Reading Guide

Common Language

Background & Struggles

A. Introduction

B. Vision

B.1. Paradigm shift in post-colonial and neo-liberal contexts.

B.2. Self-sustainability as our highest value for the Network.

B.2.1 Sustainability understood in its multiplicity.

B.2.2 Sustainability and the need for funding.

B3. Collective Study, instead of demonstration and administration

B4. Exploring Radical Imagination.

C. Ethical Principles

C.1. Open ethics, not a manifesto.

C.2. Arts Collaboratory’s Ethics.

D. Commonwealths

D.1. Lifeline Plan

D.2. Resource Map

D.3. Budget

D.3.1 Philosophy

D.3.2 Allocation of Budget

D.4. Time strike

D.5. Advance Payment.

E. AC Organization: Mechanisms for self-determination and shared governance

E.1 Philosophy: Self-ccountability and Study

E.2. Challenges faced

E.3 Cooperative entity through the working groups

E.3.1 Permanent activities

E.3.1.a Self-organized Assembly

E.3.1.b Triangles

E.3.1.c Banga

E.3.1.d Mutual Learning (study)/ Tooling/ Resourcing

E.3.2 Permanent Groups

E.3.2.a Communications (Internal and External)

E.3.2.b Financial Administration (Attaya)

E.3.2.c Fund-raising

E.3.3 Temporary Groups

E.4 Membership, growth and openness of Arts Collaboratory

F. Unresolved Questions

Resources

Appendix I: Working Groups: List & Guidelines

Our current world faces the anthropocene with an urgent need of change. Centuries of death, exploitation, addiction and violence have affected our local contexts directly. Arts Collaboratory shares common dreams of change from the embedded notions of value that neoliberalism and postcolonialism impose, as well as shifting paradigms in the micropolitics of our relationships with others, with our communities, ourselves, and most importantly, our living, breathing environment.

’Goodbye, capital, time for you to go, we are going to create other ways of living, other ways of relating to one another, both among humans and between humans and other forms of life, ways of living that are not determined by money and the pursuit of profit, but by our own collective decisions.’

- John Holloway

’It ends with love, exchange, fellowship. It ends as it begins, in motion, in between various modes of being and belonging and on the way to new economies of giving, taking, being with and for...’

-Jack Halberstam

Paradigm Shift in the Post-Colonial and Neo-Liberal Context

Most of the Arts Collaboratory member organisations are located in the geographic area denoted as the ’global south’. While purposely avoiding the use of this notion for our identity, Arts Collaboratory is conscious of the problems of the current division between the ’global south’ and the ‘global north’ and seeks to transcend them.

This partition reflects the division between labor and capital, namely the structural domination of the former by the latter through the mechanism of never-ending production, the myth of growth and the logic of accumulation. In turn all of these factors have created the culture of individualism and competition, dependency and exploitation, which has resulted in ever-increasing inequality among humans.

While the neo-liberal turn of capitalism since the late 1970s on a global scale has only accelerated this capitalist mode of operation, we find the root of this system in colonization, mainly in the construction of the hegemonic notions of time, value, space and language. All the organisations in Arts Collaboratory continue to be affected by the trauma of colonialism as it is a logical progression, the structures of capitalism in our organizational contexts perpetuate this trauma even after each respective country’s ’independence’ from, or the removal of colonial power.

This makes us keep producing at the cost of our own labor and time, without being able to create our own rules and rhythms. Yet, the crucial recognition that Arts Collaboratory wants to make, in line with many other colleagues and thinkers around us, is that this problem does not just belong to the so-called ’south.’ The general instability, insecurity, the exploitation of labor by capital, and the increasing gap between the rich and the poor are experienced palpably by the majority of the population in the ’north’ as well.

In this light, Arts Collaboratory sees the importance of challenging this paradigm by subverting the above mentioned division and cultivating co-existence. We move forward towards degrowth as opposed to growth, to enact interdependence rather than dependence or independence, to share commonwealths rather than subscribe to capitalist accumulation.

Introduction

Arts Collaboratory (AC) is a translocal ecosystem consisting of 25 diverse organisations around the world focused on art practices, processes of social change, and working with broader communities beyond the field of art.

As an ecosystem, AC exists via processes of collective study and active research in the fields of self-sustainability, self-determination and interdependence through radical imagination. It functions as a meeting point where these organisations can share knowledge, collaborate on projects, and build emotional and financial support together. AC is a place for building self-care and work in common across territories in order to form a community of solidarity based on the idea of mutualism. The organizations constantly practice radical imagination, and critical thinking, through self organization in order to generate the power to write our own history.

The current AC organisations in the ecosystem include:

32º East | Ugandan Arts Trust (Kampala), Al-Ma'mal Foundation for Contemporary Art (Jerusalem), Art Group 705 (Bishkek), Ashkal Alwan (Beirut), Casa Tres Patios (Medellín), Centre Soleil d'Afrique (Bamako), Cooperativa Cráter Invertido (Mexico City), Darb 1718 Contemporary Art and Culture Center (Cairo), Casco – Office for Art, Design and Theory (Utrecht), Doual’art (Douala), Kër Thiossane (Dakar), Kiosko Galería (Santa Cruz de la Sierra), KUNCI Cultural Studies Center (Yogyakarta), Lugar a Dudas (Cali), Más Arte Más Acción (Choco), Nubuke Foundation (Accra), Platohedro (Medellín), Raw Material Company (Dakar), Riwaq (Ramallah), ruangrupa (Jakarta), Stichting DOEN (Amsterdam), TEOR/éTica (San José), Theerta (Colombo), Visual Arts Network of South Africa (VANSA) (Johannesburg), Waza (Lubumbashi).

Brief History of Arts Collaboratory

Arts Collaboratory was founded in 2007 by two Dutch foundations Stichting DOEN and Hivos as both a funding program and a platform for knowledge sharing amongst visual artists’ initiatives in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. Its aim was to support the growing movement of artists initiatives that provide alternatives to the often lacking or inflexible established arts scenes in their local context, and to strengthen the south-south connections between these organisations. Soon after its beginnings the Mondriaan Fund joined, supporting the exchange between Arts Collaboratory linked organisations and the Dutch arts field.

In response to the shifting economic situation in Europe, after a long consultation process in 2012, the program of Arts Collaboratory was re-designed in 2013. The new mission of Arts Collaboratory became to promote sustainable, collaborative and open visual arts practices that contribute to social innovation. Also, more emphasis was put on building a translocal community amongst the participants. 23 participating organizations were selected to constitute the core of the community and in order to better facilitate the knowledge sharing and relation building process within the network, the funders Hivos and DOEN started a collaboration with Casco – Office for Art, Design and Theory, in Utrecht, the Netherlands.

This new phase focused on building trust and sharing through face to face meetings in Assemblies, Tents, and Institutional Residencies. These gatherings produced a series of collaborative projects between the participating organizations.

In 2015, during the Assembly in Senegal, the Arts Collaboratory members agreed to go further into the collaboration and to develop a common vision.

The current model relies on a horizontal approach rather than a top-down one and seeks to nurture a new relationship to funding and accountability based on trust and continued study. The rethinking of funding models, models of working with art locally and trans-nationally while unlearning the current modalities of working, and, most importantly, devising the self-sustainable and open system of trans-local collectivity are amongst the central issues.

In light of these paradigm shifts, the position of DOEN, Hivos, and Casco were revisited. The organizations were asked if they wanted to fully join AC, committing to the ethical values. While, DOEN and Casco were enthusiastic and ready to join, Hivos chose to remain as an observer for the time being with a potential interest of joining in the future. These inclusions acted as a stepping stone for AC’s self-determination, further emancipating itself from its origin as a funder-created umbrella.

Casco’s geographical background, as the only non-funding institution located in the so-called ’global north,’ is viewed as enriching the diversity of practices of AC. This involvement may also serve as a reference for future possibilities of AC opening up to groups /organisations located in the so-called ’global north’.

DOEN’s membership represents an opportunity to gain access into the heart of a funder’s organisation, and efforts are still being made to find strategic ways to communicate the radical changes that are occurring with regard to the systems of governance and sustainability in AC to DOEN’s executive bodies. The third phase of Arts Collaboratory started in 2016.

This document constitutes what is currently AC; it is a result of a collective working process among the previously mentioned organisations, developed through practices and gathering and is still a work in progress.

The timeline and process is further summarized below

Timeline

• Colombia, 2011: This meeting was the concluding meeting in the first phase of Arts Collaboratory (2007-2012) and the first meeting where a future was imagined with more emphasis on collaboration and collectivity. The first 7 years of AC had seen a lot of networking and exchange, but had not built a strong collective identity. The Colombia meeting showed however that after these 7 years there was friendship and a shared identity and a wish to move on collectively. The meeting was an important base for the second phase of AC (2013-2015) and the decision to work towards a collectively owned platform. Around 50% of the organisations present in Colombia moved on to the next phase;

• Indonesia, May 2014: The first general meeting consisted of learning from and with practices in the Indonesian art scene and affinity building and developing the idea of collaboration;

• Senegal, April 2015: The second general meeting included learning from and with practices in the Senegal art scene and developing a deeper knowledge of each member, elaborating on collaborative projects, building future plans (working models) in light of shared passions over Arts Collaboratory and the current obstructions for the passions;

• Utrecht, June 2015: The workshop group further developed the future plan that centers around the ’ethical principles’. It was the beginning of the current document.

• Kyrgyzstan, June 2016: The third general meeting consisted of learning from and with practices in the Kyrgyzstani art scene while beginning to address and implement the conceptual and organizational concepts presented in the first version of this document. During this meeting, some of the originally defined terms and mechanisms were changed and some were eliminated. The work of consolidating AC based on theory and practice had began.[7]

This document is designed to be an open document that proposes a model for translocal collaboration among socially involved art organisations. In this way, the plan outlined here should not be viewed as definitive, but as a structure in the making. It should work as a place where collective knowledge is formed and supports the commons, not as another regulation or constraint. This reflects the core of the plan: to imagine and practice sustainability, as well as processes that value unlearning, studying, sharing and tooling together, as opposed to individual and competitive production and possession.

This process requires a constant subversion of the existing language we use and the creation of new languages and/or concepts. If anything, it is not for immediate understanding but, should be considered as an open invitation for collective study, collective invention, and rewriting.

This document provides the conceptual base as well as the practical mechanisms that have been defined collectively by the AC organizations up to this point in time.

Study and tooling is like a breathing activity for Arts Collaboratory. Breathing is a natural process which does not require the need for approval and evaluation of others. Accountability, as imposed and defined by external systems, produces the process of bureaucracy and multiplies time for administration. A regular, major activity of art organisations these days lies in representation, demonstration and writing reports, which mostly attempts to prove one’s success and strength, and hides failure and vulnerability, or falls into the trap of ’pornomiseria’ - a commodification of misery.

Instead, Arts Collaboratory turns every mode of activity into a self-mutual-(un)learning process where conversation is taken as the most basic and important mode. This way, the time and labor used for the existing form of accountability will be instead used for enriching the self and collectively enriching the process of learning. Based on this new use of time we open the space to different forms of study that are tools to let us create a real praxis. Furthermore, based on the Ethical Principles (see Section C), we commit to sharing our learning beyond ’us in the room’, by transforming part of our learning process into common tools, that we make available to others, and into mechanisms for building affinity and studying diversity of strategies that in turn enrich our commonwealths. Those mechanisms are reflected in Mutual Learning, Triangles, Banga Meetings, Experimental Tooling Projects (ETPs) and Assembly (see Section E).

The recognition of ‘failure‘ next to success is key here as it provides essential knowledge that is neither overly optimistic nor pessimistic, but practice-oriented. Failure may in fact provide more creative, more collaborative, more surprising ways of insights into the organisational being, and thus lead to tools for productivity beyond the dominant narrative of progress.

Vision

Arts Collaboratory is an organisation that we build and are a part of, that doesn't mean that AC limits or constricts our autonomy as organisations and our work with other networks or communities. The aim of AC is to create an ecosystem to support different organisations in order to coexist and sustain themselves. The ecosystem is thus an assemblage of various interdependent networks, resources, and organisations, like a living organism.

Arts Collaboratory envisions an ecosystem comprising 25 organisations which acts as one translocal organisation. This does not mean a mere collectivisation in place of individual organisations. Rather, the strength of Arts Collaboratory lies in each individual organisation embedded in their specific local context and working accordingly, while being connected trans-nationally and considering the relationship between the AC and its communities and its accountability to them[8]. Our difference and diversity are key elements for this ecosystem in this regard, as well as the fact that we are an ‘unnatural network’ in the sense that we did not gather by affinity or common interest by our own initiative. Nevertheless, we are connected through common desires and struggles. Four strong desires are recognized in forming our vision:

1. Create a paradigm shift in the post-colonial and neo-liberal contexts

2. Recognize our sustainability as the highest value for the ecosystem

3. Implement the concept of Study instead of demonstration and administration

4. Combine Radical imagination and pragmatism through thoughtful organisation

B.2.1 Sustainability understood in its multiplicity

B.2.2 Sustainability and the need for funding

Radical Imagination & pragmatism through thoughtful organisation

We are convinced that the complex challenge of Arts Collaboratory is the process of unlearning that allows us to be aware that we are our own obstacles.

The deep problems we face are not only outside of us, but within our own mental structures, social relations, and historical and cultural contexts. Active exploration through radical imagination is absolutely necessary to build this ecosystem based on our ethics.

What is Radical Imagination?

On the surface level, radical imagination is the ability to imagine the world, life and social institutions not as they are but as they might otherwise be or become.

It is the courage and the intelligence to recognize that the world can and should be changed. But radical imagination is not just about dreaming of different futures. It's about bringing those possible futures ’back’ to work in the present, to inspire action and new forms of solidarity across boundaries and borders, real or imagined.

Without a radical imagination, we are left only with the residual dreams of the powerful, and for the vast majority they are not experienced as dreams but as nightmares of insecurity, precariousness, violence, and hopelessness. Without a radical imagination, we are lost.

Radical imagination remains a driving force in the dynamics of our political moment. It is not a thing that individuals possess, but something that groups activate and do together. The imagination is our capacity to think about those things we do not or cannot directly experience, but it is also the filter or the frame through which we interpret our own experiences. For this reason, the imagination is an intimate part of how we empathize with others, the way we project ourselves into the future, and gain inspiration and direction from the past.

Radical imagination is a deep force at the very basis of the human subject, the realm of ‘the imaginary’ where ideas, meanings, associations, fixations, drives and affects circulate beneath the threshold of conscious thought. The notion of the ’radical’ inherits its most powerful meaning from the Latin ‘radix’ or ’root’, in the sense that radical ideas, ideologies or perspectives are informed by the understanding that social, political, economic and cultural problems are outcomes of deeply rooted tensions, contradictions, power imbalances, and forms of oppression and exploitation.

The radical imagination is that tectonic, protean substance out of which all social institutions and identities are made, and which, likewise, is constantly in motion under the surface of society, undermining and challenging all that we take to be real, hard, fast and eternal. Likening the radical imagination to magma, that volcanic substance between liquid and solid. Seemingly permanent social forms (from the ideal of marriage to the form of the state, from the value of money to the concept of nation) are the temporary solidifications of the (shared) radical imagination.

Radical imagination is also that force within individuals and collectives that resists the present order, that screams ’no!’ and refuses to be conscripted. Art is the very concrete means for exercising this radical imaginative power: hence is ’Art’ + ’Collaboratory.’

What happens if you know you don’t know where this is going? And you know that it came into being because of a whole set of contingencies. Then, how do you evaluate this experience? And from that point of view, the practices of bricolage are very important because they allow you to hang on to that temporality of transition, that doesn’t say, “I have an authority because I am the contemporary.” And it doesn’t say, “I have an authority because I am only a stepping stone towards this transformation, I am [an] incomplete process of what is going to be transformed.” It says, “ In my fragility, in my incompletion, I also represent the ground on which people’s feel will have to uncertainly balance. And from which they will observe the world, and from which they will have to create, and from which they will have to write.

[...]

Bricolage is rather an “incubation”. Whenever you think you are at a turning point at history, people always keep using the word “new” - just like now, everything to do with globalization is new: new economies, new telecommunication, new materials. Whenever you hear this word “new” you have to understand that you stand in a very fragile relation of the past to the present, and that is incubation. It is not as if you stand at the end of something or in the middle of a brave new world. It is a middleness of a different kind. It is, in a way, starting from thinking you are always in the middle of something - and that is the incubation- al and the spirit of time, that is part of the movement of bricolage.”

(See the Unresolved Question at the end of this section.)

Homi K. Bhabha (2006)

This document describes what is Arts Collaboratory (AC) and how much further it could go and could become.

The purpose is to identify the principles by which we work together and to describe the structures that have been put in place to make this possible since the first version was published in 2015.

This second version was edited from Dec. 15, 2016 and until mid-March 2017 by a temporary working group whose mission was to incorporate the comments made on the first version and to update the document to reflect the decisions and processes that were established during the Assembly in Kyrgyzstan in 2016.

This continues to be an exploratory working document, not a manifesto, and by its nature will need to continuously evolve. In order to reflect this idea the title was changed from AC Future Plan to AC Ecosystem - Work in Process.

It helps to read this document more than one time to get a clearer sense of the content.

The structure of the document begins with principles and paradigms in section A, B and C (these focus on what we are trying to achieve), then continues with the ways in which these paradigms and principles are manifested practically in sections D and E (how we are trying to achieve them). Unresolved questions are included in different sections of the document and signal questions that Arts Collaboratory still has to figure out. This process should occur as part of the process in the next assembly in Costa Rica in June of 2017.

