#policy.nz

[airyairyaucontraire]

This is so helpful if you’re confused about which party’s policies best match your priorities. You can go through and mark the ones you like (you can set it to “blind” mode to see the policies without the party names attached so that doesn’t influence you) and then when you tap on “your favourites,” you’ll get a graph showing what your closest matches are. It’s simple and clear.

[mattshaskpod]

Blog #8

Case Study 2: Gone by Lunchtime

Gone by Lunchtime is a political podcast hosted by Toby Manhire with Annabelle Lee-Mather and Ben Thomas for the New Zealand website The Spinoff. Gone By Lunchtime covers New Zealand politics and has been releasing special episodes covering this year’s general election from many different angles. The shows format over the last couple months has involved Toby Manhire interviewing someone about New Zealand politics. Guests could include any candidates running in the election or an expert in the field, like Ollie Neas from Policy.nz who came on the show to talk about how each party uses policy in their respective campaigns. The podcast style plays out similarly to how radio plays out. The podcast has a structured approach where the hosts will introduce themselves, one host will describe the episode content and then they will go straight the episode whether that be a discussion between the hosts or an interview that was conducted. The Gone By Lunchtime conduct their interviews is something I would like to replicate. The interviews are structured with set questions that the host wants to hit but the podcast will still allow for tangents that tie into the topics up for discussion. I think when interviewing young people having a similar approach will make them feel comfortable while showing that they are not wasting their time with someone who does not know what they are talking about.

[boreal-sea]

Just did my local “what party’s policies do you most support” quiz (our country’s elections are coming up soon too), and !!! I was wondering why the US doesn’t have that sort of quiz floating about

Can’t tell if it’s that they only have two parties, if it’s that no one seems to pay attention to policy ??? or if it’s just that I haven’t seen it floating around tumblr (though with tumblr’s love of both quizzes and rage at American politics, I feel that’s unlikely).

Whichever it is, my mum did the quiz and it seems I have converted her, because while her result was more mixed than mine she also had the most in common with most socially/economically left wing party (the Green Party) which ! important news because she used to align way more conservative. (If you’re interested in seeing the quiz or looking at the policies in question this election, btw, it’s at policy.nz. The damned thing took me a couple hours to complete because I had to reference some things for clarification haha)

We don’t have like, an official, government-created quiz like that (because no one could trust it to be unbiased) but there are a lot of independent websites in the USA that do exactly that! ISideWith.com is the most comprehensive, in my opinion. 

I Side With’s quiz is nice because you can choose how in-depth you want to go on each issue (choosing to answer more questions on the issue). You also choose how important that issue is to you. 

At the end, it shows you a list of candidates who match your ideals. It doesn’t do it by party, just by candidate. 

[peaceowatermeln]

I’m not one to directly talk about political parties much, but I do want to say if you were planning on voting New Conservative Party at all please get the fuck off my blog

(and also go check out policy.nz to compare policies on different issues and compare candidates thx)

[samhonours]

Made using content from https://policy.nz/

This exploration details 3 policies from political parties that relate directly to Prisoners. The information is easy to digest and condensed: The form illustrates this by being “condensed” in size.

[samhonours]

Developing content. This poster expresses the policies of the green party that directly effect people in prison taken from https://policy.nz/

Perhaps the content doesn’t have to encompass the whole political spectrum of issues. I can assume that most prisoners who are engaging with the book will have an interest in political parties stance on justice reform. Therefore its main focus could be around that area. The On The Fence type section about who you align with the most could be separated from the book entirely.

[samhonours]

Week 7 Round up

It has been a hectic week, Here is an explanation of all the things that happened.

After the super crit, I believed my project was a workshop

To decide what content will go in my workshop, it will be important to talk to people in prison and ask them what political topics they have the most interest in. If this was to be done at a masters level it would be a co-creative exercise with people in prison. I would have access to the prison to interview people and use those findings to formulate my workshop, however, I can't enter prisons so they best way to get insight is to contact ex-prisoners. My contact from Just Speak Tania has offered to relay my project to ex-prisoners to get their input. I am currently waiting to hear back from her.

Then, I had a conversation With Pip Adam (set up by Kerry Ann) who runs workshops in prisons and Pip suggested that perhaps a workshop wasn't the right way to go.

Today I had a really eye-opening chat with Pip Adam. Among many other things, Pip Adam runs writing courses in Prisons.

Some interesting takeaways

A workshop may not be the best way to explain political concepts - Sharing information through a lecture or workshop means the political information is delivered through a person (educator). People on the receiving end may have issues with trust, personal bias towards the person educating them or a general dislike for lecture styled learning.

A book would be better. Pip explained there is a culture in prisons around the value of books and reading. She explained prisoners see books, glossy magazines, etc as high valued objects. Creating something physical that speaks for itself rather than having someone read the content might be a better way to share information.

I also meet Chris Ulutupu

I was also lucky enough to be put in contact with Chris Ulutupu who is an artist, a filmmaker and the Arts in corrections advisor. Chris was able to give me advice on how a workshop could run. We discussed the issues of trying to create a-political design, something that I will work with in my book/workshop. Chris spoke about his own practice - His works, although stunning, are just as much if not more about the process of filming that the actual outcome - I thought this was a really interesting take on what art/design can be, especially in relation to service/experience design and my own practise.

Further thoughts

The meeting with Pip and some conversations with Karl has shifted my project majorly. It no longer feels as though the outcome has to be something that competes or requires prisoners attention. It feels like any space where I will be forcing engagement with my project won't work. A civic's lecture won't work because someone is leading it telling people what to do. My project is something that needs to access out of the will of the people in prison. Therefore, and as Pip Suggested it needs to be a book that explains concepts like MMP, democracy, voting, the referendums and collates the policy from policy.nz. It needs to cater to different levels of understanding. Concepts must be understood on a visual basis as well as written.