The research undertaken to develop this idea was supported by the European Cultural Foundation.
Thank you!
Connected Action for the Commons is an action-research program and network with six cultural organisations from across Europe and the European Cultural Foundation (ECF) as collaborating hubs.
Story Caravan is a part of the network since our project idea was selected to be along in the second Idea Camp in Botkyrka 2015 after which we received a R&D grant from the European Cultural Foundation.
Here, you can see how the network has grown over the past three years, who the people behind the network are, and what the projects and issues are they work on and find in common. Feel welcome to access this database and get inspired by the activities and connections of this growing movement of people.
Ekenäs Story Caravan receives R&D grant
Yes we did! The European Cultural Foundation granted us 10.000 € to be able to work on the planning and researching of a larger Story Caravan project. So we are kicking-off this part of the project in December!
Our collaboration partners in The Netherlands Migration Lab were also granted the R&D grant and we are very eager to start collaborating with them.
Ekenäs StoryCaravan meet collaborators in The Hague
In the beginning of March the Story Caravan working group met together with the folks from Migrationlab in The Hague for a very welcomed workshop. Present was Åsa Lönnqvist, Annabelle Antas and Ylva Rancken-Lutz från the StoryCaravan R&D project and Laura Pana, Anca Fronescu and Denis Stillewagt from Migrationlab.
The Ekenäs StoryCaravan and MigrationLabs Welcome to the Living room both have storytelling methods at its core and some common goals: To find innovative method tools for facilitating dialogue through place-based storytelling. Through our projects we want to encourage engagement with the local commons and encourage an on-going dialogue to deepen local engagement in our community commons, nurture tolerance with the goal to create more sustainable and resilient communities. Welcome to the Living room has migration stories as its main focus and The Ekenäs StoryCaravan are planning to work with stories and memories as well as visions for the future with the general public but with a special commitment to reach out to migrants and refugees.
We found that it was important for us all to take time to share our own “stories”. After listening to eachother’s life stories I think non of us were surprised that we now find ourselves working for these goals and are creating specifically these projects.
An important subject which came up during the day was how we find collaborating partners and how we chose to work with them since we all agreed that projects like these are dependent on collaborations in different forms. We will therefore continue discussing online how to work with collaboration as one of our methods.
We will also continue discussing ways in which we can refine our storytelling methods and tools to accommodate different sorts of people and help eachother attune our projects in ways which will benefit our goals.
In the conversations during the day we found that we time and again were discussing the urgent topic of how our cities and countries deal with migration today; in which ways they are welcoming migrants and refugees (or not) and how they are providing for refugees and other migrants.
These discussions were not always very uplifting but nonetheless they gave us all more energy and a sense of purpose in our continued work to create mothods and ways in which we can work with new arrived migrants as well as those who have arrived earlier and are trying to settle in our communities. This sense of common commitments is what collaboration can lead to when it is successful.
For the afternoon part of the workshop we had invited some participants with whom we believe we in different ways could collaborate in the future. Marijke Annema and Jonas Lutz are both designers based in Rotterdam today. Jonas has found his way to The Netherlands from Finland and through Sweden and Marijke is originally from Friesland, a province in the north of the country with its own language. Artist Iris Honderdos has one of her bases in Utrecht and has worked in community art projects for many years and also been an artist in resident at Pro Artibus in Ekenäs, Finland.
After a very inspiring workshop day we topped the day off with an amazing dinner at the Love & Peas.
Ekenäs StoryCaravan takes part in ECF Idea Camp 2015
The Story Caravan project took part in The EU Cultural foundation (ECF) Idea Camp 23-25.9. I came home from there very inspired and eager to continue working on ways to promote co-governing and participatory local processes.
ECF’s second Idea Camp took place from 23 to 25 September 2015 in Botkyrka, Sweden. This year’s theme “Build the City” applied the principles and ethics of the commons. The Idea Camp explored how citizens and communities can get directly involved in participatory democratic processes that shape and govern our cities. The Media Lab (ZEMOS98, Canan Marasligil, Charlie Tims and the ECF Labs team) has documented the Idea Camp through a variety of audiovisual material you can all find compiled in the Build the City: Online Resources on ECF Labs.
The Story Caravan 