These are the sections:

1. Introduction

Gives the background to how we have arrived at this point. In doing so, it links how each organisation, and the way that we work locally and in AC, has lead to the ideas captured in this document;

2. Vision

Tracks some key points of what AC foresees for a future. This frames why the future of AC is important and what it seeks to do in the bigger picture;

3. Ethical Principles

Discusses shared principles among us and the ethics we have in common. It also identifies some specific principles (potentially more akin to some AC organisations than others) that are pivotal to the future of AC and new ways of thinking about what AC could be.

4. Commonwealth's

Discusses some specific tools that can achieve the principles and vision expressed in the previous sections. Specifically this section discusses our resources and how we can support and grow them.

5. AC Organization: mechanisms for self-determination

Is a new way of thinking about governance and the possibilities of how AC could function in the framework of self-organisation.

6. Unresolved Questions

All the unresolved questions gathered in this section.

There are some key things that must be taken into account while reading:

• Language: There was an agreement that conventional 'funding language' is not adequate for speaking about what AC is becoming. Therefore this document includes a glossary that defines some existing words in a way that we feel better captures what AC is doing. These words attempt to move away from the dynamics of applications/proposals, reports and deadlines but also attempt to rethink ideas of value, of resources and of hierarchy of relations.

• Style: the document is written in a theoretical/poetic/political style to attempt to define the wider spirit in which we work. The current version combines the ethical principles and the results of our radical imagination in creating the AC ecosystem, it describes the mechanisms currently in use.

• While sections B, C and D are relatively well developed they are of course still very much open to change and discussion. Section E is the current structure of governance of AC, for which the details are refined through practice and reviewed collectively during the Assembly. Finally section F details the questions and issues that are still pending within AC.

• A Common Language / Glossary of Terms follows to give descriptions of the language and the intention behind the use of some of the words. This glossary will be constantly and collectively reviewed, developed and expanded as the dynamics of AC are more clearly understood.

A B C D E F L M N O P R S T U W

A

Accountability

see Self-Accountability

®Affinity

Refers to the action, intuition and sensation of searching to build yourself and to build with the other. We’re talking of desires, dreams, your present situation, economical, social or political issues and all that you think is worth fighting for. This action will lead an engagement with the other that at the other end will find an ally. But beware of the differences you might leave out, these might come in handy later on.

B

Banga Meetings

These are proposed to be Nomadic (or Know-madic for knowledge) meetings that merge the previous tent and institutional residencies strategies but have their main purpose in care for each organisation and knowledge sharing specific to the support of each organisation and/ or its programme(s). See E.2 for further discussion.

C

Care

see self-care

Collective Pot

The common pot is a multi-use term that refers to a shared locus of resources. The idea behind the pot is that all contribute to the pot, and all can take from the pot according to predetermined guidelines. See section D.5 for an example.

Commonwealths

Commonwealths refer to the wealth we have collectively through sharing resources. This idea works against the neoliberal ideal of the wealth of the individual and rather focuses on the range of resources – time, knowledge, care – that we have collectively. In terms of activity common wealth is translated into the common pot. See section D for further discussion.

D

Decentralisation

Decentralisation refers primarily to the proposed dispersing of power and responsibility to all organisations in AC. In so doing the work is shared and the decisions are non-hierarchical.

Degrowth

Degrowth is the principle of acting against the influence of the world that says bigger is better. In our work, and in conventional society, we are encouraged to always have bigger numbers, more outputs, more programmes – degrowth acts against this. Degrowth is the principle that we focus on quality and not quantity.

Degrowth is seen as a direct form of sustainability. The implementation of the concept of Degrowth requires the implementation of un-learning or re-learning in order to reach a “proper postcolonial realm.”[Based on comments by Abdallah Salisu, April 2017.]

Dissensus Facilitation

The idea behind dissensus facilitation is the understanding that we will disagree, that there is productive potential in our disagreement, and that we can manage this to have good outcomes.

Bridging theory and praxis:

1. To reveal a dissensus / how do we know we have a dissensus?

Would people recognize dissensus, for example when people are silent?

2. Disagreement is not dissensus: different situations and various degrees

a) during assembly

b) in smaller meetings

c) online and not face-to-face

3. Silence, discussion or crisis: we have to find out the deep reasons for the crisis -> it can be cultural reasons or emotions.

4. Prevention: dialogue, listening, self-organization, clarification

5. Mediation to work towards a productive potential of a consensus (but keeping in mind that we need constructive dissensus)

6. What happens if a dissensus/ crisis / confrontation is very strong ? sanctions? exclusion?

E

Ecosystem

The use of the word ecosystem suggests that like in nature, our relations are about life cycles, germination and maturation. The ecosystem is the system of connections, relationships and linkages between all the organisations that make up the commonwealth of the Arts Collaboratory.

In the context of the AC the word ecosystem is also understood as it relates to each organization’s own context or local ecosystem and the resources that are related specifically to those ecosystems which, by means of the resource map, can also be used to nurture the commonwealth. (See Resource Map)

Entangled vs. horizontal/linear

Entanglement is the visual language of our connections, relationships and thought processes. Entanglement suggests we should not attempt to develop our ideas, or simplify our relationships into linear or horizontal ways of thinking but rather respect the complexity.

Ethics

Ethics are the principles that govern our approach to our work. Why and how we do what we do. See Section C for further discussion.

F

Failures, validating (≠ celebrating failures)

Failures are an important part of learning. Because Arts Collaboratory is about unlearning/ learning and study, failures must be taken into account as fountains of critical thinking and questions. Importantly, because AC does not subscribe to conventional neoliberal society – we do not need to ‘hide’ our failures in order to ‘get more money / status” but rather can collectively share and learn between the organisations that make up AC.

Failures refers to not being able to meet expectations, not achieving a specific goal. For AC FAILURE = OPPORTUNITY. Failure is not based on simply listing flaws but rather reflecting on them for further growth. From failure we can collectively share and learn.

Steps in failing:

• Identify the failure

• Accept it. Remember that what resists, persists. We must learn to embrace failure.

• Reflect on: what happened, why it happened and how it happened.

• Share with others

• Review possible options

Ways to deal with failures:

• Open up a space to talk freely about failures (NO JUDGING ZONE).

• Self Evaluate : Internal and External

• Share with others (Study Buddy, Banga, Triangles)

• Reflect on feedback

• Enjoy and go onto the next one.

• Hospitality

The use of the term hospitality in AC refers to a traditional hospitality for ‘affinity groups who can find a home at AC’. This is different from the way that hospitality is often understood, in relation to tourism, wealth and inequality. Priority will be given to organic and natural processes of building trust and confidence.

L

Lifeline Plan

Within AC, and due to the fact that AC should not subscribe to more conventional societal pressures, we should subscribe to lifelines rather than deadlines. This means that ‘milestones’, ‘outputs’, ‘activities’ and ‘reports’ within more conventional funding language change to become focused on the life, strengthening and care of the participating organisations and their work.

M

Micropolitics

As organizations in AC we focus both on macropolitics and micropolitics. Macropolitics appears in the general goals we have as a group, how we carry out our programs, and all the agendas to be accomplished. However, in order to build commons, the dimension of micropolitics is also essential, and refers to the smaller scale relationships among people and their relation with the world.

Micropolitics is about caring, hospitality and openness.

For AC Micropolitics are constructed upon the affective and often inarticulate parts of everyday life such as sensations, intuitions, beliefs, feelings and emotions and implemented through material and concrete, often seemingly mundane, ways of doing things.

We are together in a group, but each of us has our own history, culture, language, learnings, fears, wishes and dreams. We need to be aware of our behavior and how this can affect others. Our way of talking, the words and the tone we use. Our corporal attitudes, the time for caring we give ourselves.

It is also important to think of how we can build transversality in order not to reduce the different singularities. As Guattari says, not to look for stupefying and childish consent, but to cultivate the dissent and the production of singular existence.

There are different ways that we can develop for implementing micropolitics in AC and into each organization. Some of them are: externalise power relationships, develop new ways to empower people, build consent, make visible. This also includes ways of doing things, like:

• Opening doors

• Respecting the other: washing dishes/ men and women on the same level

• Doing things together: creating commitment and sharing commitment

• Giving away control

• Rotating tasks

• Assuming responsibility and learning how to do things for yourself in self-organization

• Giving opportunities to recognise and externalise disagreement and to share those disagreements or get them aired out

• Translating AC documents

• Creating clear definitions

• Being open

• Being flexible

The values of each organization should be coherent with AC micropolitics. E.g. the organisation thinks about self-care.

Micropolitics can be a way to turn our terms from the future plan into action leading to a consciousness and to a change.

Mutualism

Mutualism is the way two organisms of different species exist in a relationship in which each individual benefits from the activity of the other. Similar interactions within a species are known as co-operation. Mutualistic relationships build new ways of coexistence. Mutualism can be contrasted with interspecific competition, in which each species experiences reduced fitness, and exploitation, or parasitism, in which one species benefits at the expense of the other. AC proposes to have mutualistic relations between all the partner organizations.

N

Neoliberalism

A form of political economic thought that favours free-market capitalism. It is the dominant state of political economic thought throughout the world. It announces that it has the solution - through 'free' markets and entrepreneurship, and by opposing states and bureaucracies - to the problem not only of racial hierarchies and racism but to patriarchy and heteronormativity. We know, however, that these solutions are false. The context in which AC struggles continue to be local and global divisions of power according to race, patriarchy and heteronormativity, and not just (as) capital and labour. [Comment by Stefano Harney and Tonika Sealy after meeting in Utrecht, June 2015.]

O

Openness

Is our ethic principle to exercise our willingness for being permeated both between the organizations that comprise the AC ecosystem and by other organizations, persons, and processes around and beyond AC ecosystem. It implies vulnerability and honesty in openly exercising our responsibility to evaluate our situations in order to communicate our willingness and availability to share (and be shared) our resources within the constraints of self-care, self-limitation, care for others and Degrowth.

Open Source Knowledge:

Means that the knowledge created by the AC members will never be privatized (including this document). Instead it is an open knowledge to be shared and discussed in our contexts and others. Is a key aspect of our shifting of paradigm because it embraces the dissolution of authorship which allows the construction of collective empowerment and builds new ways of giving and taking.

Organisation

see self-organisation

P

Paradigm Shift

A paradigm shift is a change in the basic assumptions, or paradigms, within the ruling form of thought. To enact a paradigm shift means to completely change the basic premise of how something is thought about. See B.1 for further discussion.

Post-colonial

In principle postcolonial means after colonial rule (or after independence). “However, it also refers to the continuation of a racist approach to governance and state control that was established by the dominant capitalist european or north-american cultures (often referred to as neo-colonialism). Importantly, this continued state of control is still felt and understood throughout the world and not only in previously colonised societies. Postcolonialism inhabits our bodies. It is not only outside of us but deeply rooted within us.” [Comment by Stefano Harney and Tonika Sealy after meeting in Utrecht, June 2015] (See the Unresolved Question at the end of this section.)

R

Radical Imagination

Radical Imagination, like the paradigm shift, is a complete rethinking of things that are otherwise unthought of. This is important for developing AC and our own work, which seeks social change and therefore seeks to imagine a different world. See B.4 for further discussion.

Resources and abilities

PResources are assets and capacities that enable things to be done. Importantly in AC, resources are not just financial but are also human, knowledge, time and space resources. Within the AC framework, this wider understanding of resources and the sharing of these resources, contributes to our common wealth.

Resource Map

The Resource Map is a document that tracks each organisation’s resources and indicates where the lack occurs. The Resource Map has a number of functions including; assisting us to know more about each organisation, serving as a way of sharing and supporting each other but also as a way of giving accountability and feedback to each other. See D.2 for further discussion.

S

Self-Accountability

The basis for our understanding of this concept is rooted in love, trust, openness, self-care, self-limitation, self-management, self-organization and interdependence. As such, it transcends but does not supplant the concept of responsibility to oneself and to the ecosystem. In practice it is manifested in open communication regarding commitments to the AC ecosystem and its processes and the use of AC funds. It is intimately linked to the diversity of circumstances found in each of AC partner organizations (see C2. Ethical Principles), and in the interest of both self-care and interdependency it requires timely honest assessments and communication of each partner's ability to achieve their commitments.

Self-Care

Care, and care of the self and each other is an important political objective for the members of AC. Self-care means taking care of AC and the ‘health’ of each organisation and its people. Self-care is different from being self-serving; it is a generative, collective and supportive action in a time when we are pushed to disregard our own ‘health’ for the purposes of production and outputs.

Self-Limitation

In order for decentralisation, mutualism and trust to function in AC, organisations and individuals would have to limit themselves to only what’s best for all involved. This means that each should take only what one needs and contribute as they can. This will not be controlled or enforced by the group but can only be managed by the self.

Self-Organisation

Self­-Organisation is the decentralised coordination of our activities as the AC by delegating responsibility to all of the organisations in AC. In so doing the work is shared and the decisions are non­hierarchical.

Shared Management / Governance

Similar to self-organisation, but refers directly to the shared responsibility of governance and the structure by which we share the different roles and responsibilities this concerns the AC network, within the self­-limitations of each partner. The non-hierarchical system of rotational responsibility is part of the mechanism for shared management and governance concept. [Based on comment by Abdallah Silesu, April 2017]

Self-Sustainability.

This serves as the cornerstone of AC. In AC, sustainability does not only refer to financial sustainability in the sense of always having enough funds but also refers to rethinking what it means to sustain the intentions of the work we do. Self-sustainability refers to relying on internal valuations of sustenance, rather than external, conventional ideas of value, resources and success. Further it focuses on the importance of collective input and reliance on one another for sustainability. This includes care and interdependence of our sustenance, not only in funds but in other resources as well. See B.2 for further discussion..

Solidarity

‘Oneh’ in Arabic means solidarity/reciprocity, helping each other to carry out tasks that are individually impossible. To be human is in question at all times. Being human right now implies a continuous struggle with the fragmentation that capitalism perpetuates. Solidarity is to be aware of this and to take a stand upon it. Solidarity is of the other, because the other is also oneself. Solidarity is knowing that you are walking along with everyone else.

Study

Study is a kind of practice of reflection and possibly spending time with each other, with material, information, and with our work in a process of unlearning/learning and striving to better understand what we do and our worlds. Study is a way to reflect on our work and is implemented as a substitute for the convention of reporting in funding, study suggests that we contemplate and give thought to our practice, the practice of others. Importantly, study does not need to produce a ‘result’, ‘thing’ or a ‘credit’; in the spirit of open source knowledge and solidarity sharing with others is a crucial aspect of study. See B.3 for further discussion. Study can be broken down into:

• Active study: it is at the same time a theoretical reflection and a concrete practice.

  • -Words that walk.

• Collective study: Collective study is done with others and shared with others

• Self study: Self-study is study of the self. Like self-care, self-study is about studying the AC network and the work we do as the ‘self’. It is not self-indulgent, but rather a self-reflexive, self-critical process.

Sustainability

Sustainability is considered in global terms. The principles of the AC reflect a holistic approach that includes degrowth as a practice that is necessary for the sustainability of human beings on the planet. See de-growth and self-sustainability. [Based on comment by Abdallah Silesu, April 2017]

T

Time Strike

Time Strike is not only a slogan but also a mechanism proposed for AC to support our power to change our relationship to time. In other words, it’s a call for a strike against the current use of time - living from one deadline to another, being busy, feeling anxious and overwhelmed which harms our well-being and interpersonal relations. We should therefore create different time, real time, time for activities that make us feel alive. It’s the beginning of building our own rhythm in our practices.

Tooling

Tooling refers to various ways of sharing our un/learning processes with others within AC as well as outside of AC. While study as a form of being together and conversation is the core, on-going activity of AC, it is important to share what we are studying outside of the group. This way, tooling replaces reporting and demonstrational practices.

Translocal

Translocal refers to localised embeddedness with deep connections to the wider world. AC is translocal because each organisation has a commitment and connection to its own place, but through AC it is connected and works with a wider geography of people, ideas and practices.

Trust

Trust is one of the key aspects of the relations between those in AC. Trust is the primary point to which the network may turn at points of difficulty.

Love, respect, confidence and motivation are essential elements in a continuing process of developing trust. AC requires permanent high levels of trust, and good communication is key to allowing trust to continue to grow in order to enrich institutional and personal relationships and to avoid doubts and fears. Virtual and physical encounters are important tools. Affinity plays also an important role, creating trust in an organic and unforced way, communication gives us the opportunity to discover affinity with others and to find answers to our doubts avoiding the diminishing of trust. Trust implies responsibilities related to the effort of being connected to the network. It is important to feed our own communication as the AC organization in order to keep each other updated and to generate trust between us for the development of encounters and sharing.

U

Unlearning / Learning

Unlearning is the act of changing paradigms. It entails rethinking the things we have learned within conventional and restrictive learning environments. To unlearn is to question preconceived, and assumed ‘truths’. In so doing we (re-)learn alternatives and better understand our own assumptions. This is important for developing AC and our own work, which seeks social change and therefore seeks to imagine a different world.

W

Wealth

see commonwealths

The Ethical Principles, as outlined here, form the DNA of Arts Collaboratory and the point to which we return whenever we encounter new questions and challenges in our working process. Ethical Principles are for a self-regulatory system, which is to be distinguished from self-control and policing.

It is important to state that the Arts Collaboratory Ethical Principles are not the moralistic rule which we need to obey, but which we consolidate and adopt as we practice them. Ethics is a process. Open mechanism serves as the basis of the workings of the organisation.

Inherent in AC is an attempt to shift the paradigm of what ‘lack of resources’ means. Questions, uncertainties, and doubts that revolve around the ‘lack of resources’ discourse are transformed into the development of power in valuing and in revaluing the existing resources that are not monetary or financial. The making of a Resource Map (See D.2) is part of the strategy for achieving sustainability, and highlighting non-monetary resources while at the same time embodying the possible output of the sustainability process.

