Reciprocity

This morning brings confirmation of the inclusion of our gift circle proposal in the upcoming conference ‘Just Do(ing) It, Again: The Politics of DIY and Self-Organised Culture’ which is a ‘day of presentations, workshops, films and discussion about DIY culture and its social, political and economic resonances’ on
Saturday May 11th, 2013 at 1 in 12 Club, Bradford. ()

I’m looking forward to working with Ivan and Georgia Mack to run the gift circle for the first time (We’ll be doing it under the identifier of ‘Wur’ which takes our blog collectivity out into the real world, a good feeling) and I think the Symposium will be an interesting audience/group of participants to trial it to, and with. My hope would be for people to experience it at the event and then take it, use it and adapt it within their own communities and networks. The intrinsic simplicity, flexibility and democracy of the gift circle seems to me an ideal means of sharing skills and resources unencumbered by structure or hierarchy and, following some Twitter conversations about creative time banks this morning, has confirmed to me as I walk the dog, that these are our core values that will underpin any gift economy activity that we do, summed up perfectly by Ivan in a follow up comment to his Twitter gift blogost

This morning also brings an act of generosity from fellow a-n blogger Marion Michell( www.a-n.co.uk/p/2157883) in the form of a lovely card and beautiful coin cosies. I sent Marion a copy of Issue 1 of my zine Reciprocity () back in December as part of a seasonal give away and Marion has sent me these lovely things in return. I’m so touched, as I love Marion’s work and writing. It’s a good reminder of how supportive and reciprocal the a-n artist talking community is, and what a good thing it has been for me to be part of it.

Finally this morning brings an email bearing good news – my application for an a-n Re;view bursary () been successful.
I am so delighted. This means I have the opportunity to gain formal and structured feedback on these and other projects from experienced practitioners – its going to be so valuable, particularly right now when there is so much going on in the way of projects, conversations, ideas, and collaborations. Thank you a-n!

Today’s post is a catch up on skills exchange/gift economy activities. There has been a lot happening in this area over the last couple of weeks, and I want to capture the process and order before it disappears. It feels important to document this stuff – i.e. the mechanics of how actions, conversations, collaborations come about – because it reveals that these things are organic, dependent on open-ness, goodwill, risk and basically just trying things out.
The last time I posted on this was the meeting I had with Bradford creatives Ivan and Georgia Mack, a few weeks back – an exploratory conversation around shared interest in sharing and gift economy projects. We talked about gift circles as a flexible, real world way of sharing skills and resources, but also about experimenting with Twitter hashtags to explore the social media possibilities. Here’s an excerpt from Ivan’s blogpost on Wur Blog http://wurblog.wordpress.com/2013/02/26/twitter-gi…

It’s important systems of gift giving are grounded in real world interactions between people in the same place as they help to build a sense of community. We wanted our gift circle to be
a:local
b:not web based but ‘real’
c:non hierarchical
d:minimum administration and hackable
e:no values placed on gifts

Plans are afoot to make this happen in the real world by meeting and talking and sharing, but we also realised that we might as well experiment with co-opting existing media to this end. The only risk is that nothing happens and we move on. With this in mind we propose the following tweet structure and hashtag for bradford skills exchange.

OFFER: (insert skill here) #BDskillx
NEED: (insert need) #BDskillx

The hashtag has so far has limited uptake in people using it to actually exchange skills, but what has happened is that is has generated interest and conversation on twitter from people within our creative networks which has led to the beginnings of a ‘real world’ collective.
I recently did a skills exchange with Bradford based photographer Adam Simons in which Adam gave me a refresher session in manual camera use in return for some advice about exhibiting (blogged here on Wur http://wurblog.wordpress.com/2013/02/27/pints-and-…)
Last Thursday on Twitter, Adam, Ivan and I were talking about the best place to get film developed – this then sparked a discussion with other Bradford creatives joining in – about the possibility of setting up a collective dark room- which we could all run and use together. The enthusiasm and excitement for this idea was palpable, so we decided to fix a date for a meeting as soon as possible.
So six of us (@simon cantrill, @impgalleryanne, @bpmonkey, @SkylightSwift and @adamsimonstweet and @jeanmcewan ) met last night for an early evening drink to talk through the possibilities.

We all agreed that what we want a is sustainable model , a darkroom which we can run as a collective which is permanent, accessible and affordable. We talked about various options for spaces within and outside Bradford city centre, and some possible sources of equipment. We agreed that we would begin as a collective of six , set up a space, and then look at how we might grow – in terms of other members, and workshops and other projects. We’re going to meet again soon to make some decisions about space and to get this thing off the ground as soon as possible. Exciting.

It’s been a busy couple of weeks with various projects progressing – lots of meetings, events and communications going on, andin the middle of it, the death of my laptop (r.i.p G4 ibook) so I haven’t had much time or opportunity to post for a while. I’ve found I’ve missed it – blogging here helps me organise my thoughts, reflect on my work and the process of writing always offers some new insight. Now feels like an exciting time, but also a little overwelming with all the ideas and projects and conversations… I feel like I need some time to reflect, take stock of all these different activities and try to find the connections between them. Some time for thinking, and space to consider methodology, and the direction and focus of my practice.

I’m going to try to post here this week on each of my projects to aid this reflective process.

