, I was invited to the city of Belfast in Northern Ireland (known largely to foreigners as the site of a series of equally sad conflicts from its past) to speak about my research into critical making and fabrication futures for the Maker Assembly NI gathering, organized by the inspiring Pip Shea and Irish hackspace Farset Labs.

For our panel on speculative making, curator Nora O'Murchu and I were asked to discuss the supports needed to maintain a critical forecast of makerspaces as the idea of digital making becomes more accessible. Nora provided some of her thoughts on making practice as informed by her work with the University of Limerick (and the wonderful Cat++ programming language). Other inspiring makers like Hanna Stewart from the RCA Future Makerspaces Project and Javier Buron from FabLab Limerick discussed sustainability and governance of maker networks.

Meanwhile, I shared two different potential futures of making (presentation here), based on initial research for my PhD into makerspace cultures around the world. The first future (of many possible) that I see being built is a top-down one, dictated by corporate entrepreneurs and Silicon Valley futurecasters, where makerspaces are framed around Western leisure and profit, not critical perspectives. The second future, however, moves from the bottom-up, where diverse, autonomous spaces around the world are fostered, building local making and fabrication practices that are sustainable, critical and in collaboration with communities.

What I was most impressed by, though, was the high level of consciousness amongst local participants regarding the complex sociopolitical and economic circumstances of their region -- and the various projects they have launched to strengthen peacekeeping efforts through local fabrication at spaces for making across the city, led by Irish communities themselves.

"Violence has stopped here," Adam Wallace and Eamon Durey from the new FabLab NI told us, "but there are still undercurrents of extremism". The Troubles are over, but Belfast remains highly divided between Catholic and Protestant neighbourhood territories -- so the idea of shared space remains challenging.

And that's exactly why locals believe spaces like fab labs are important in building non-contested public community centres for everyone. From workshops that give local youth qualifications to create their own local technology enterprises in marginalized areas to programmes on hyrdoponics and plant processing to the use of open source practices and machines, many local organizers believe these spaces can help build new kinds of community - and manufacturing - that revitalize as well as educate. "It's not a classroom, it's not a college, and it's not a community centre. It's something that we've never had here before," they told us.

The discussions that emerged were equally interesting. Would efforts like these build a truly egalitarian future for the region, audience members wondered, or another form of New Labour-era, Claire Bishop-esque social control? A local trade union representative mentioned similar initiatives like the inspiring Lukas Plan technology community hubs that were opened across in London in the 1970s and then closed down due to Thatcher-era cuts to social programs. How could Northern Ireland's initiatives be more sustainable, longer-lasting and provide jobs at the end where services and goods are created for the community, by the community?

In such circumstances, where the worlds we discuss remain so new, their machines so shiny, there are often more questions than there are answers - but it was a good sign to see people asking them so thoughtfully last week. I now look forward to seeing how the powerful local mandate of shared machine shops to "bring manufacturing and technology back into our communities, this time with co-ops" will help build peaceful and empowering futures across Northern Ireland.

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PhD Student Life at 30, Six Months In...

Small updates about big things: Today I wrote this piece for Medium about what it's been like leaving a job in the tech industry at 30, moving back to the United Kingdom and accepting a position as a PhD candiate at the University of Sussex. These thoughts had been building for a while (I still can't believe six months have passed by already!), so it's been great to so many friends and networks find it useful to them.

I also wrote this piece for the Guardian a few months ago entitled "Hacking Apple: Putting the Power of Tech Back into Our Hands" which was based on some of my early research into community makerspaces and sustainability here in the UK. This piece also got some great and thoughful responses. Overall, it's been a really wonderful process to get long-brewing thoughts out into the wild at last!

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Power geometries in new territories, makerspaces in museums

In 2011, I received a MSc Digital Anthropology at UCL for an ethnography where I worked with 30 Millennial-aged hackers across Europe to understand their experiences of gender and identity, and then I spent the next several years working as a digital community manager and maker for organisations like the Open Knowledge Foundation and Mozilla. During this time, I built a curriculum pack with the Tate Britain in their new Digital Studio, and I couldn't get the space out of my head. There was something special about its combination cultural collections, open source methods and machines aimed at engaging diverse users through digital practices. I was convinced these emergent efforts warranted further research. What did it mean to open a radical space for creative remix in the auspices of a large institution with a history of colonial hegemony?

My doctoral work, funded by the Sussex Digital Humanities Lab, in collaboration with the Tate and supervised by Prof Tim Jordan, Prof Caroline Bassett and Dr Rebecca Sinker, builds on this research by exploring user experiences and spatialities at shared machine shops (sites with digital tools and mentors aimed at help people make things) as they open for the first time at sites of this kind in cultural institutions across London.

Combining historiographies of hacking-as-practice and shared machine shop communities in the U.K. with empirical data drawn from a year-long ethnography as researcher-in-residence at three such sites within the Tate Britain, the British Museum and the Wellcome Collection, this research works from critical theories of spatiality from scholars like Doreen Massey, who writes about space as power-geometry, to introduce sites as ‘collections makerspaces’, fourth-wave exemplars of a UK-derived shared machine shop canon.

It's been a wonderful ride so far, and I feel lucky to have been given the opportunity to do this project. I'm starting the last year of the PhD, which means I will soon descend into the uniquely terrifying dissertation phase. 100,000 words here we come!