Sustainability is thus a condition which captures the struggle and the process of defining, redefining, and experimenting with each member’s definition of themselves. It is a practice which expresses AC’s readiness for being in a state of perpetual invention and for decolonizing the existing power relationships. What emerges from this process is a series of choices, speculations and lessons that can be used to write our own history and future.

At the same time, however, AC acknowledges the need for monetary resources that are still obtained through “traditional” methods such as fundraising. Although AC works in shifting the paradigm of funding and the existing power dynamic within the funding scene, AC is also aware of its position within the existing paradigm. The need for fundraising is acknowledged. How to go about it remains the question. See Section E.3.2.c Fundraising.

Arts Collaboratory celebrates openness. Openness is our ethic to share knowledge publicly and to 'invite' others into the ecosystem. Openness also allows each of us to dissolve, disappear or reduce in the need for certain resources from the AC. This can be seen as a self-checking system, which then allows other organisations to join, to bring in new resources and receive support when needed.

• AC is a decentralised, translocal organization. Entanglement and non-hierarchical relationships are two of the main characters of the ecosystem.

• Decisions are made through consensus and an active study of dissensus and power is dissolved through sharing.

• Arts Collaboratory runs by shared-management and shared-governance. We all can give mutual support to address hierarchies in our own organisations;

• AC values the diversity of all members, taking advantage of its quality as an ‘unnatural network’. In the same vein, it also embraces the diversity of commitments of all members and provides room for the diversity of the members’ shared-determination;

• AC is dedicated to critical thinking and deep collaboration.

• We take learning and unlearning processes in common and as the core of our spirit. We call learning and unlearning ‘study’ that we want to build as our habit. This means, we remain open to self-reflexive and contextual thinking. The emphasis on study invites the responsibility for sharing what one learns or unlearns: Tooling (see section E) what we study is also a key for our operation and forms a radical pedagogic method, which in turn lets us build our capacity and lets us share our radical imaginations with others;

• We are dedicated to critical hospitality (distinguished from the service providing hospitality in tourism) and a critical notion of friendship and conviviality. Our relations are not social capital, that should be measured and commodified;

• We take conversation as the best means for learning and relating to each other. This allows us to study with a focus on process rather than on production. The conversation also makes it possible to stay vulnerable and honest;

• This also means that we value discomfort rather than comfort in our relations and collaborative works;

• Trust is the basis of our relations. We have a strong faith in abilities as well as in failures, because what we aim for is a network as a space for radical imagination;

• Inherent in the trust is collective risk-taking practices, which can pervade AC with flexibility and the willingness to permit constant mutation, change, and re-evaluation;

• We value experiments and serious playfulness;

• Arts Collaboratory is based on care, which works against the system of punishment, exclusion and indifference. In doing so, reciprocity or mutualism serve as the basic principle. The idea of self-limitation accompanies it: your share is also based on the consideration of others and in order to share you may need to limit your own (in)take;

• We take reciprocity, or our sense of reciprocity, as a practice, which would precipitate the development of solidarity. Solidarity thus can be defined as a mutual feeling as well as a space where certainty amidst uncertainty could be created.

Sustainability is the primary concern within the AC ecosystem. It is a condition and a process which incorporates the determination of each organisation. It has always been referred to as the capacities for self-sustainability and self-determination.

It not only denotes a reason or a means by which to live but also an avenue for making sense and valuing the various forms of the existing discrepancies among the AC members. The value of the ecosystem lies in how each member shows their willingness to take care of, and at once acknowledges their inter-dependency to each other.

Sustainability is most of the time measured in how well an organisation can survive, i.e: goes on, and mainly in terms of money. However, in AC, sustainability is looked at in its multiplicity and interwoven layers, since an organisation is not only dependant on monetary resources but also on intangible resources (such as experience, knowledge, etc.) and relies greatly on the relations it maintains within its community and its context, in order to sustain the intentions of the work it does.

The shift towards degrowth and ecological sustainability is very much linked to the idea of working towards self-sustainability for the organization and the ecosystem. This involves a shift towards qualitative content rather than quantitative, strengthening rather than growing, caring rather than exploiting and exhausting.

In that regard, it is equally important for an AC organization to work on its internal structure (exposing power dynamics inside the organization for example; placing values such as care and studying at the center as part of the day-to day practice), rather than the structure of its funding. It is also necessary to be aware of its surroundings, namely other organizations working in the same field and to nurture the spirit of openness towards the different communities. This is especially true since in the precarious context where arts and social work reside, the survival of an organization depends to a great extent on the informal relations it maintains with its community (through emotional support, non-waged labor, networking, etc.).

Arts Collaboratory generates and sustains itself through commonwealths. Commonwealths do not only include money and knowledge but also: affection, care, energy, time, aesthetic opinions, critiques[9] and other tangible and intangible resources. We go beyond money and knowledge in order to subvert the concept that the (so called) ’global south’ ‘lacks resources’. We believe that resources are not lacking: it’s just that the definition of resource lacks ethics and radical imagination.

Arts Collaboratory believes that commonwealths are co-owned and co-generated by all. Arts Collaboratory is an eco-system that generates its wealth through intra-action and inter-action with other parties. Each member is regarded as an autonomous node while at once being interdependent with the others. Differences such as time, value, distance, language, empathy and silence, are rooted in our various contexts and are acknowledged as valid and human factors to shape and inform the modes of contribution of each member to the network. Arts Collaboratory is not a static pocket but a rhizomatic living system that intra-acts and inter-acts with new external things.

There are a variety of ways to contribute to the commonwealth. We propose that ‘funding applications’ be replaced in order to decolonize “art and culture by developing new and interdependent forms of critique and aesthetics, as well as new art forms themselves and attention to experiments in indigenous traditions.”[10] Based on new paradigms we work towards a sustainable future for our organizations and towards a future that is full of commonwealths.

The Time Strike is a mechanism to support our power to change the way we use time and transform our way of working within ‘project economy’ into sustainable and radically imagined activities.

The Time Strike Pot is a tool to develop self care and also to take a step further in the activities related with sustainability process and different ways of conviviality. It is a way to show solidarity with specific situations that some of the organizations might encounter.

This is really important for shifting paradigms in terms of criteria and judgment, but also is only received by organizations that ask for it when they need this extra aid or when they are ready to go further in a self sustainability process.

Time Strike Funds will be used for facilitating the Lifeline Plan, furthering a different mode of working and living in common, and assist our different rhythms. It is a spirit keeper, building the collective imaginary.

It could be used in different ways:

• As a time to pause activities and do things that we never imagined before; time to do more experiments, time for freedom, and doing a project that has not been funded;

• To study and provide space for your ‘own-rhythm practices’: for active, radical imagination and spare time for study; or as a mixture of investment and active study: to go deeper into your sustainable plan;

• As a time for the organisation to break away from the routine/daily boringness of life.

Each member can call for a Time strike of maximum 32,000 EUR.

Please refer to Attaya’s guidelines regarding the requirements for a Time Strike request.

In the current way capitalism is practiced, we are accustomed to think and act in ways that lead to maximizing profit, aiming for bigger outputs while keeping our expenses as low as possible. In the not-for-profit context, this can translate into seeking more funding, partnerships, establishing new activities and programmes, calculating success through external indicators such as audience numbers, etc..

This quest is often at the cost of our body, our social and learning time, and our spirit. Additionally, many of the member organisations in Arts Collaboratory fulfill and/or feel compelled to fulfill multiple roles that in other realities are taken on by governments, educational institutions, etc. Therefore, the pressure on each organisation is out of balance with its size, and many are under threat of burnout.

Instead of complying with this trend, Arts Collaboratory proposes degrowth (see vocabulary) as a sustainable and viable alternative. A principle that reflects how AC envisions budget and planning.

In order to practice un-learning and to provide a healthier picture of the ‘cost’ of each activity, we are building the habit of measuring the amount of time spent on these activities, alongside the financial costs. Activities are considered in relation to labour (visible and invisible) and time, and what it does to our life.

Arts Collaboratory is not an externality to the members that compose it, rather it functions as an eco-system, interconnected in terms of reflection, activities, and structure.

The relevance of each organisation to its local environment, as well as the value the translocal collaboration brings to that reality is reflected in the way the budget is conceived and managed: The funds of AC are collectively owned, belonging to the whole eco-system and not to one organisation in particular.

The Lifeline Plans replace what is known as a funding application. While conventional funding applications obey the logic of production, expansion, and productivity in the face of judgemental evaluation—approval or non-approval—this system draws from the ethical principle of inclusivity and care, and makes a plan that celebrates life and living processes. It does not shy away from experimentation and interrogation, leaving open the door for trial and error.

The Lifeline Plans that we create, become ‘lifelines’ which reflect all the interests, needs and priorities of the organizations that form the Arts Collaboratory and serve as a kind of foundation for the network. The plans serve as a readily available main reference which can be used to learn about the activities of the members of the network.

The Lifeline Plans are written for a period of minimum 5 years, the agreed time that each organization will receive funding from within AC.

In 2015, AC secured funding from DOEN for a 3-year period, with a high possibility of a renewal for an additional 2-years. This was a guarantee to enable Arts Collaboratory to start building sustainability without a competitive or (self-) exploitative scheme.

This proposal invited all the current Arts Collaboratory members to create a Lifeline Plan of maximum 5 pages.

It was requested that the Lifeline plans include the following details:

1. Articulate the resources already generated by each organisation by creating a Resource Map (see section D2 for full details of the Resource Map);

2. Discuss ‘life-lines’ (instead of deadlines) and ways to survive long-term by creating a Lifeline Proposal that includes long term thinking on the sustainable survival of our organisations (create a timeline to articulate how we are thinking long term);

3. Budget (see section D3 for details): At the moment, the funds available are equally set between the current members of the AC ecosystem at 75,000 Euro per year for a period of 5 years. The usage of the funds is two-folds: a max. of 50,000 Euro could be used to fuel the life-line of each member, while the rest is destined for the permanent activities and working groups of AC (Assembly, Banga Meetings, communication, ETP, etc.).

4. The Lifeline plan is one of the investments that each organization gives in terms of imagination for sustainability, it is an exercise to imagine how to survive with the possibility of using some specific resources and walking with the other experiences of AC Members.

The plans were submitted to DOEN and a commitment for funding for 3 years was given to all of the organizations.

See Appendix for the Guidelines to develop a lifeline plan.

Keeping in line with the idea of care and the individual need of each member to follow their own rhythm. The collective pot could be used to “help-out” a member that need to “borrow” money in order to survive, live, and/ or work towards their sustainability.

Advance payment is seen as lending a hand to one of the member that takes an engagement to give back the amount to the collective pot.

Each member can ask for an advanced payment of maximum 50,000 EUR.

Please refer to Attaya’s guidelines for the requirements for requesting an advanced payment.

D.3.1 Philosophy

D.3.2 Allocation of funds

Tentative budget division, AC June Working group, Utrecht 2015

Together, the AC ecosystem has decided on the ways that the funds will be allocated:

Each member organization (except DOEN) receives the same amount: 75,000 euros per year. This amount reflects two components:

Institutional Funds

• Each year up to 50,000 euros will be allocated to each organization as institutional funds, to be used for the organisation’s own lifeline plan (see self-limitation).

Collective Pot

• An additional 25,000 euros (21,000 in 2015) will be allocated to each organization to be used as part of the de-centralized collective pot (each organization can contribute some of its institutional funding to the collective pot if the organization decides to do so). AC members can use the funds from the collective pot for the following activities Self Organized Assembly, Banga, Experimental Tooling Projects (ETPs), Fundraising, and Communication, but also for Collective savings, which has been conceived of as a way to prepare for unforeseen eventualities and thus to consolidate AC self-determination. (See Collective Savings below.) Time-strike and Advance payment.

A shared budget sheet has been created that encompasses both the finances per activity and the time investment per activity for each organization. It is available to all of the organizations for individual and collective study.

The funds of AC, although collectively owned, are decentralized, each of the members keeping part of it. The use of the Budget and the funds is practiced through the prism of self-limitation. This will be particularly true in relation to the institutional funds provided to each organization by AC.

Currently, AC budget is still being covered almost exclusively by the funds provided by DOEN who has committed for a 3-year period; negotiations are being undertaken for an additional 2-year. Steps to locate additional income are being researched by the Fund-raising Working Group.

In total, each organization will receive AC funds for institutional purposes for a period of maximum 5 years (or a maximum of 250,000 EUR over 5 years).

In line with the ethical principle of attending to the diversity of situations and challenges faced by each organisation towards its self-sustainability, members were given the option to exceptionally request their 3-years of institutional funds in one lump sum, instead of annual instalments. This allowed for members to decide on the payment method that best suits the needs and conditions of their Lifeline Plan.

Ethical principles of self-limitation and collective care should be kept in mind by each organization while forecasting their annual budget. In particular, the amount that will be used for institutional purposes. In order for decentralisation, mutualism and trust to function in AC, organizations and individuals would have to limit themselves to only what is best for all involved. This means that each should take only what one needs and contribute as they can. This will not be controlled or enforced by the group but can only be managed by the self.

It is worth stressing that if organisations reach self-sustainability before the 5 year period, it is assumed that they will subscribe to self-limitation, and will still receive funds for collective activities. Also it needs to be stressed that discontinuation of financial support to any organisation within the network is by no means equal to exclusion from the network.

Self Organized Assembly, Banga, Experimental Tooling Projects (ETPs), Fundraising, and Communication

All logistical costs related to these activities will be taken from the collective pot. The groups involved will organize the activities, lodging, local transport and eating arrangements in their country, but each organization will contribute to the costs relating to their participation using funds from their share of the collective pot. In some cases upper limits for the costs have been established and can be found in the Administration Group (Attaya) Guidelines.

Collective Savings

An important means to build trust, solidarity and sustainability within and outside of the AC network.

Within our budgets, each AC member is to dedicate some funds to an immaterial shared ‘pot’ (an account) for times of emergency, crisis or particular needs for care. This way of managing the resources revolve around the possible anxiety and fear of whether they could lead us to sustainability.

Collective Savings might not just contain money, but time and other resources as identified in the Resource Map. The saving fund can contain the returned funds that are not used by the partner for the current year.

Rather than bringing the notion of Collective Savings back to the concepts of individualism, we take it as an idea and means by which we practice generosity. Within the generosity holds the thinking that we value imagination and speculation in relation to the future. It is a space where we transform the ethics: mutualism, interdependency, coexistence, valuing personal rhythm- into an actual practice

The saving mechanism hereinafter has been proposed by the Administration working group (aka Attaya)

• Attaya suggests that each institution saves at least 10% of each year’s collective money.

• From discussions in the Kyrgystan assembly, Attaya thinks that we need to increase the percentage of savings to 15% for next years.

• Each institution can decide to make extra savings from their own institutional budget. You need to inform your attiya and he/she will mark it in google drive sheet.

• The leftovers funds in the collective pot will also be transferred to the savings at the end of each year. You need to inform your attiya and he/she will mark it in google drive sheet.

The above organogram was developed during the Kyrgyzstan Assembly after lengthy discussions and debates. It departs from the agreement that was made in the Senegal Assembly to shift the current paradigm of funding and to reframe accountability.

Self-accountability is organised as an alternative to the ’upward accountability’ approach which emphasizes showcasing and/or demonstrating ‘success stories’ in reporting to funders and donors. Instead, the current AC structure relies on collective study while trying to remain relevant, open and sharing towards local artists, publics, activists etc

As such, accountability is practiced (1) as a form of care towards each other, (2) as a working structure and (3) to those outside of AC including local networks, public, and funders. In this practice we honor and care for each other by taking responsibility for completing our commitments to one another and to the AC ecosystem, we recognize accountability as an integral part of self-organizing and self-management, and we show respect and appreciation for the public, networks and funders outside of the AC ecosystem by openly sharing our accomplishments and failures according to our ethical principles. Our trust in each other enables us to openly recognize our limitations and to ask others for help or understanding when necessary in order to complete our commitments.

A few examples include changing the idea of ‘measuring success‘ into a tool for collective studying through the Resource map (see section D.2). This Resource Map is the essential base not only for accountability towards each other within the ecosystem, but also towards the outside.

Also, in cases where one of the AC members has to deal with problems, financially, administratively or otherwise, it goes without saying that principles of study and care apply. Practically speaking this may mean that AC provides support in terms of assistance from regional-based group, Triangles (E.3.1.b) or during Bangas (E.3.1.c), or Assembly (E.3.1.a) depending on the emerging needs and circumstances.

Building up such a mechanism of governance and accountability that can be practiced collectively by 25 organisations across the globe while at the same time fostering the sustainability of each of the participating members, requires radical imagination as well as collective effort from those who are involved.

The realisation of such a mechanism entails subscription to ethics of trust, care, openness and decentralisation, as well as a process of mutual learning based on collective conversation.

However it is worth considering here the challenges faced by AC in terms of self-organization in the ecosystem.

Indeed time and resources are not infinite and can put a strain on the already overworked member organizations. Additionally, geographical distance remains a concrete obstacle when addressing issues that require immediate attention.

While there is no single solution to these practical but complex challenges, especially if we are to balance the aspirations of dissolving centralized power while at the same time maintaining trust and caring for each other, a structure/scheme was developed after the working group session in Utrecht and the Kyrgyzstan Assembly. It is being practiced at the moment and will keep on being refined and fed by our radical imagination.

We are also still working at optimizing the use of technology and the online platform of AC (again not without its own limitation due to the discrepancy of internet access in the different regions) and to work with triangles and regional study groups.