So to start with, the collaborative blog is now up and running. It officially launched on March 1st and has six posts already which I am delighted about. I called it “Wur blog”. “Wur” in Scots means two things: “we are” and “our”. I had been struggling to find a name for the blog, and one day reading Eisenstein’s ‘Sacred Economics’ came across a discussion of WIR, the Swizz complementary currency system. A WIR/WUR rhyme took hold of my brain -since my Nana’s death Scots words are constantly lodging themselves in my head. The word seems a good fit – communicating the sense of collectivity, community and shared ownership that I would like all contributors to the blog to feel. I’m delighted to have almost 20 people as authors on the blog- who are a cross of artists and non-artists, with varying approaches and ideas to and about gift and reciprocity. It’s so exciting to have different voices (including a-n bloggers Kate Murdoch, Alinah Azedeh, Louise Atkinson Lee Gascoyne and Stuart Mayes) and to have the opportunity to bring these together in conversation. Already, just a few weeks into the blog, this is already happening. This is working just as I wanted it to- a democratic open sharing of ideas – I think of it as co-research. Please join the conversation! The blog can be found at http://wurblog.wordpress.com

An great meeting yesterday with fellow creatives Ivan and Georgia Mack yesterday to talk about possible gift economy projects over a fantastic lunch at The Treehouse Cafe in Bradford (http://www.treehousecafe.org/ where all food is locally sourced, organic and home-made – a great place to support)

We talked around the possibilities for various projects including Freeshops, skills exchanges and gift circles. From the oustet we agreed that we dont want is to do an online project which may replicate exisiting exchange projects such as Craigslist and Freeconomy and suck up all our time in administering. We want to do a real world project, local to Bradford which involves real time conversations and physical presence, and building of community. We talked about creative exchanges as a starting point, perhaps among people we know within Bradford’s arts community and potential diffculties of getting people to commit their time and come to events. Georgia suggested linking in to existing networks and communities and perhaps a flexible approach that wasn’t tied to a particular space or venue. We came to the conclusion that we just need to try out some stuff and see how it works without being too precious about it. Part of the experience is seeing what comes up, learning on the way: R and D as Ivan put it.

We talked a bit about gift circles which I had come across via Mark Boyle’s book ‘The Moneyless Manifesto’. Gift circles are a really simple idea, involving meeting the needs of a group of people at any given time via gifts (of time or resources or skills). This article by Charles Eisenstein explains it really well http://www.shareable.net/blog/charles-eisenstein-g…

The beauty is the simplicity of the idea and they can happen anywhere and with any group of people, and also and there isn’t the adminstrative burden of creating and maintaining a structure. We got excited about the possibilities of using this model in a variety of contexts and environments (art and non art) began to identify some upcoming events/projects in Bradford that we could link into. More soon.

… continued from last post:

A week in reciprocity, part two:

7. Vantage Art Prize (..continued).. There was a huge breadth of work, including live art, sculpture, painting, video, print and photography, shown on three floors of an unused office building. My personal highlight was ‘What is Left? () a participatory photography project being made by Leeds based performance artist Ellie Harrison, Manchester-based artist Roshana Rubin Mayhew and 50 members of the public. Working with individuals, community groups and bereavement charities, Ellie and Roshana are generating 50 portraits, corresponding texts and audio recordings exploring experiences of grief and mourning. Some of these portraits with audio were shown as part of Vantage. This project is part of a wider work called The Grief Series, a sequence of seven projects by Ellie using a seven stage Grief Model from popular psychology as a starting point. ( ) I experienced one piece (Ellie’s own) and found the audio of her talking about her mother hugely affecting. I found the work generous in its honesty and very cathartic to experience as it has moved me on in my own process of mourning.

8. Ongoing reading of Charles Eisenstein’s ‘Sacred Economics: Money, Gift and Society in the Age of Transition’ (read it here online for free ). I found out about this book via Alinah Azedeh’s excellent a-n blog ‘Burning The Books’ www.a-n.co.uk/p/2831785 and I’m so glad, as it has made me think, learn and re-asses my relationship to and knowledge of money. It’s been mind-altering. Here’s a quote from Chapter 14 ‘Relearning Gift Culture’

“To fully receive is to willingly put yourself in a position of obligation, either to the giver or to society at large. Gratitude and obligation go hand in hand, they are two sides of the same coin. Obligation is obligation to do what? It is to give without ‘compensation’. Gratitude is what? It is the desire to give, again without compensation, borne of the realisation of having received. In the age of the separate self, we have split the two, but originally they are one: obligation is a desire that comes from within and is only secondarily enforced from without. Clearly then, reluctance to receive is actually reluctance to give. We think that we are being noble, self-sacrificing, or unselfish if we prefer to give rather than to receive. We are being nothing of the sort. The generous person gives and receives with an equally open hand”

9. Progress on the multi-author blog on generosity/reciprocity is going well. The majority of people I have asked to contribute have said yes, either to being a regular author, or to guest posting. People have been really positive about the idea, which has been so encouraging, in particular fellow a-n blogger Kate Murdoch (www.a-n.co.uk/p/1689794/) who has been really generous from the outset with her time and support of all my reciprocity doings. I feel very fortunate to have made such good connections on a-n with artists such as Kate whose work I greatly respect and which feeds my own. The plan is to launch the blog on Friday 1^st March.. more to follow!

10. A stunning A1 edition, sent to me from artist Alex Hetherington from ‘Modern Edinburgh Film School’, a research and production project which includes curated screenings, film essays, a group show and participatory forms, a published zine Edinburgh Homosexual, texts and editions: A Party for Young Artists. I am a great fan of Alex’s work () and I have had the pleasure of showing his work at a number of projects/exhibitions I have curated over the past 6 years or so. Although we have only met once briefly in real life in all my communications with him I have found him to be one of the most reciprocal and generous artists I have encountered. And his work is stunning. Lucky, lucky, lucky me.

http://modernedinburghfilmschool.bigcartel.com/product/modern-edinburgh-film-school-wallpaper