A few highlights and further reading:

“Genealogy, Culture and Technomyth: Decolonizing Western Information Technologies, from Open Source to the Maker Movement”, an article I wrote with Tim Jordan for Digital Culture & Society journal;

Space / Gather / Make, a mini-exhibit on shared machine shops I curated at the Tate Modern for Art:Work this autumn;

An article I wrote for the Guardian about an increasing consciousness of the importance of sustainability amongst UK makerspaces;

The Haunted Random Forest Festival organised with colleagues from the Sussex Humanities Lab to "find human ghosts in the algorithms";

A Call for Proposals for Issue 12 of the Journal of Peer Production on increased shared machine shop institutionalization, which I'm currently co-editing with Dr Adrian Smith;

"PhD life at 30, six months in": On moving from the tech industry to become an apprentice academic;

A Maker Assembly panel I spoke on about building cultures of piece through making practices in Northern Ireland.

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#UNBOUND غير مقيد IS BORN

Today marks the launch of #UNBOUND غير مقيد, an interactive digital project I have been building with artist Rachel Gadsden, filmmaker Abigail Norris and The SPACE which asks diverse communities in the Middle East, UK and beyond to communicate shared senses of cultural and personal identity through creative practice. The heart of #UNBOUND is simple: Draw an image of who you are, and share it with with your name, location, and a photo of you being creative. All submissions will be featured on our global site, displayed for other communities around the world. Here is an example of work we've received so far, created by Zahra Al-Daman, a blind graduate student and sculptor at Riyadh University in Saudi Arabia.

And now for our humble ask. Because we are looking for a diverse body of submissions from people of all kinds of different backgrounds, like Zahra, we need you to help us get started. Please take a moment today to sketch out a portrait -- and ask your students, family and friends to do the same. Submit work online or with the hashtag #UNBOUND so we can feature it. We'll see you there... and thank you, from the bottoms of our hearts, in advance! PS) For Middle Eastern friends in the know, here is an Arabic translation. UNBOUND " بلا قيود" هو مشروع رقمي تفاعلي يشجع و يطلب من المجتمعات المتنوعة في الشرق الأوسط والمملكة المتحدة وغيرها من البقاع التفاعل والتواصل والتعبير عن الهوية من خلال الابداع الفني المشترك. لتنضم وتشاركنا ما عليك سوى المشاركة برسم تعبيري توضح فيه " من انت" مرفقا باسمك ، ومكان تواجدك، وصورة لك كمبدع ومن ثم ارساله الينا الى من خلالالرابط

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Farewell Mozilla, Cześć Europe!

Sad news, exciting beginnings: This Friday will officially be my last day working at Mozilla in Vancouver. This is where the sad part comes in. I've had a truly amazing year being back home in Vancouver, and it is very hard to leave. The two years I spent working on Mozilla's Webmaker project in London and in Vancouver were fascinating, challenging and fun. In every project, from Community Literacies to Hive Vancouver, and from teaching the web to starting #ARTOFWEB, I found myself continually amazed at the passion and talent of the Mozilla employees and community members I was fortunate enough to hack with, create with, laugh with and break the Internetz with. And now, the exciting part. In a few weeks, I'm moving back to London for a few more European adventures before a return to my first love, radical research - much of it inspired by the open tech communities I've been lucky enough to be a part of over the past few years. This autumn, I'll start doctoral research in the UK to examine the creative roles that hacker cultures are playing at shared machine shops (from makerspaces to tech studios) which are now emerging in cultural heritage institutions in Canada, the UK and the Netherlands. Until then, I'm looking forward to going back into consulting. As a practicing interaction designer, I am open to taking on small contracts with value-based projects that aim to make the world a better place, so if you need help with web development, curriculum design, participatory research or community curation, please get in touch via @codekat on Twitter. London, I'll see you (and dance to your music) very soon. And Vancouver, my love, I'll always be around. I'll continue serving as Education Co-chair on the Maker Foundation Board of Directors, and from our first Maker Education Salon of 2015 this March to Mini Maker Faire this summer, there's a already lot to look forward to this year, international borders be damned! I'm very excited for the crazy new ideas and community-led developments yet to come.

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Hello, World: Let's (re)Make Networked Art ◣

Image by MAX CAPACITY After much second-guessing, I've published a big piece on Medium today about my belief that Net(worked) Art still lives as a movement, making the continued existence of cooperative, creative practices of [and by] the web more essential than ever. This post was based on the visionary work of the crazy web/trans/media folk I've been able to dream and build with lately around the world, especially the #ARTOFWEB community who helped bring together the Mozilla Festival's first-ever Art and Culture track to the shores of London this year, and taught me so much in the process. It's a 10 minute read in 6 chapters, the perfect amount of time for a coffee. It opened up some pretty interesting debates as it made the rounds this morning, so I'd love to hear your thoughts (and criticisms!). While this is an area I'm passionate about, I am cognizant that I, like everyone in my "post-post net-art"generation, have much more to learn. And in the end, that's a part of the fun. "As the hardwares and softwares of computers give us new capabilities… we have to learn to feel with them. If we can’t feel with them, they are only dumb metal claws. Therefore, the vistas of digital art are only as wide as our potential to grasp those possibilities with full human expressiveness.” — Jim Andrews, “Why I Am A Net Artist”, 2011

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Call for Artists: Mozfest 2014

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Lo-Fi, No-Fi Teaching Kit v1...

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Community Literacies: User stories, with <3

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Let's teach the web, offline! A design canvas and a new kit.