Another challenge awaiting Arts Collaboratory is the choice of its legal status, that might determine the reach of its future operations (in terms of fundraising, money distribution, etc.) It is still an unresolved issue that will need further discussion and debate. To this date, the following have been undertaken:

Before the Kyrgyzstan Assembly a temporary working group, SOLE (Self-organization and Legal Entity), later transformed into Legal Entity, was constituted to research the options available to legally establish Arts Collaboratory as an autonomous entity that could be co-owned by all the members. The group consisted of VANSA, Crater Invertido, Casco and DOEN and hired an external consultant, Alejandra Montiel. The outcome of their research was presented during the assembly (see appendix).

The option to merge all the organisations together quickly appeared technically unfeasible. It was also rejected during the Assembly, the members reacted strongly against merging into one entity all together and not retaining their individuality.

The option to create a new entity all-together also seemed entrenched in technical difficulties although not impossible, worries about costs and administration remain at the center of the debate.

Finally, the preferred option given by the external consultant was a “non-legal” approach, using the model of the European Union as a precedent. She proposed that the Arts Collaboratory be considered as a union with a constitutive document and administrative procedures organs.

The discussions that ensued during the Assembly were animated and the second option was discussed at length with concrete possibilities, i.e: creating a holding or a trust. However, objections were raised against both options on the grounds of ethics, inclusivity, reproduction of colonialism/ western hierarchies. It was agreed to continue the research through the Legal Entity working group.

Key to the Lifeline Plans are the Resource Maps of each organization. They are a way for AC members to share with and inform each other of their resources and therefore also areas where they might need particular support from AC in order to achieve a more sustainable and resourceful life. The narrative in the Resource Map visually reflects the ebbs and flows of the organisational life of each organisation and of the AC ecosystem. This includes falling short of expectations and the creative ways the individual organisations and the AC ecosystem cope with vulnerable circumstances.

The maps attempt to capture the recognised capacities of the AC members and other forms of capacities that might be left unknown without the illustration of this Resource Map. While aiming to describe the resources of each organisation, the maps also manifest the quality of the relationships among the members. The organizational maps are active maps; they will be renewed many times as long as AC exists.

These maps also reflect to what extent each organization is embedded in their context, in their struggles and the effect of their programs in their communities.

The materials of the maps consist of, but are not limited to: knowledge, experience, capacities, desire, commitments, facilities, influence, affection, access, people, affinities, vision, ambition, dreams. This includes all the relations with other organisations, groups, and communities in our locality that we share struggles and processes with.

As the Resource Maps not only contain sustainability plans but also the budget and financial reports of each organisation, the financial aspects of the AC organization also undergo a similar process of collective discussion as a form of care of the network to its individual members

The importance of building and developing these Maps is to share the knowledge and complexity of the projects, activities, struggles, programs and movements that are affecting our conditions in our individual contexts and in our collective relationship.

The Resource Maps become tools for building awareness based on affinities and our needs, our ethics and our visions. The maps are an open source tool for other organisations, communities, groups and individuals to visualise what opportunities we might offer and in which areas we might need support. This allows the AC ecosystem to generate decentralised and natural links without the need for any of the participating organisations of Arts Collaboratory to act as mediators—we all are mediators. In this sense, the Resource Maps are key to the active exercise of decentralisation and devolution of power, while allowing collective empowerment that is rhizomatic and expands itself.

Resource maps were included in the first round of Lifeline Plans. This was the first attempt of each organization to identify the individual resources that can be included in a comprehensive resource map of the AC network. They were based on the Arts Collaboratory Ethical Principles, and encourage sharing and caring for others rather than promoting or showcasing achievements. However, it became obvious that there is a need for the creation of a common comprehensive map for collective study and to be able to identify resources for the permanent activities of the network and our sustainability.

The Resource Map working group was established in the Kyrgyzstan assemble and is developing a matrix in which we can organize all of the resources and the needs that have been identified by the AC ecosystem thereby creating a better understanding of the current situation and providing an effective way to put them to practical use by the AC community.

The Internet is the main medium that will be used to store and share the map. It is being developed in different stages. The first will be an extensive questionnaire. The second, an approximation of a visual version, will be developed and then it will become an autonomous platform.

Permanent activities are the heart of AC ecosystem, it is where we experience different ways of study, care and a constant search for the sustainability of the member organizations and AC based on the Lifeline Plans. These activities are Assembly, Lifeline (by Triangles), Banga and Experimental Tooling Projects.

Mechanisms for self-determination and shared governance

E.1 Philosophy: Self-accountability and study

E.2 Challenges faced

E.3 Cooperative entity through the working groups

E.4 Membership, growth and openness of AC

One of the ways of working efficiently in such a large self-managed structure such as the AC is to work in smaller groups. Individuals from member organizations are encouraged to choose one of the established working groups based on specific desires, interests and (self-limited) capacities.

This being said, the formations of the working groups is not to be regulated by the logic of delegation or representation. It is more about opening ways for individual members to actively ’take matters into their own hands’.

The framework of self-limitation, self-care and self-accountability in the current approach, implies that silence by any of the core members in the network also signifies an important component in the learning process that occurs in Arts Collaboratory: silence does not always necessarily mean absence, listening to silence may also articulate a negotiation of the disparate and the common in different ways.

The tactical character of these small working groups entails sensitivities to time and power accumulation, whereas its aim should be oriented to common practice without losing sight of other forms of struggle within AC and elsewhere. Therefore, some groups are temporary in nature and exist as long as an urgent need exists and there is affinity for the issue, other groups have a rotating composition, making place for new organizations who wish to take part in it.

Currently, the working groups ensuring the management of Arts Collaboratory are divided into permanent activities, permanent groups and temporary working groups:

Banga means time and space in Luganda, a Ugandan language, and means ‘tide’ in Lithuanian.

Issa Samb’s studio. Dakar, 2015

While the Assembly takes place annually and with participation by all the AC member organisations, Banga (Knowmatic Meetings) are small-scale, sporadically held meetings based on a ‘call for gathering’ for friendship, self-care, reciprocal support, and collective study on a particular subject/issue. Banga can take different forms including 1) ‘advice meeting’ for getting advice from the AC members on a particular issue that a member is dealing with, 2) ‘collective study meeting’ for delving into a topic, 3) ‘event meeting’ to be held next to an event that a hosting organisation organizes or attend and 4) skills sharing meeting.

Like the Assembly, the spirit of Banga is for working, conversing, and learning being together, not showcasing or promoting. Nonetheless, tooling this collective study/learning process for wider sharing is crucial, as well as being embedded in a local context.

The Banga is a “form of replacement for the institutional anchoring of important world intuitions at one place, hence a unique postcolonial approach in which instead of funding structures, mobility is funded, which lead to heavy reliance on know-how instead of a heavy reliance on institutions and structures.”[11]

Practical Framework

• Each member who wants to call for Banga should look at the AC Resource Maps to see where resources to support them could be found;

• Partners should also make a ‘self-diagnosis’ first through Study Buddying (interview chains and skyping AC partners) in order to check if a Banga would be resourceful;

• A rotativing Banga team/committee will be formed (to be selected in the next Assembly), and will consist of 3 AC organisations in order to decide on which Banga calls to support. Decisions will be made in line with our Ethical Principles—including the value of self-limitation, non-hierarchical self-organisation—this team will look at whether the meeting should take place with the AC members and whether there is a translocal benefit. The meeting could be with other local organisations or practitioners. AC will also investigate how Banga could benefit the AC in general in light of its resource map;

• The actual organisation of a Banga is to be done by the host organisation, including the travel arrangements;

• Each Banga budget is a maximum of 8,000 Euros, which will be used to cover all of the costs of the Banga meeting. These funds typically come from the Collective Pot of the host organization (the organization that is calling for the Banga) or, by mutual agreement, they could come from the collective pots of the other participating organizations. If the costs of the Banga exceed the 8,000 Euros the host organization will have the choice of either paying the difference from its own funds (not the collective pot funds), raising the additional funding from sources outside of the AC ecosystem or requesting permission from the entire AC ecosystem to use additional funds from the Collective Savings.

The Triangle is a mechanism of study established to generate a continuous reflection about each of our Lifeline Plans, this is a type of openness and accountability and a way to create a permanent critical space among the organizations that are part of each Triangle.

The heart of the Triangles are three organizations that commit to habitually developing their own refletions about each other’s Lifeline Plans. These reflections will be shared every three months in the TAM TAM - Newsletter, one of the communications tools that we use to share our rhythms: (see E.3.2.a).

Each organization in the triangle:

• Translates its own Lifeline into English

• Reads the lifeline of both of the other organizations within the triangle.

• Asks friendly, constructive and critical questions

• Coaches and supports the other organizations as necessary

• Shares its own difficulties, failures, successes

One way to to balance limitations in terms of time, resources, and geographical distance is to optimize the use of the online platform of AC (again not without its own limitation due to the discrepancy of internet access in the different regions) in order to work in the Triangles.

Principles for Triangles

• Inside the Triangle

It is expected that in the meetings of the triangles the harvesting process will be implemented. (See Section E.3.1.b/Tools Developed by AC/Harvesting)

• Each Triangle

  • Is self-organized

  • Is aware of different types of resources available within its own ecosystem.

  • Watches out for inclusiveness of diversity and differences of groups in the ecosystem.

  • Shares what has been important for each organization during the past period.

  • Is a place in which radical imagination can occur depending on the needs of each organization

  • Is aware of AC ethical principles

  • Is aware of and try to localize the AC Identity

As a replacement of an Annual Institutional Review, AC will undertake a yearly peer-review using the Triangle method of organisation to organisation conversations and mentorship. The Assembly will be the ‘Annual General Meeting’, and the occasion for studying together core issues and questions that emerge in each of our plans during the year.

Spirit of free school, big annual family gathering, retreat, visits.

The Assembly is a key moment as well as a key device for Arts Collaboratory to operate as a translocal organisation according to our ethical principles.

It provides a temporary space for all the organizations to gather, live together, share experiences, address issues and challenges in a mode of collective study, and collective engagement in decision-making processes. It also plays a crucial role as a laboratory for studying together ways for individual organisations to navigate local dynamics while collectively envisioning ways to deal with unfolding challenges in and beyond AC.

It permits the nurturing of our sense of empathy and the galvanizing of an ‘energy pot’ comprised of our lived and inherited experiential knowledge of various historical contexts.

Through this extensive time of physically being together, we also develop common languages and enrich our commonwealths.

The Assembly is self-organised by the AC members and therefore the moment when we exercise self-governance and develop forms of accountability. It provide a practical training ground to exercise self-organization and horizontality.

It is the perfect setting for new members to experience and understand Arts Collaboratory’s intricacies on an emotional, ideological and practical level.

Practical framework

• The Assembly takes place once a year, for at least 10 full days (excluding travel time); The 2016 Assembly in Kyrgyzstan took place in June and the 2017 Assembly in Costa Rica is scheduled from June 11th to June 22nd.

• The Assembly takes place in a different country each time, where at least one of the organizations of AC is based.

• The Assembly Working Group is the one in charge of organising and facilitating the Assembly. The hosting team(s) should be an integral part of the group which also includes members from other organizations that signed up during the previous assembly.

• During the Assembly, working sessions are facilitated by the facilitation group. Specialized sessions are also facilitated by the members of specific working groups according to the issue to be addressed. The role of facilitation is not to make decisions but rather to make progress happen.

• It’s important that we challenge the boundaries between host and guests. The hosting team and Assembly Working Group creates a structure to facilitate the Assembly and the stay of the AC members. However, members should take part in coordinating the Assembly, especially the reproductive labour such as cooking, cleaning, taking care of each other. As such, even before the Assembly, some tasks are delegated to each member such as: ticket booking and purchasing, visa application, etc.

• Each member should pay for their ticket, visa, and accomodation from the collective pot.

• Additional assembly funds have been budgeted for the remaining expenses: A maximum of 31,860 EUR.

Main Objectives

• The assembly is the occasion to collectively study our Sustainability Lifeline Plans as well as to (re)-visit our Ethical Principles; and our collective entity (governance).

• It is an opportunity for the triangles to meet, work together and share their processes.

• The assembly nurtures the desire for collaborative projects and exchanges among the AC organisations.

• Time and space are allocated to develop the tooling methods for sharing what we learn with others;

• We evaluate Banga Meetings that had took place and the tools generated by them, and address possible future meetings;

• As part of the collective study, we visit and explore other communities and organisations that are part of the local environment, outside and inside the field of art, as a mean to mutually transform and extend our affinity lines;

• The assembly allows us to engage in non-discursive and non-verbal moments where our emotions and bodies are directly involved, experimenting communication methods. This could be in a form of party, dancing, picnic, or ‘emotional assembly’;

• We visit and evaluate the common resources that are tangible, intangible, imaginary and material;

• We study the resource map and determine the need for continuing the work of the Temporary Working Groups and we look for ways of rotating the participation in these groups while implementing self-care and self-limitation.

• We dedicate part of our time for updating and fundraising new resources;

• Lastly, we decide collectively on the location for the next Assembly, following proposition(s) by members

Techniques used during Assembly:

The techniques described below are not used exclusively during the Assembly but also while working remotely. They are however better exemplified and experienced during an Assembly.

• Small groups. As much as possible, we try to work in small groups while allowing for key moments to be shared all-together. Small groups allow for intimate setting, faster-pace, the participation of everyone, and in-depth knowledge and understanding of others. The results are always shared with the whole network. The groups vary most of the time so everyone can work with everyone.

• Language. Arts Collaboratory is multilingual and doesn’t recognize one language as prominent. Although, for practical reasons, English is most widely used and spread. Translation and navigating between languages is an ongoing process. As much as possible, all major texts are translated and available in English, French, and Spanish (sometimes also Russians and Arabic). Working within small groups also allows for easier translation and circulation of the conversation. Most of the time, translation is an informal process undertaken by volunteers. AC tries to provide a space where the members can express freely in any language they are most comfortable with.

• Harvesting technique.

• Drawings and maps. The preferred expression mode of Arts Collaboratory, alongside writing and publishing, is drawing and mapping (our constellation, resources, governance model, etc.) Over time, we have renewed our commitment to express ourselves not only in words but also in images and drawings allowing us to visualize our affinities and connections more vividly.

Decision-making process

The Assembly is the ideal time and space to test and experience the potentiality of Arts Collaboratory, the way it is run, and the application of our ethical principles.

In line with our ethical principles of horizontality and openness, consensus is the preferred mode of decision of Arts Collaboratory, agreed on during the Kyrgyzstan Assembly of 2016.

Working groups can move and decide freely but must report to and consult with the general assembly (all the members), especially for major decisions (including usage of budget, doubt on the conformity with the ethical principles, etc.)

Consensus is exercised during plenary sessions of the Assembly, and it is also practiced using e-mails.

Steps to reach consensus were explained during the Kyrgyzstan Assembly and the processes for making decisions outside of the assembly are included in the Internal Communications Guidelines.

The documentation of the Assembly is also based on the methods of tooling that we develop (see E.3).

Mutual Learning

Although the predominant forms for mutual learning in Arts Collaboratory are the Assembly and Banga, we are not limited to them and encourage Radical Imagination of on-going Tooling processes. Tooling can for example, take place through on-going, online requests for collective study or affinity meetings with AC partners (but self limitation here is important too).

What is Tooling?

The traditional reporting process will be replaced with Tools and Collective Study. Instead of hiding mistakes and showcasing ourselves in order to get more money, we will create Tools to honestly share what we learn between ourselves and others.

Tooling expresses what trans-local organisations can do well, without being subjected to agendas of productivism and self-exploitation. This concept is related to the existing and future resources found in each organization.

Tooling is a process of learning and sharing.

Tooling means the transformative and creative capacity to transmit a concept that belongs to one or a few, for others and many. It is a process where Radical Imagination is practiced.

Tooling is not synonymous with use-value. We challenge the concept of usefulness, instead of thinking of what moves us, what affects us. Can we imagine affective tools?

Examples of tools (that can replace reporting) are: Essays, edited transcripts of a conversation or interview, videos, photo-montages, comic strips, poems, recipe books, performance presentations. The key is that the Tool is linked, connected and complementary to our activities and to our experiences when running our programs and activities.

Tooling makes time by giving us tools for learning.

Tools as an Open Resource

All the tools generated will be posted on an online Resource Map. There will not be a selected editor, but the website is trusted as a co-editorial process, which runs by the principle of passion and capacity.

All the tools of Arts Collaboratory will be open source. (copyleft, anti-copyright).

The use of Arts Collaboratory common identity, not the logos of individual organisations, needs to be considered when sharing these tools.

(See Failures, validating (≠ celebrating failure)

Tools developed by AC

1/ Lifeline Guide

The Lifeline guide was thought as a manual, with a series of steps to follow in order for an organization to develop its 5-year lifeline plan.

Most organizations don’t have a long term vision of their budget and activities. Instead, planning depends on the resources they are able to generate. The Lifeline writing exercise pushes an organization to imagine a desirable self-sustainable future (as much as possible) and how they might reach that future given their current resources, while considering possible ways to obtain additional resources for the organization.

The Lifeline Guide is available in the Appendix.

2/ Harvesting Technique

First introduced during the Kyrgyzstan Assembly, this technique allows for a smooth and balanced facilitation of working sessions. Before starting each session, the group chooses a Host to lead the discussion, a Guardian of Process to keep track of the time, a Guardian of Intention to make sure the energy is still flowing and everyone is participating, and a Harvester taking notes and extracting the essence and outputs of the session.

3/ Cascade of Coherence

As explained by Stefano Harney, Tonika Sealy, and Valeria Graziano during the meeting in Casco in June 2015.

This is a useful tool that works for checking correspondence and coherence between rooted struggles, ethics, activities, delivery mechanism and resourcing (labour, affect, money, time). It is generally used to evaluate an activity and/or mechanism according to the values and vision of the group.

(1) The rooted struggles are the point of embarkation, the main reason behind our practices. The struggles can be identified as something that we want to tackle, for example: the prevalent neo-liberalist paradigm.

(2) Ethics is an open principle and an orientation, it serves as an objective that aims to shift the paradigm in our rooted struggle. Ethics should be the antithesis of our rooted struggles.

(3) Activities are the materialization of ethics through collective practices.

(4) Delivery Mechanisms detail the activities.

(5) Resourcing is the material and immaterial support for delivering activities. For example, if an exploitative oil company wanted to support our activities, the cascade of coherence will show that the resource contradicts our rooted struggles and ethics. Should resources follow ethics or ethics follow resources? Or, can resources and ethics create a productive conflict? When there’s a contradiction in the cascade of coherence, we will start to question all elements that interact in the cascade of coherence (and that’s good).

More information about the Cascade of Coherence can be found in the Experimental Tooling Projects Guidelines.

4/ How to reach a consensus

The following steps are used to reach consensus within AC:

1. A proposal is shared with all the members (usually after discussions).

2. Friendly amendments are suggested.

3. The proposal is re-presented with the friendly amendments.

4. Members can agree, stand-aside or block the proposal.

   1. Stand-aside is used to express dissent.

   2. Block is used to refuse a proposal and block its approval. A member blocking the decision would rather leave the group than see it through.

5. A consensus is reached when there is no block.

Within AC, a block is understood more loosely, and AC still has to determine its full meaning. A possibility would be for blocking members to leave the collective activities but still receive core funding.

5/ Other possible tools and/or suggestions

Collective Managerial Tool

We also propose to have a collective managerial tool to monitor expenses and allow for an up-to-date view on the budget (remaining funds).

This should allow for an easier overview of the budget and the expenses, more flexibility and facility in self-managing the collective pot, in particular in terms of time and coordination.

On a later stage, it could also allow for self-management of the collective pot by each member without previous request with a light overview of the expenses by attaya and consultation in case of needs and/ or advice, questions.

Attaya is the senegalese word for the popular African tea ceremony around which care is given, information shared, and disputes are resolved. In Arabic, Attaya stands for “givings or offerings” that are necessarily unconditional.

Created during the Kyrgyzstan Assembly, Attaya, is the working group, in charge of overseeing the budget and facilitating allocations. Each member in the working group is called Attiyya and communicate with a number of AC members, playing the role of direct link.

Attaya will more specifically facilitate the collective administration of the AC collective pot distributed by DOEN to each member and composed of the sum of the collective activities’ budgets.

Until a solid and legal model for governance is settled (see E.2), some of the ‘old’ structure of AC will remain in place in which the “funder”[13], DOEN, directly contracts and transfer the funds to each organisations individually. However, the budget for collective activities, the collective pot, which was handled by DOEN and Hivos until 2015, is now becoming decentralized and divided into smaller quantities. In other words, the AC collective pot is not in one place but it is being kept in 24 AC[14] collective pots.

This mechanism allows for collectively sharing the management of the budget and for a quicker access to resources, without numerous bank transfers or proposal writing.

Each organization can withdraw the funds needed from their part of collective pot in order to pay for the costs of Assemblies, Banga Meetings, ETP’s and Communication costs relating to the AC ecosystem (including the website). When it comes to Banga and ETPs, and for coordination purposes, the member should let their Attiya know. At the end of each year, each member is still required to submit an audited financial report, which will be reviewed by DOEN.

At present time, additional funds are still being provided by DOEN for the assembly, website, communication and fundraising costs (additional from the funds drew from the collective pot).

Bangas, ETPs, advanced payments and time strikes will be based on the AC members’ needs, urgency and the availability of funds in the collective pot. It is not about give and take; it is about caring and sharing as outlined in the AC ethical principles.

AC considers it part of a healthy practice to develop a yearly financial document that is audited by an external accountant and then attached into the Resource Map (D.2), both in terms of creating a sustainable internal financial practice and in terms of accountability towards the outside. The auditing will happen according to local auditing standards and most importantly in working with auditing companies that understand the nature of the creative and self-organisational practice of the network. In case companies with this understanding don’t exist locally, AC will help develop this understanding. Attayas will thus collect all of the individual audited reports, in addition to an audited report for the external expenses of AC and present one unified audited report for all of AC.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B1dvlBDD00WpOGVhMjJQNWVQZHM

Appendix I – Working groups: List & Guidelines

Fund-raising is a critical aspect of the economic aspect of sustainability, which has been identified as the highest principle for the AC ecosystem. The concept of sustainability has been addressed in section B.2. This concept is considered in both affective and economic terms. Since economic challenges are constantly present in the day to day practices of the partner organizations, and sustainability is also directly related to the sustainability of the organisms of the AC Ecosystem itself, the question of how or if the organization can sustain itself as the existing members become un-funded is uncertain. Therefore, a clear position regarding the future is necessary to define. As a step in this direction, in order to address the issue of funding for the AC as an organization, in the assembly in Kyrgyzstan, it was decided that a fundraising group be established to look at how this task might be accomplished within the decentralized structure which is the AC ecosystem.

While the fundraising guidelines outline many if not all of the typical actions involved in fundraising. It is not clear which, if any, direct fundraising process will be implemented, for the AC as an organization. It is also not clear how groups of organizations might apply for specific project funding under the AC “umbrella.”

The guidelines correctly identify the critical relationships between this working group and other working groups that will be required in order to develop a coherent position based on the consensus of the AC members.

It is clear that part of the process for determining which potential funders to approach should involve the use of the Cascade of Coherence.

To subvert the paradigm of reporting to funders and in order to open the space for creation and sharing common resources, the assembly provides ways to manage the active circulation of information and outcomes produced by each organization and each study or working group. It also provides mechanisms for accountability that means that it recognizes and values not only quantitative or financial data but also the work that we do in permanent recognition of our contexts and our challenges, struggles, achievements and un-learnings.

Avoiding conflict and avoiding increase in the amount of work assumed by each organization implies the management of the AC communications mechanisms, which the network established as part of the self-management tools. They include the following:

Internal Communication (accountability)

• Tam Tam/AC Drum (quarterly newsletter):

TAM-TAM is one of our internal communication tools/mechanisms for accountability. It is an internal digital newsletter that is used to update and share important, relevant and synthesized information with the rest of the AC network about ongoing of AC processes; triangles, permanent activities, working groups (permanent and temporary). It is lead by the permanent TAM TAM working group, but each organization and or working group has to develop their own content .

• Mailing list arts-collaboratory@googlegroups.com

The mailing list is a mechanism to share relevant information, share resources and to make collective decisions.

• WhatsApp

The WhatsApp group, AC Family, is a permanent way to share and to keep the love flowing. It is a way of virtually living together and sharing and documenting on a daily basis the personal and affective relationships that are part of the dynamic of the ecosystem. It is an instantaneous way of keeping the conversation alive.

External Communication

• Website

AC as well as the “face” to the outside world. It should communicates and represents the current self-organized structure of AC.

• Brochure

The Brochure will be one of the tools used to communicate what the AC is and what it does. It has not been developed yet.

All the working groups have their own guidelines, describing how they function. (See Appendix I)

These working groups make possible the permanent flow of information that let us know the state of the resources into the network. There are three facilitator working groups to manage communications (TAM-TAM & website), Financial Administration (Attaya) and Fundraising (FUN-raising).

Membership

On a conceptual level, membership to Arts Collaboratory network is open and voluntary. It is built on common affinities and sensibilities of working together. But considering the social and historical transition of AC from a funding-based network to a self-organizing one, financial issues continue to influence the life course of AC in general and its members in particular.

As far as the sustainability of AC is concerned, there is a deep interrelation between its sustenance and is linked to the core being of each organisation and therefore its sustainability is linked to the sustainability of each separate organisation. However, for specific activities like assembly, fundraising processes will be developed. There is a list of contacts that are interested in Arts Collaboratory and that have expressed the will to further research collaboration. This list will be expanded over the coming years. Also, the founding partner Hivos is researching the possibility of continuing support to AC especially in developing new collective ways of obtaining financing.

It is worth stressing that if organisations reach self-sustainability before the 5 year period, they will subscribe to self-limitation, but will continue to receive financing for AC activities (Collective Pot). Also it needs to be stressed that discontinuation of financial support to any organisation within the network is by no means equal to exclusion from the network.

Openness and growth

An important ethical principle of Arts Collaboratory is being open and relevant to both its local networks, publics and societies and towards the translocal community. This openness is enacted in two ways:

• The first is that openness and growth are considered horizontally. This means that the principle is not that AC itself will grow bigger and bigger, but that its reach and participation grow bigger by actively opening up to the broader local and international networks, publics, in short the constituents of each individual organisation. The growth of AC in terms of quality and scope is parallel to a snowball effect. Affinity is continuously formed by the members as they continue to bring in the diversity of practices, knowledge and desires from their community settings. The way each organisation does this is part of the sustainability plan. But also, for example, an important element of Banga meetings is that other organisations and individuals are invited to join and many will be organized to establish study and debate with wider local constituencies. Note: For AC members, growth doesn't mean becoming a huge organization that manages big programs and budgets, but growing downwards as we give back tools to our contexts, giving space for others to break our own paradigms. In that sense we grow and walk together with our struggles.

• The second one is gradual growth of membership. The openness of Arts Collaboratory will be maintained by accepting maximum 1 new member every year. These members will be brought in via the new project funds that DOEN provides for financially supporting socially engaged art organisation’s mid-size projects (8 projects per year, between 15,000 euros and 60,000 euros). This fund is currently part of Arts Collaboratory. The proposal is that DOEN maintains this program and runs it independently, but part of Arts Collaboratory so that this field of work is continuously supported. DOEN has better capacity to run this programme then AC. However there will be an intimate link between the programme and AC: Arts Collaboratory members will support DOEN in the administration and workload of its selection procedure and AC will select its new members out of the pool of selected projects in this fund. New members will be decided in the Assembly.

The paradigm shift faced by the AC ecosystem requires strong rituals and habits to interiorize and live the self-managed model. Establishing and understanding a common rhythm is necessary to keep alive this process. Rhythm is understood as the habit of conversation, studying, and working together.

The temporary groups support this purpose by creating guidelines and following up each process when it is needed.

At the moment these working groups are:

• Assembly Guideline

• Banga

• Lifeline

• Legal Entity

• Resource Map

• AC Presentation Group

• Tooling

• Documentation

• Internal communication

• Network Health Group (Guardian of Intention)

• AC Working Document Editorial Group

Each working group has created guidelines with information regarding the topic that they are responsible for, which can be found in the Appendix.

The members of these temporary working groups rotate annually (See E.3.1.a).

(TEMPORARY) GUIDELINE

Working Group: Breyner, Ferdi, Jumana, Sally, Ying

This is a temporary proposal on how to document and archive AC’s working process. The goal of having clear guidelines about documentation is to create a common ground for what kinds of things are important to be documented. We like to think through a common digital space with a clear archival structure that working groups can use to archive their working processes and materials. An accessible archival structure can help to make each other’s work internally transparent, make our knowledge easily transferrable to new members and smoothen the working process.

This proposal is temporary, as ideally, this archival structure would become part of the website. Until that moment comes, we like to reorganize the google drive.

Click here to access the AC Documentation & Archive at Googledrive:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B8pqeUYqSVX_ODdZNzd5aGotUVE

We see this drive as a pilot to exercise how to collectively document and archive. As soon as the website is up, we can learn from this process to habituate the practice.

GENERAL INFO

• The capacity of Googledrive free service is very limited, so make sure that the documents you upload is not too large in terms of size and file types (see below for details).

• As we agreed, the network working language is Spanish, English and French. So try to provide translations for the archive that you upload (even if it is just a summary of the document).

WHAT TO DOCUMENT

General

• Photographs/Images (Jpeg. format, max. File size each: 500 kb).

You may use our AC flickr account (Yahoo ID: we@artscollaboratory, password: Artscollaboratory123) and archive the link in the folder. Heads Up: Please note there is a difference between images of your harvests/working materials and images of activities like Assemblies, Banga’s or group (selfie) pictures. Upload your working materials in your working group folders. Upload the activities images on the Flickr.

• Audio (mp3 format, max file size: 4 MB)

Another option is to use your own soundcloud account (but mind you that the capacity is only limited to 3 hours for a free account).

• Video

Due to the limited capacity of the google drive, we propose the following: upload your videos on your own channels, for example: youtube or vimeo. Then archive the link in the folder.

• Reading material (Articles, Books, References, Models of working etc.) (In pdf.)

• General AC information, including general info of all members (logos, mission statements, etcetera) and documents related to the network life (Resource map, AC Future Plan etc.)

Working groups

• Meeting minutes

• Meeting harvest (if it was harvested)

• Process materials: sketches, diagrams, doodles, etc.

• Working documents: concepts, proposals, budgets, schedules, etc.

• Financial documents, in collaboration with Admin group: budgets, invoices, bank information, taxes

Activities

• Lifeline Triangle

• Banga

• Assembly

• Collaborative projects (for now Minga, Schoolaboratory & Territories)

HOW TO STORE ARCHIVE ONLINE

The documentation WG had initiated a simple and general archival structure, where each working group can adapt to fit their own working process.

Working groups are responsible for their own documentation and archiving. The documentation WG has created some basic folders for a start but all the other working groups can add more based on their specific needs.

Save all your material in the digital archive!

Digitalize whatever you can! Meaning: type out your notes, photograph your harvests, scan your diagrams.

The Map for AC Documentation & Archive @Googledrive

There are six main folders provided (see diagram in dark grey box for details), and each folder contains several subfolders depending on the complexity of the informations documented.

In the future website, it should be much easier since the different subfolders can be marked and managed by clicking certain bulletpoints.

But due to the limitation of googledrive appearance (you may get lost in different layers of folder!) we limit the maximum amount of subfolders to the third layer only (such as in the blue box related to working group documents and the red box related to activities).

NOTES

• In general, to simplify the process of migrating existing documents from google drive to the website later on, make sure that each document that you uploaded has a clear heading.

For example, if you want to upload a note during one working session on Website on in Assembly 2016, during day 2 in Issykul, then put the document in the folder assembly under a title. Please also mention the language of the document:

File name: Working Session-Website-Note-Spanish- Issykul Day 2

• In case you have many things to document, like a set of images that you want to upload, place them together in one folder and name it accordingly based on the name of the events-time-location, such as: Assembly 2016 Bishkek

You can name the photographs as you wish. If there are many, please make a small selection of your favourites (about 20-30) by adding a star. It’s an option in Googledrive, that you can get to by right clicking on the file.

Calm down!

We understand the detailed naming of the files can be jarring, but this is important for future use and hopefully after the website is done we can assign different archive automatically.

Guidelines – Editing of AC Documents

This document has been developed based on the experience that we (Marie-Nour, Ana, and Tony) had in editing the first version of the AC Future Plan into the second version (from Dec. 15 to Feb. 15).

It could be extended to any editing process realized for AC documents.

Note: Google doc is currently AC preferred mode of working collectively on a document, as it allows several people to work simultaneously on it while viewing live the changes that are being made.

A process should be determined to identify the editorial group for each version of the AC Future Plan.

I- Planning

1/ Delimiting the goals of the editorial project with the agreement of AC members. These goals can include, but are not limited to, simple spelling and grammar corrections as well as more substantive changes that reflect new or changed processes or dynamics in the AC ecosystem.

2/ Identifying exactly what would need to be done, i.e: the missing points that need to be developed; the paragraphs that need to be reviewed to reflect the change of tone/ the recent practices of AC, etc.

3/ Agreeing on a general timeframe.

4/ Dividing the tasks between the members of the group.

5/ Planning weekly or bi-weekly skype meeting to check on the progress, plan the next steps, and talk about the difficulties encountered.

6/ In order to keep track of the progress and the upcoming tasks, after each skype meeting a member should send by email the notes of the skype and/or a list of the upcoming tasks to do to the group.

II- Working on the document

1/ It is preferable to use the suggestion mode so that previous texts don’t disappear.

2/ In general one or more persons are solely responsible for a section, this doesn’t mean that the section can’t be reviewed by other members of the editing group. They are more than welcome and encouraged to comment on the changes, raise a question and/ or suggest edits.

3/ The person working on a section could also actively ask for help, by adding a comment and/ or bringing up the issue during a skype meeting.

4/ Every once in awhile, it is preferable to review the whole document and read the comments that are marked.

III- Incorporating comments/ accepting the changes

1/ It is better that the person in charge of a certain section is the one accepting the changes, and reviewing the comments made by the others

2/ Make sure that previous sections are not deleted before they have been included elsewhere or it appears clearly that they are not relevant anymore

IV- Highlighting unclarities

1/ If questions arise during the editorial process regarding processes, policies or principles, it is recommended to create a section or sub-section highlighting the unresolved questions and/ or future suggestions that arose during the editing process and that should to be further discussed with all of AC. These can then be addressed in the next assembly or perhaps in consultation with a working group who is familiar with the question.

V- Review and Finalizing

1/ After the bulk of the work has been done, it is recommended that the document is reviewed by members of AC (one or two people max.), outside of the Editing group, that could have a fresh perspective and give their comments. At this point in the process the task is to continue to check details such as spelling and grammar, and also to add comments regarding the organization of the document, the importance and clarity of each section, the accuracy of the incorporation of the decisions that were made prior to the edition of the document and the adherence to the original philosophical and ethical principles.

2/ After the outside review is completed, the document should be returned to the Editorial Group in order to incorporate the suggestions made in the review. It is recommended that these comments and suggestions be done in the ‘Suggesting’ mode and by using ‘comments’ in Google docs.

VI- Translation

1/ In line with our principles, AC documents should be translated as often as possible into Spanish and French.

2/ This step should happen only after the final edits have been made, in order to have a clean version and not duplicates in process.

3/ The Editorial group should suggest names for translators and supervise the process.

4/ It would be helpful to also be able to review the translations for accuracy. This could occur if some of the members of the Editorial groups are fluent, or native Spanish or French speakers or by asking other AC members to help or by contracting with outside reviewers.

Composition of living organization

organization structure/relation

family map

family tree

organigram/organisational chart? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organizational_chart

for example:

9 members

artistic director/ management & communication/ secretary / board

director / project & infrastructure / project & community…

but also: where is your artistic director: At the root of your organizational three or at the top branch?

Ethos philosophy of organization and the (co) management principle (vision?);

Values / organisational characteristics / Philosophy / habits

Capacities, skills and experiences;

unlearning - Curating - thinking - cooking - fundraising - energy production - talking - curating - listening - imagining - studying - organizational - lobbying - advising - critical thinking - writing - inventing- connecting - consolidating

(influential power/ privilege?)

for example:

cooking vegan

facilitating group works

translating from xxx to xxx

producing public art projects

negotiating with political institution

fundraising in European context

People / communities around you;

Different types of relation;

Communities we live in, environment of our organizations, organizations we work with / Affinity groups / networks / collectives / movements / institutions / individuals / governments / business / universities / Communities affected by your activities / Co-workers from different spheres of knowledge (not only art) / Communities or organizations you want to work with / public /audience.

Knowledge:

Interest of the organization for developing projects

lines of thinking , areas you're always working with.

Types of works you are doing

for example:

urbanism in Indonesia

anarchist history in spain

feminist “intersectionality”

new materialism

“critical management”

“Financial” Resources:

Money (currency?) / Membership structures / methodologies for fundraising / alternative currencies / business support system / Cooperative models / Financial and informal system based on solidarity / alternative fundraising system / Corps / Shops / savings / Endowment / Shares

Trade economy/immaterial supports / Funding network / Funding individuals / Loans/credit

average annual income?

funders (organization, individual, networks)

other income sources

financial strateg

Media Resources:

Radio station- Media website - Magazine - TV channel - Newspaper

Physical Resources:

Spaces: what kind of space ? (office residency ,sleeping, library, kitchen , meeting)

rented space? - Space that you own?- Equipments (production mediums) - Shop - Art collection - Access to spaces

Influential Tool (existing tools you are using) :

Inspirational reference

books / organizations / social movements / historical process / people / films / traditions /theory

for example:

Collective Mapping Manual : http://www.iconoclasistas.net/post/manual-de-mapeo-colectivo-en-pdf/

Google drive (?)

RESOURCE MAP - Experimental Tooling Project - Why-How-When

Ana, Hama and Dominique

What is Resource Map ETP?

RESOURCE MAP is an experimental tooling project to research and develop an active and ever changing tool and space to map, bring together, archive and activate our common resources.

How should our Resource Map be and become?

• a map that informs us in a simple visual way what is where, within each organization and the general network

• an active tool available not only within the AC Network, but to the affinity network that we build daily in our ecosystems.

• a map that contains in itself tangible and intangible resources, bringing to the common: ideas, tools, thoughts and knowledge in a decentralized way

• a way to voice particular needs within each organization opening the possibilities for collaboration

• an extension of AC as a potentiality for learning, for devising and imagining ways of being and resisting, for artistic practices and for the understanding of our ecosystems etc.

• an imaginative platform that takes into account the complexity of our network and entanglement as a resource in itself.

• an online tool where each organization, group, ETP, triangle etc can (and should!) directly upload information and keep an updated map of the resources they have to share.

• an open source tool.

An approach to think about our Resource Map

Drawing from the ethical principles of the AC network, we should be critical about the limitations of our resources but also about the potential they reach when they are shared and brought to the commons.

Future guidelines will be developed on ways to recognize, organize and share the information related to the resources that exist and are being built within:

• each organization

• triangles

• working groups

• experimental tooling projects

• bangas

• AC Assembly

• collaborative projects

In mapping our resources we should address how / when / under which conditions we can share the resources among the AC members but also how to be OPEN to the “outside”, to the imaginary, potential and invisible collective of free radicals around the AC network.

As well as our resources we should also map our struggles and our needs. These will enrich the resource map as they would allow the network to recognize possible links, connections and mutual affectation through commoning.

During Assembly we recognized a list of big ideas to collectively develop as exercises for tooling, fun(d)raising, etc. These ideas are part of our map of desires and possibilities to construct and signify through the collective work. For example the AC Art Gallery...

As an Experimental Tooling Project we propose to develop it in two stages:

STAGE 1- Resource Map 1.0

3 months / END OF OCTOBER

In this first stage we would

1. address the issue on how to get the knowledge of our common resources shared as soon as possible and do it in a basic and simple format

2. start the research on more complex systems of archiving info, sharing and activating resources.

How and What:

• Study Group (3 members) to deeply research and collectively study existing archives and sharing networks, meet with developers and try to find the kind of platform best suited to AC Resource Map needs.

• Work with Documentation Group and with Website Group to address overlaps, clarify tasks and find a way to make sure all systems work together.

• Define basic guidelines and organization system for the Resource Map

• Design and conceptualize a survey to map each organization’s actual resources and also to gather feedback on the way we are thinking about resources.

• Gather, process and share the information of this initial survey as a first step towards the Resource Map.

STAGE 2 - Resource Map 2.0

6-12 months (?)

This second stage will be dedicated fully to the tooling of the tool for sharing the tools!

It will require, but not limited to:

• Study Group (same 3 members) - bring the research to concrete proposals about possible tools - maps and platforms- to share and access resources or info about them

• Review the classification system, categories or specificities and refine all this based on organization’s feedback from survey.

• Work in conjunction with programmer and designer to fully develop whatever tools we come up with

• Test and adjust

• Create a Guidelines for self-maintenance

Once we have a tool, a working tool, there would have to be an ongoing commitment from all AC members to upload and to keep information on resources up to date.

NEEDS

• It would be great to have one to two more people join this ETP!

• Contact info on hacker friends, developers or gurus of information with affinity to AC principles Anyone in the network that we can ring for advice ?

TIMELINE

BUDGET

(Work in Progress)

https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/0B1dvlBDD00WpaGgxYmJUcmNQUzQ

INITIAL REFERENCES FOR STUDY

Some of the references we have been looking into are:

• http://www.artmob.ca

• http://www.ubu.com

• https://github.com/artmob/artmob

• https://www.onlineopen.org/index.php

• (great for links ) http://archives.nypl.org/

• http://bookcamping.cc/

• http://www.worldofmatter.net/

• http://www.spatialagency.net/

• (for collaboration) http://www.parquelalibertad.org/cetav/

• http://lagentedelcomun.com/es/

Feedback welcome!!

UQ. - i. Reading Guide:

The future: How do we envisage it... I feel it must be factored here somehow.

Do we see it as a projective path as Homi will put it, or do we see it as something we are living now?

To him, it’s as form of future anterior that is not far from the now. So this gives postcolonialism as time lag between the now and the envisaged end of this projective past.

In practical terms the colonial period had a start and an awareness of postcolonialism started at some point. Hence, mathematically speaking, one should be able to project a vision of this now or future, in order to be able to be properly postcolonial.

UQ. - Language:

We say that we resist using the typical ‘funding language,’ but we also say that sustainability is our highest value. Maybe we need to think about the typical funding terms and redefine them so that we, and other readers such as potential funders, understand that we are imagining a different way of describing what we do and why we do it. Terms such as impact, output, outcome, etc. This is also an important question regarding the presentation of the AC to outside individuals and organizations and our attitude about the typical work of fundraising.

UQ. - ii. Common Language / Index of Terms

Post-Colonial: The way that we talk about the effects of colonialism in each of our contexts should be clarified. Terms such as Postcolonial, Anti-colonial and Decolonial etc. and their effects need to be defined and identified as part of the conceptual basis for the AC Ecosystem.

Study: Is there a conceptual difference between the concepts of studying and the concept of learning? Or are they more more or less superposed? One leading to the other?

In the Common Language / Index of Terms we shift from ‘Sustainability’ to ‘Self-sustainability’ and in the section B2 in the text we use the title ‘Self-Sustainability as highest value for the Ecosystem (AC), but in the text we continue to use the word ‘Sustainability’. It seems that this should be clarified, and we should expand our thinking about this concept to directly address what we mean by sustainability and/or self-sustainability in affective and economic terms.

UQ. - B.1 Paradigm Shift in the Post-Colonial and Neo-liberal context:

• Isn’t this ecosystem and collaboration among the organisations just a burden, adding to the workload and perpetuating the precariousness of the contemporary working and living condition that each organisation is coping with? If there’s a strong common desire for this translocal encounter and mutual unlearning/ learning, what obstructs this desire to be further fulfilled and what direction for our future does this desire express?

• Considering AC’s position regarding capitalism and neoliberalism, what is the AC position regarding the art world and the art market, which have deep and obvious roots and connections to each of these systems? (This was one of Stefano and Tonika’s questions after reviewing the preliminary AC Future Plan. They ask if this is an issue that might be addressed in future assemblies, bangas, collective study etc.)

UQ. - B.2 Sustainability

Sustainability, as the highest value for the ecosystem, is a fundamental component in the self-determination of the ecosystem and of each organization. This concept is addressed throughout this document and specifically in section B.2.

After participating in the June meeting in Utrecht in 2015 Stefano Harney and Tonika Sealy made the following comments:

“The move to self-sustainability within five years will be difficult but more importantly it may take more time, effort, and imagination than anticipated. This will be time away from other activities within network, or indeed it may come to dominate these other activities. Perhaps more thinking about sustainability and funding needs to undertaken? Perhaps a new activity needs to be dedicated to this goal?”

This question appears in different parts of this document, and the answers to it affect different mechanisms that have been initiated. It is important to clarify the AC position relating to sustainability.

UQ. - D.1 Lifeline Plans / Sustainability Plans

The text describing lifeline plans was written before the original lifeline plans were developed. It was modified to become a history of the Lifeline plan process.

Will new organizations that enter the AC ecosystem be required to submit lifeline plans as well?

This is related to the question about membership and how new members are integrated into the ecosystem.

UQ. - D.3.1 Philosophy (Budget)

The opening paragraph is written as a criticism of the typical information that funding agencies require of applicants in order to secure resources for projects and administrative support. However, numbers of people impacted by the activities of organizations, the quality of the experiences of the people involved in the organizations projects and programs and the internal evaluation of the quality of the activities that each organization can serve as internal as well as external information. The text does not address this possibility. This question is not just related to sustainability and budgets but also to organizational self-evaluation, failure and pride in our accomplishments. What is AC’s position regarding processes of organizational self-evaluation as it relates to the statement about demonstration of successes? Are these processes always stressful or counter-productive, or is it possible that they can be considered as part of the internal study processes that occur within and among the organizations in the AC ecosystem?

UQ. - D.3.2 Allocation of funds - Collective Pot

What happens to the collective pot when organizations leave AC or become “un-funded” members? If they have savings how are they redistributed?

How will it be determined if an organization becomes self-sustainable before the end of the 5 year period?

What does it mean that they will “subscribe to self-limitation?” Will they divert the “unnecessary” funds into the collective savings?

UQ. - E.1 Philosophy: Self-accountability and study

How will the resource map become a source of study for individuals and accountability for groups outside of the AC?

Is the resource map a place in which organizations can list their successes and failures so that it can be collectively studied and seen by individuals outside of AC?

UQ. - E.2 Challenges Faced

The question about the Legal Entity still remains today and other questions include:

Whether it is possible to decentralize the existing funds and collectively manage them and any new funds raised.

Who could represent AC?

Where should the existing funds be deposited, and where will any new funds that are raised go?

Who would be able to sign on behalf of AC?

Is possible to work without registering AC?

How should a Trust be formed?

What will be the forms of the contracts within the AC and between the AC and other organizations.

UQ. - 4/ How to reach a consensus

What is the significance of a Block with respect to the Blocking organization’s participation in the AC ecosystem after having blocked a decision?

UQ. - E.3.1.c Banga (Knowmadic meetings)

Audu: Bangas are unique processes of their kind and must be one of the ways AC, per practice distinguishes itself from other world collaborations of its kind.

This is a point that should be included in the presentation of the AC.

UQ. - E.3.2.c Fundraising

How does AC see itself after the 5 years of support for the current members?

What is AC’s philosophical stand in regards to the language it could use to communicate what it does with others and the relations it could form. This unresolved question is especially acute in relation to fundraising. It could be grossly formulated in these terms:

Does AC want to maintain a radical position in regards to the use of language and refuse to communicate using “traditional” referents such as impact and audience building or would AC accept to still play the “traditional” game while making its position clear and using a language that could be seen as “simplified” but could be used as an entry point for funders and/ or communication purposes.

In other words, how do we portray ourselves in a non-obscure way, in a way that is open to others, using a language that could be understood without betraying ourselves and our principles?

What is the AC position regarding the concept of the impact of the AC network on a local and global scale? Should this even be considered? If so, how should this be presented?

As a group we need to clarify our position about this and whether we want to try to quantify our individual and collective impacts in the traditional sense, and/or if we want to use qualitative impact measures, or both, or if we want to use any kind of impact measures at all etc.

Are some or all of the organizations interested in project funding as opposed to, or in addition to, structural or administrative funding?

How might we form groups of organizations that might request funding in order to realize a collective project? Is this related to the existing mechanisms that we have; Bangas, ETP’s, etc.?

If some organizations decide that they want to participate in such a collective project how can they take advantage of being part of the AC to secure funding? How can they or should they contribute to the AC common pot if the funding is awarded and the project is realized?

This is related to the question of the Legal Entity, which we still need to solve, but some basic questions related to fundraising also have to do with identifying our individual and collective strengths and impacts and agreeing on ways to communicate them to potential funders. This is also related to our ethical principles and brings up questions about developing new relationships or continuing existing relationships with organizations who work with and within the constraints of the capitalist system (including the art world and art market).

UQ. - E3.3 Temporary Groups

How long is the commitment of each organization to the temporary groups? Or, what is the process for rotating these responsibilities?

What are the unfinished tasks of each working group? What processes can be implemented to help each other identify and finish these tasks?

UQ. - E.4 Membership, growth and openness of AC

What will the process be for integrating the new organizations into the AC ecosystem as it relates to the institutional funding, the collective pot and collective savings?

Should future growth of the ecosystem be collectively considered in the assembly?

Should DOEN still runs a separate AC grant program, and if so is it integrated into the AC ecosystem? If it is discontinued then is it contrary to the principle of openness?

II. ASSEMBLY GROUP MEMBERS

Who makes up the Assembly working-group?

• Members of this group will include members from the new host organization as well as anyone interested in facilitating the upcoming Assembly

• We advise members from the previous assembly working group and/or host organization to participate in the planning and organization of the upcoming assembly, either for advice and consultation or as an active member;

• Preferable that each assembly working group members are responsible for the full process of an Assembly: planning, organization, facilitation and ensuring documentation/tooling is completed, facilitating choice of next Assembly host;

• During every assembly a new working group is devised who will take on the tasks and process of organizing the next assembly

• *Please note that there will be a period of time where 2 assembly groups are overlapping: as one Assembly ends, the initial working group continues following up until the documentation and tooling is complete (also a reflection / evaluation of what went well / what was important / what didn’t work …); while the new working group begins planning for the next Assembly.

• It is important that we challenge the boundaries/distinction between the AC host and AC members to allow equal participation and engagement with the Assembly program. The hosting team creates a schedule allowing for the rest of AC members to take part in coorganising during the Assembly, especially the reproductive labour such as cooking, cleaning, taking care of each other.

III. CHOOSING A HOST FOR ASSEMBLY

How is an Assembly chosen?

NOMINATION

During an Assembly, any member can nominate itself to host an Assembly having considered the areas for consideration below. There will be a dedicated time during the Assembly schedule to share and discuss ideas, as well as making the decision. If there are more than one organization that want to host, the nominated organizations should discuss among themselves by reviewing the considerations alongside a facilitator of their choice (either a working group / an individual / selected members) to help with the decision making process.

AREAS FOR CONSIDERATION:

WHO

• Any AC member can nominate themselves based on their availability, level of commitment, and/or context relevance to the progression of AC’s development.

LOCATION

• It is advisable that the location of the Assemblies change over the years to diversify the schedules, visits, contexts and content of the Assembly; thus to change over different countries as well as allowing different partners to get the chance to host;

• To ensure that all partner organizations are able to travel and obtain visas to attend the host location for the Assembly;

• To take into consideration that the location may be dependent on the nature of the assembly; this may change over the years to focus more on collaborative projects rather than administration of AC.

WHEN

• Preferably Assemblies should be held within 12 months of the prior Assembly;

• Preferably not during a ‘high-season’ to avoid high costs of travel and accommodation;

• Not to overlap with a partner organization’s major project i.e. a member is hosting a biennale in a certain month and cannot attend an assembly at the same time.

*If there are months that are known before-hand that organizations cannot commit to at all, this should be announced during the assembly or communicated to the Assembly working group as soon as possible to take it into account.

DURATION

• In the past, assemblies have varied from 10-12 days. Length could change depending on the content/nature of an assembly and availability of members. Preferably assembly group should discuss with partners beforehand on the length and content to get everyone’s approval and commitment levels.

IV. PLANNING AN ASSEMBLY

How is the Assembly organized?

PRE-PLANNING

Pre-planning is key for organizing an Assembly to ensure that everything passes by smoothly. The preparation should begin at least 8 months before the Assembly takes place. The Assembly working group must ensure devising a feasible work-plan that covers the following:

• Logistical Planning: visa documents, arrivals/departures, transportation, accommodation, to be planned ahead of time and be cost efficient;

• Schedule: this will include both visits organized by the host as well as working sessions, ensuring positive energy, momentum and a good flow of the meetings. The WG tries to find the balance and harmony in the schedule.

• Host Visits: these will vary from artist talks, site visits, walks, events, etc. that are particular to the host context as well as to AC.

• Working Sessions: the Assembly working group will have to gather information from all the working groups and collaborative projects to see how much time is needed for discussion and any necessary tools/equipment for sharing.

*Advisable for Assembly Working Group to arrive a few days before the start of the Assembly to finalise the program schedule and ensure tasks are covered.

COSTS

• Each organization will pay for its own flights, visa, accommodation, per diem, from the collective pot. The Host can pay for 1 or 2 people from the collective pot, the remaining amount is covered by assembly budget.

• The host organization will be allocated a certain sum of money (TBC) to organise the Assembly, which will cover meals, transportation and programming.

V. FACILITATING AN ASSEMBLY

Facilitation literally means ‘making easier’. In the case of the Assembly facilitation group, it means they would make the process of discussion, overall program and schedule run smoothly. The group keeps an eye on the informal (and formal) hierarchies in the group to maintain the horizontality of the network.

Each working group will organize and facilitate its own sessions, as well as any decision making processes with consideration of the Facilitation Guidelines (still to be created.) Throughout the year, each working group has one or two facilitators as the contact person for the Assembly working group (the group can decide to rotate this role).

TASKS

Before an assembly

• Create preparational working document(s), that include:

  • Schedule for the assembly;

  • Working group proposals that AC has to make decisions on;

• Contacting all working groups to:

  • Ask for desire, time and content for the assembly;

  • Collect proposals for decision making;

  • Collect information on materials needed for assembly (e.g. material for printing, some special stationery, etc.)

• Needs to decide in coordination with the harvesting team (see below): what we document and how?

• Building the assembly schedule in collaboration with the host of the assembly, including energizers;

• Share draft schedule to AC for suggestions;

• Process suggestions, finalize and share final schedule;

• Share working document within a reasonable amount of time allowing AC partners to read and study before the Assembly.

During an assembly

• Facilitate the overall Assembly schedule, ensuring that the Host isn’t overwhelmed with organizing and planning the schedule. Allowing other AC members to rotating roles: guardian of intention, guardian of time, collecting harvests from plenary sessions.

• Follow up with working groups and host in case of changes/additions to the schedule, and adapt accordingly;

• Follow up with AC members ensuring the general momentum, energy and flow of program is going smoothly, and adapt accordingly.

• Each Working Group will be responsible for:

• Documenting, analyzing and archiving their harvests;

• Facilitating their own sessions during the Assembly;

After an assembly

• Reflection document that includes:

  • Summaries of all plenary sessions;

  • Decisions made through the assembly;

HARVESTING ASSEMBLY

• Documentation group (to be discussed with the WG): needs to organize a harvesting team for the assembly, who will be responsible for gathering harvests from plenary sessions and summarizing them. In addition, harvesting team should be able to advise or suggest relevant materials needed for documenting Assemblies, i.e. video sessions, audio recordings etc.

• What do we document and how? - needs to be decided prior to assembly by assembly WG and harvesting team (see ‘tasks’)

• Summary of the Assembly would be shared in the upcoming Tam-Tam following the Assembly.

• Tooling will be shared by participants of AC.

Odile – Nubuke Foundation

Marion - Kër Thiossane

Diana – 705

(Gertrude – DOEN – Associate)

WHAT FOR ?

Fund-raising Working Group has to coordinate, strategize and facilitate contact and relation with external organizations to find financial resources for AC Ecosystem and projects within AC ethical principles. The group will provide guidelines to member organisations to identify and harness potential funding sources within their own networks.

Fund-Raising Working group is not responsible for directly fundraising but will follow different leads that could become sources for the network or for projects within the network.

GUIDELINES

• Habitual process

Within member’s network

1. Every member organisation will present AC with identified possible funder.

They will always inform other fund-raising group members of discussion with potential funders.

Always make a small written report of meeting with potential reports and archive it in the website document section.

The Fund- raising working group will:

1. Identify potential funders from member’s resource maps.

2. Analyse the potential fundraising opportunity ie. In accordance with AC ethical principles1 or related to any practice.

In that sense emphasis will be put on finding financing or donors within the countries/regions that AC organisations are based to develop funding mechanisms acceptable with our ethos.

1. Develop rough guidelines on the different ways to establish relations with funders: when do they become part of the ecosystem, when do we work on a project together, when are they just outside funders?

2. Make available a revised AC Presentation and AC ethical principles.

3. Be abreast with local organisation negotiation with a potential funder.

In presenting negotiations back to the rest of the members :

• • Open up a window for member’s feedback. [2weeks]

  • If agreed, passed on to Administration group

    • Not agreed then-update guideline

  • If there are objection – Discussions to be organised

  • If stronger objection – Brought to assembly

1. Keep record of all decisions with each funder and AC members in negotiation.

We will identify potential options we have now and follow through.

We are the point of contact for external request about support.

We are point of contact for and will give guidelines for individual members so they can harness (exploit) their own potential networks.

Find potential funders to collaborate within the fields of:

Travel Technology

Residency Education

Regional/ Geographical Location Ecology

RAISING FUNDS WITH EXTERNAL PUBLIC

1. Identify and analyse the needs within AC ecosystem through resource map/projects.

2. Research and collate information about potential funders based on the needs identified.

3. Go to represent AC at international conferences.

4. Research and collate information on existing calls in region- share its in newsletter.

5. Consider other forms like sponsoring or selling our “tools’’ or our knowledge on “intercultural collaboration/radical imagination”.

6. Launch a Call for Donors to apply to fund AC.

7. Add a donation button on website.

8. Explore how to promote and present AC and sell art works at commercial art fairs.

WHO DO WE NEED ?

• AC representation

• Website updated with AC info and our programmes.

• TamTam : newsletter

• Admin group.

• Central repository (répertoire central).

• Resource map.

WHAT ARE WE DEPENDENT ON ?

. Legal entity : We need the entity registered or have some AC members functioning as legal entity for AC.

. AC Presentation : We will work with the AC Presentation team.

Website : We need an address for external communications . A place/ server / cloud to store our records.

. News : We will use guidelines from Communication team.

. Resources : Resource maps harnessed with funder identity available by region, interests , etc

Guidelines

Working group: Gita, Binna, Yollotl

This guideline tries to create a common language and understanding of what tooling is and offers a way for (1) sharing your tools with others and (2) doing a collective tooling in experimental tooling project.

What is tooling?

• Tooling is a process of generating tools that have been (consciously or unconsciously) used in our practices.

• Tooling is a way of practicing our radical imagination not only for making artworks but also for supporting the way we organize our daily life resistance.

• Tooling is a method for reflecting / making sense of the way we do our (im)material labour.

• Tooling is a strategy for sharing knowledge inside and outside AC ecosystem, as well as building a solidarity/interdependent relations based on our open ethical principles beyond AC ecosystem.

• Tooling is a mechanism to sustain openness.

Why tooling?

• Tooling relates with our common interest in practicing AC (open) ethical principles.

• Tools made from tooling process form the important part of the AC common resource, which consists not only of (1) money, space, infrastructure, facilities but also (2) ideas, thoughts, affect, and knowledge. Tooling makes (2) shareable and accessible within and outside of AC ecosystem.

• Tooling also supports the sustainability of ideas and there’s a process of learning and unlearning when we form, share, test and give feedback to the tools.

What are tools?

• Tools are different from products. Tooling shows the structure and the entire image of our working process.

For example: You made a book in a collaborative project. The book is a product. Inside the book there’s knowledge. But the way you make the book (e.g. how you collect resources, how you do collaborative editing, how you deal with conflict in collaborative process, how do you fundraise the project, how you make a DIY printing machine, how do you circulate that knowledge, hot do you circulate the book) is also knowledge, and that is what you can share as a tool, the methodology of that process.

• Tools can be theoretical knowledge, practical knowledge, or both.

For example: Theoretical tools can be an argument about subverting the notion of School in conventional sense. This theoretical tools (the new notion of “School”) will feed to the growing knowledge of our (open) ethical principles and common languages.

Meanwhile, an example of practical tools can be about how to create a new setting of learning environment by changing the arrangement of chairs and tables in a classroom.

The example of practical tool that was given above can be generated into a theoretical knowledge, for instance about the politics of spatial division.

• Tools should be replicable, in a sense that at least it can be applied or tested in different contexts. However, it doesn’t need to be a super mechanism or determinative algorithms.

Perhaps your tools won’t work in other contexts, but the process of testing the tools also form or add new knowledge to your initial tools. Tool is always in the process of becoming. For example: you share your tools of doing a collective making decision that you learned from a collaborative project with Indonesian migrant workers in Hong Kong. Could we use the tools to work with undocumented migrant workers in the Netherlands? It should be tested; and the person who try to use/apply the tool should give feedbacks and report their experience upon using the tool. This way, tooling replaces reporting and demonstrational practice of superficial publicity. All the tool need to pass through a process of contextualization that gives meaning of using that tool that comes from other place.

Tool is a cycle of sharing, it’s always working for and from inside and outside.

When do you have to do tooling?

Tools should be generated from:

• Study Buddy triangle

• Experimental tooling projects

• Banga

• Assembly

• AC organizational works like Fundraising, Financial Admin, Website and Tam Tam (Internal communication)

Tools could be generated from:

• Lifelines (individual organizational projects)

• Each organizational works

How to do experimental tooling projects?

• Experimental tooling projects should be based on affinity of minimum three organizations (the triangle!), with involvement from minimum two members of AC. Inviting other organizations outside AC is therefore allowed or even recommended in order to keep our network open.

• Funding for experimental tooling projects can be taken from the collective pot. However, you may also consider the project as a strategy to get funding from outside for AC collective pot. Therefore experimental tooling projects can also be a form of fun(d)raising.

• Experimental tooling project proposal does not need to be agreed by the Assembly. As long as two members of AC are involved, the project can be conducted. This is also an exercise of practicing our autonomy.

• The accountability of experimental tooling project will be assessed in Tam-Tam and should be presented in the next Assembly.

How to do tooling?

• Tools should be based from our own experience.

• Before doing tooling, consider the existing tools that have been made by others. Therefore your tools won’t be redundant. If you have similar concept with other tools, you may just add your tools to the existing one.

• As a start, think of comprising a “How To” “Why to” “When To” instruction based on things that you consider can be used by others (particularly when you’re going to write about a practical tool). However, remember that the instruction is not a universal mechanism. Therefore you should give a context of your particular situation and how you came up forming the tools. Giving concrete examples are also an effective way to give a clear understanding of how to use the tools.

• When creating a theoretical tool, referring to the style of our Common Language is helpful as a loose guideline.

• Tools are created for the commons and belong to the common resources. When it is go public in our website, it is not longer “Riwaq’s tools” or “Art Group 705 tools”, it’s only tools, that can be shared and used for everyone. We let go the ownership of the tools to disrupt the prevailing capitalistic paradigm of property and sharing. (tools are not signed)

• When you do tooling, you should consider that the way you communicate the tool need to be understood by others.

• Tools can took the form of diagram, video, writing, audio, everything you think can effectively communicate your tools.

Technicality:

• The tooling process should start at least one month after doing events/activities/projects. The tools should be shared with the rest of AC members maximum 3 months afterwards.

• When tooling is going to be done collectively within AC (for example from Banga, Assembly), form a temporary working group and appoint a guardian of process within the group.

• The procedure for sharing tooling need to be discussed with the Internal Communication and Website working group. Proposal: We can share it through our Tam Tam newsletter for internal reading and then share it in our website for public under the section of Tooling.

Examples of Tools (or almost tools) from the Assembly:

• Cascade of coherence

Cascade of coherence is a tool that works for checking correspondence and coherence between rooted struggles, ethics, activities, delivery mechanism and resourcing (labour, affect, money, time.

(1) The rooted struggle is a point of embarkation, the main reason behind our practices. The struggle can be identified as something that we want to tackle, for example: the prevalent neo-liberalist paradigm.

(2) Ethics is an open principle and an orientation, it serves as an objective that aims to shift the paradigm in our rooted struggle. Ethics should be the antithesis of our rooted struggle.

(3) Activities are the materialization of ethics through collective practices.

(4) Delivery Mechanism details the activity.

(5) Resourcing is the material and immaterial support for delivering activities. For example, if an exploitative oil company wanted to support our activities, the cascade of coherence will show that the resource contradicts our rooted struggles and ethics. Should resources follow ethics or ethics follow resources? Or, can resources and ethics create a productive conflict? When there’s a contradiction in the cascade of coherence, we will start to question all elements that interact in the cascade of coherence (and that’s good).

• Triangle

Mechanism/guideline proposed by the Lifeline group can be a tool for sustaining self-care within a network.

• Collective pot

Mechanism/guideline proposed by the administration working group can be a tool for radical decentralization of sharing money.

• Please add more, anyone! :)

Internal Communication Guidelines

Working Group

Lina, Luciana, Oscar, and Teesa

==================================================================

1. Email Formatting

Email Subjects

• [Name of the Working Group or Activities] Concrete Subject

• Use a relevant and descriptive subject line that adequately describes the content of your message.

For example:

[Resource Map] New name for Resource Map

• To make email conversations easy to follow, stick to the subject of your email

For example: [Internal Communication] How to make decisions using our Google Group

[Internal Communication] Survey Results

• If you feel the need to discuss a topic that is no longer directly relevant to the original subject of the email conversation, consider starting a new email with a new subject line that is more relevant.

Content / Body of the Email

• Use short sentences.

• Put them in short paragraphs.

• Clear and simple English so your email is easy to understand and translate.

• Feel free to use bullet points.

Translation

The language used in Google Groups is English but when a decision needs to be made, or the content of your email MUST be understood by every AC member, then it is the responsibility of the person initiating the email conversation to translate its main points.

We suggest using Google Translate as the first step for translation.

You can then reach out to someone in the AC network who is:

• Fluent in the languages you need to be translated.

• Able to respond to emails quickly.

They can then look over the translation for any major errors.

Then send out the email, with translations of the major points in French and Spanish.

2. Email Replies

When to reply all vs. replying directly to the original author of the email

Before you reply, ask yourself if this is something that everyone needs to be aware of.

Reply all when your response can help move the conversation forward, or provide clarity for.

Example:

“How many books can we print with that money?”

“Is it possible to make this transfer from your country?”

“When is the deadline?”

and so on.

Avoid "me-too" and “thank you” replies

It's rare that these add much to the discussion. You can still be kind <3 but just to the person who wrote the initial email (reply to the sender).

Quotes and Between lines answers

This makes replies easy to follow and helps get to the point quickly. So instead of replying with a long response like: “I hear what you’re saying about this proposal but regarding the budget issue I believe that...” you can just quote the specific section of the email that you are replying to and then add your comment.

You can also use a different colour for your reply, in order to make it more visible for all readers.

Example:

1. Is AC in agreement that we all begin working in some way (starting small) with Lambent based on our affinities.

Yes.

2. Is AC okay with us all opening banga and assembly to lambent in a limited way and where mutually beneficial?

Yes.

3. Is AC okay with us all opening banga and assembly to lambent grantees in a limited way and where mutually beneficial?

I am not so sure about this yet. We should know some more about these grantees.

3. Decision Making over Email

Whoever needs a decision made by AC will initiate the email chain. This person will be the host and harvester and shall also appoint a Guardian of Process to help moderate the conversation. The guardian should be mentioned in the body of the email.

Subject: [Name of working group or activities] Decision on….x

How to communicate your proposal for a decision

• Describe your question/proposal and the context

• Be as clear as possible about what you are asking and the kind of decision to be made

• Ask questions that people can answer with yes (agree), no (disagree), stand aside

• Also add the possibility to insert comments or ask more information

Timing for Decision Making

• Urgent decisions > 4 days (96 hours from when email was sent)

• All other decisions > 10 days (240 hours from when email was sent)

• During that period people ask questions in the list in order to clarify

• When the deadline is near (48h) Guardian of Process sends a reminder to the group so that people remember to vote/share their thoughts

Results

• When the 4 days or 10 days are up, if you have not responded, it is assumed that you are standing aside

• The initiator of the decision making process is responsible for harvesting the results and will share with the AC Google Group

• In case of decisions that are not urgent: after sharing, if nobody blocks after 48hrs the decision is made.

• If decisions are urgent, the decision is made after 96 hours. The decision is urgent after all.

• We suggest that more than one person in your organization is available to make decisions over email, in case you are offline and unable to share your vote.

Example:

[Internal Communication] Decision on Dissolving Google Groups

Hello Everyone,

Guardian of Process: Luciana

Looking forward to having received all of your responses in 10 days.

Peace!

Note: these guidelines are inspired by the decision making process during the AC Assembly in Kyrgyzstan

1. Proposal

2. Clarifying questions + friendly amendments

3. Time to reflect (if needed/asked) > smaller groups to discuss and think inside each organization < if you don't understand and want more clarification / if you don't agree / if you don't have the capacity to do it.

4. Block > you definitely disagree.

5. Stand aside > you are ok with the proposal but will not block it.

6. Any other friendly amendments?

7. Any other reflection needed?

8. Decision making.

More information on stand aside and block: http: //www.seedsforchange.org.uk/consensus

4. AC Whatsapp Group

Whatsapp group is great if you’re missing some AC love and also for building/maintaining relationships beyond “work”.

• If new people are added, please introduce them to the group

• If you have something specific to bring up with one person, consider having a separate chat outside of the group.

• If you feel that there are too many messages, you can mute the notifications of the group.

Malika and Rima from Art Group 705 are the current admins.

5. Internal Communication within Working Groups

Be self-organized!

Here are some suggested tools, so you can choose the ones that best suit your needs. If you find others that work better for you, go ahead and use them! Then please share with the AC internal communication working group so we also get to know them ;)

> Working Group Mailing List

In order to have an archive of the emails that can be seen by new members that can join the group in the future.

> Instant messaging - useful for reminders and very urgent messages

> Setting the best date/time for a grupal meeting

>Once the meeting day/time is settled, add in a calendar for sending reminders to all the participants

During the meetings, please remember the facilitation method > have a host, harvester, guardian of intention/process.

6. Adding new people in the AC general list

For adding new people please get in contact with the current administrators of the list:

ARTS COLLABORATORY | GUIDE FOR 5 YEAR LIFELINE

Stop Surviving and Start Living (Together).

Dear Friends. This is simply a guideline to support the making of your Lifeline Plans. Treat it as a Counter-instruction-manual-form!

SHORT GUIDE (Full guide from next page)

1. Define your Struggle

• Define what you want to focus on and what you want to change, within and outwith of your organisation.

2. Portrait your Ecosystem (formally known as Resource Map)

• Illustrate, draw and un/map your Resources, relations and position in your ecosystem.

• Your resources might be positive or negative. Eg. Political and geographical situation. People, places, products, knowledge, the time you have or don’t have.

3. Imagine, Plan and Write your Life, Time and Story

• Narrate the next 5 years of what you want and need to do in relation to your struggle, ecosystem and Arts Collaboratory. And how will you sustain what you do?

• Relate this story to your self-portrait. How will the your Portrait change over the 5 years? How might your Struggles change?

4. Write a Financial Storybook

• How will you use (spend/invest) money? How will you save money? How will you make money? And how will you share or not need money?

External “DEAD” Line for 12 Organisations to submit a first draft:

8th November 2015 (to receive funds by January 2016)

External “DEAD” Line for 12 Organisations to submit a first draft:

9th January 2016 (to receive funds by March 2016)

Internal Life-Line: After Study Buddying with each other we can submit our final Life-Line Plan on: 1st April 2016

LONGER GUIDE

1. Define your Struggle

Define what you want to focus on, to change, inside and outside of your organisation. Focus does not mean you have to exclude other concerns but that you address things from your focal point. At best, it can enable you to work less and more sharply.

Here is a proposed exercise with the members of your organisation for identifying and focusing on your Struggles.

1) Define the Struggles that your organization wants to address (what do you want to change in your ecosystem). Define the social / cultural / artistic / political / economic changes that you are committed to.

2) Make a priority list to focus on a few Struggles, based on the desires and capacity of the members in your organisation. Elaborate on these chosen Struggles.

3) Reflect on who else in your environment is working on these Struggles and how you relate to that. Would you like to sharpen / shift your focus in relation to that? Where can you inter-relate more?

4) Reflect on your priority list. Consider the strategic benefits and difficulties of your focus:

Where, how and why does “art“( radical imagination, creative, aesthetic…) work in this context for the concerns we have (our struggles)? Why do we do things with/through art? Why not just a social movement, activism, lobby and/or politics?

After defining your struggles, you can start to build your Self-Portrait of your ecosystem (formerly known as Resource Map)

2. Portrait your Ecosystem

Create a portrait of your organization and its ecosystem. This portrait gives your position and relations in the ecosystem that you belong to. Consider all your tangible and intangible resources that contribute to a well being of the ecosystem. It also reflects the effect you are having in your community and the way you are affected by your context. This portrait can become our common, open resource / tool which we share beyond our own organisation and Arts Collaboratory.

The portrait has no template or form. You draw freely. The most interesting aspect of this portrait is the creative and imaginative approach that each organization can have for creating it. (Please note: Consider that this ecosystem would be in constant transformation as your Lifeline continues and the portrait therefore needs to be updated constantly).

Our ecosystems can be made of the following: Please feel free to add other kind of resources. For the elaboration of these, see the bottom of this Guide.

Composition of living organization;

Ethos philosophy of organization and the (co) management principle (vision?);

Capacities, skills and experiences;

People / communities around you;

Different types of relation;

Knowledge;

“Financial” Resources;

Media Resources;

Physical Resources;

Influences Tools.

3. Imagine, Write and Plan your Life, Time and Story

Now that we have five years financial security and a network of critical friends, we can do a deep exercise of pushing boundaries of imagination. We can think in long-term investments. We can plan projects and ideas that can make a radical change in our organizations and a radical change in our ecosystem. We may allow ourselves to leave way for the habits of programming and producing we are familiar with.

The Life-Time-Story tells: What and where will you be in five years? What are your dreams and desires? WHAT, HOW, WHEN and with WHOM are you going to do it? How do you push a change in your organization and ecosystem’s portrait?

Inspiring Questions for your Imagination and Writing of our Life Time Stories:

• How can exchanges and encounters with other members of your eco system help you to achieve your dreams and desires?

• How do you influence AC, as an ecosystem, now and in 5 years? And vice versa, how does AC influence you?

• What is your function for your ‘satellites’, other communities, organizations and artists, outside of your organization?

• How do you draw the borderline of AC? What will happen to this edge in the next five years?

• How do you sustain and expand your connection to AC’s ethical principles?

• How much can your organization contribute in Care Time and Study Time to the AC Ecosystem?

• How are you going to use Banga, Assembly, and Study Buddy as an important process while making Lifeline Plan?

• How long do you think your organization will last or need to last?

• When will you be ready to leave AC’s funding (still remaining in the network)?

4. Write a Financial Storybook

How will you spend/invest, save, make and even, make away, with money?

Align your Financial Storybook with your Life-Time-Story, Portrait and AC Ethical Principles.

Create a Financial Storybook which:

• Covers a period of 5 years;

• Indicates the total budget - expense and income - of your organization (money from AC, from other donors, earned money, donations, etc) for the 5 years;

• Indicates the annual division of it;

• Indicates how you envisage to spend the amount you get from AC as a basic income for your organization (as it is now: 50,000 Euro a year);

• Indicates how you plan to use money you get from AC for the collective AC activities such as Banga, Assembly, Communication, Collective Saving Pot, and Time Strike and the unforeseen (in 2016 it is 20,000 Euro)

• Indicates vision and plan on: Spending, Saving, Sharing, Investing and Generating Money;

Some core concepts - Self-Limitation, Radical Imagination, Transparency, Solidarity, Trust, Mutualism in our Ethical Principles in forms of questions are following:

• Do you need the full core funds (50,000 Euro) each year?

• Can you contribute some of these funds to the AC Collective Saving Pot?

• Are there times when you need more money and other times not?

• Can we share our budgets with all AC partners, artists and other cultural organisations?

Form of the Financial Storybook

The financial storybook can take any form. It can be intertwined into the Life-Time-Story directly or it can be a separate excel sheet. It can be a pie chart. What it needs to show is how, and how much, money will be spent, saved, shared, invested and generated over the next five years.

Administration group contact details (email + whatsapp):

Yu Lan yu-lan@doen.nl +31 6 24 63 33 19

MHP mariehelene@rawmaterialcompany.org +221 77 560 61 83

Khaldun khaldun@riwaq.org +972 59 9887848

Farid fairdkun@gmail.com +62 878 76940554

Jagath jagath.weerasinghe@gmail.com + 94 77 778 0054

Vero prog@centredartwaza.org +243 820003973

Introduction

The Administration working group have decided to rename the group into Attaya (sing. Attiyya). Attaya is the senegalese word for the popular African tea ceremony around which care is given, information shared, and disputes are resolved. In Arabic, Attaya stands for “givings or offerings” that are necessarily unconditional. We will refer to our admin group hereinafter as Attaya and each member in the working group as Attiyya.

Attaya will admin the AC collective pot. The AC collective pot is made out from the sum of the collective activities’ budgets in each AC member individual budget. For the 2016/2017, the collective activities’ budgets were transferred directly from DOEN to each AC member at 21,000 Euros each. During assembly Attaya proposed to have a decentralized collective pot. So the AC collective pot is not in one place but it is being kept in 24 AC collective pots, each organisation being 1 pot.

From the collective pot, the AC will spend on collective activities, namely: AC Assemblies, Bangas, collective studies, expenses related to permanent working groups, savings, advance payments and time strikes. Bangas, collective studies, advanced payments and time strikes will be subjected to the AC members’ needs, urgency and the availability of funds in the collective pot. It is not about give and take; it is about caring and sharing as outlined in the AC ethical principles.

We are 6 attiyas in Attaya. In the spirit of sharing and caring, each attiya of us will directly communicate with 4 AC members. Each of us will be the link to each organization in order to gather information, reports… The Attaya team is divided as follows:

To make it easy for us to admin the collective pot and to be able to share information with the whole AC in timely manner and to be able to provide needed care, we propose that each AC member opens a bank account that will only be dedicated to AC funds with three sub-accounts: the first for the institutional funds, the second for the collective funds and the third for the savings. This will help all of us keep track of all AC related common pot expenses. It will also be easier to know how much money is left by the end of each year, and therefore direct these leftovers to savings.

2016/2017 Budget:

Each institution has received 50’000€ as Institutional funds

Each institution has received 21’000€ as Collective funds

Each member can ask for an advanced payment of maximum 50’000€

Each member can call for a Time strike of maximum 32,000€

Each member needs to save 10% of the collective funds. For 2016 it is a min. of 2,100€.

1- Advanced payment

If you would like to ask for an advanced payment:

Send a written summary to your Attiyya, the summary is free of format but should specify:

• The amount?

• When do you need it?

• What do you need it for? It should be related to your lifeline.

• Triangle consultation: feedback is needed from each study buddy

• How will you reimburse the advanced payment?

• All advance payments need to be reimbursed before December 2019.

Attaya group will need 2 to 3 weeks to work on your inquiry and issue an open call for advancers to the whole AC members. When the advancers are found, a general communication will be done via email to get feedback.

If we all agree on the advance payment, we will start working on the practical level :

• Attaya will make sure that the advance payment contracts are signed by all parties

• Money transfers can be done after signing of the contracts

• Attaya will supervise the process

• Each party sending/receiving money should inform his Attiyya and he/she will update the excel sheet on google drive.

• Attaya will make sure that the google drive sheet is being fed and updated with the proper information and numbers. Each Attiyya will follow on the 4 AC members.

2- Time Strike

If you would like to ask for a time strike:

Send a written summary to your Attiyya, the summary is free of format but should specify:

• The amount?

• The duration? When do you need it?

• What are the activities that you will develop during the time strike?

• What do the organization of your triangle think about your time strike inquiry? Feedback is needed from each study buddy

• How will your time strike help you overcome your current situation?

• What tools you will develop and provide AC with during or after your time strike?

Attaya will need 4 to 8 weeks to communicate with all AC via email and get feedback.

When your time strike inquiry is approved by all AC, Attaya will:

• Find possibilities for the organization to get the requested amount

• Institutions can offer to transfer money from the collective funds directly

• Money transfers can be done after the institutions receive the invoice (check templates)

• Attaya will supervise the process

• Each party sending/receiving money should inform his Attiyya and he/she will mark it in the google drive sheet as receiving/spending from the collective pot

3- Banga meetings and Collective study

Each institution is free to organize a Banga or a collective study as decided during 2016 AC Assembly in Bishkek.

However:

• Before doing a Banga or a Collective study, The organizer should check on funds availability with Attaya

• After implementing a Banga or a collective study, each institution should send us a financial report in order to help Attaya keep track on the collective funds expenses. Your Attiyya will help you in the process. Banga meeting and collective study financial report template is available here

4- Savings

Driven by sharing and caring and by the idea of sustaining our AC network beyond the 5-year funding, a saving mechanism is hereinafter proposed:

• Attaya suggests that each institution saves at least 10% of each year’s collective money.

• From Bishkek discussions, Attaya thinks that we need to increase the percentage of savings to 15% for next years.

• Each institution can decide to make extra savings from their own institutional budget. You need to inform your attiya and he/she will mark it in google drive sheet.

• The leftovers funds in the collective pot will also be transferred to the savings at the end of each year. You need to inform your attiya and he/she will mark it in google drive sheet.

5- Invoice payment

Working groups might need to pay some invoices related to their tasks, in that case you should:

• Notify Attaya via your Attiyya

• Attaya will tell you who will be available to pay for that invoice

• Use invoice template and send the final invoice to the institution that will pay the invoice. Always CC your attiya so that he/she can follow up

• Payment should be done by bank transfer within two weeks after receiving the invoice

• Inform your Attiyya when you receive the payment, he/she will inform the google sheet

6- Assembly expenses Reporting

Each institution should tell Attaya how much they have spent for the assembly in Bishkek. Send those information to your Attiyya by giving the amount in Euros for each line:

Deadline August 15th, 2016

You can also see how much have been spent by other organizations on this sheet.

7- Reporting and feedback from Attaya to all AC

Attaya will update the TAM TAM every 3 months.

Attaya will report annually on the status of the collective pot during AC assembly.

Assembly Working Group

Current members:

Barto (ruangrupa), Ana Maria (KIOSKO), Raquel (KIOSKO), Aline (Al-Ma’mal), Lauren (VANSA), Malika (Art Group 705)

General questions we need to address:

1. What is an Assembly?

2. Who makes up the Assembly group? How do members enter/change?

3. How is an Assembly chosen?

4. How is the Assembly organized?

5. How is the Assembly facilitated?

6. How do we ‘document’/’harvest’ the Assembly?

7. How do we ‘tool’ the Assembly?

8. What is an Assembly?

Assembly is the main space for the AC organisations to gather, share experiences and

collectively engage in decision making processes. It also plays a crucial role as a laboratory for

studying together on how individual organisations navigate local dynamics while collectively

envisioning ways to deal with unfolding challenges in and beyond the networking of AC.

Main Objectives

• Studying the Sustainability Lifeline Plans and visiting our Ethical Principles;

• Meeting with the Lifeline Triangles;

• Engaging in collaborative projects and exchanges;

• Developing tooling methods for sharing what we learn with others;

• Evaluate Banga Meetings and tooling generated by them, and addressing possible future meetings;

• Visit communities and organisations in the local environment as a means for extending our affinity lines;

• Engaging in non-discursive and non-verbal moments where our emotions and bodies are directly involved, experimenting communication methods. This could be in a form of party, dancing, picnic, or ‘emotional assembly’;

• Evaluating the common resources that are tangible, intangible, imaginary and material;

• Dedicating part of our time for updating and fundraising new resources.

Network health group (Guardian of Process/Intention)

Aline Khoury, Lina Mejia and Gertrude Flentge

Guidelines

• Intervene mainly on invitation

• Identify gaps between working groups, but does not solve the problem

• Receives questions that are not answered by anybody

• Checks dynamics of Working Groups/Triangles/network

• Proposes techniques and solutions, when needed, that help in inclusive communication, planning and decision making, problem solving and habitualization methods.

Tasks

• Read all working group documents and identify gaps between them

• Answer upcoming questions and distribute to right person

• Research and share tools for working process, like f.e. EBS, to Lifeline Triangles and working groups

• Be available for skype coaching in these tools on demand

• After 4 months we check how healthy network/triangles/working groups are, by checking in which each individual (one per organisation)

• If symptoms arise we actively start conversation

• Develop strategies for serious problems (Banga, independent mediator, friendly supporter)

• For assembly: make sure there is time for care taking + inclusive discussion/decisionmaking methods. Advice and develop tools + training in this.

Habits

• Collect tools and share them amongst us and then whole group

Before end august (is not realistic!)

• After 4 months and one month before assembly individual check-up. We will divide the group amongst us.

• Read working group plans and newsletters to identify problems/gaps

• Make digestible material to share in newsletter to remind on humanity, inclusiveness etc.

• Develop tool for this group to track our progress (Lina I forgot what this is exactly)

Concrete planning:

• Beginning August: work on guidelines

• Beginning of September (start tools collecting etc.)

• End october/beginning November: individual check-in with everyone

• End November skype meeting to analyse all this

LEGAL ENTITY WORKING GROUP

Marie-Nour Hechaime (Ashkal Alwan): Harvester

Molemo Moiloa (VANSA): Host

Paula Piedra (TEOR/éTica): Guardian of process-intention

The decision on Legal Entity is related mainly to AC need to distribute and receive money. Once it is defined, it can also affect some of AC self organization mechanisms. The legal entity decisions we make also are related to what we call the AC Myth (how we define ourselves inside and outside AC).

Legal Entity Working Group Guidelines are divided in two stages: research and legal entity constitution. (We can’t make guidelines for Stage 2 Legal Entity Constitution before we accomplish Stage 1: Research).

1. Stage 1: Research

This research is to find out what is better to fulfil AC need to distribute and receive money according to our values, principles and ethics.

Guidelines for this research

• Structure (registration option) should be the one most close to AC ethical principles

• Place of registration/account should also be measured against ethical principles

• Financial sustainability should be primary driver of registration decision. Eg. funder, banks/accounts, currency.

To consider for this research

We have two options: REGISTRATION or NON - REGISTRATION.

For Registration:

• Best location

• Least bureaucracy

• Ease of registration

• Ease of financials (strong currency, strong banks, cheapest)

Non-Registration:

• Shared bank account

• Modalities if possible

• Once clear, decide next steps

Legal Entity affects Admin/Bank and Fundraising:

• Documents of legal entity and bank account

• Governance checks & balances guides

• Communicating legal entity clearly to funders

Legal Entity affects Newsletter (TAM TAM):

• Governance checks & balances guides

• Communicating our Myth

Legal Entity affects Website:

• Communicating legal entity clearly to funders

• Communicating our Myth

2. Stage 2: Legal Entity Constitution (PENDING)

Assembly Research

• http://unitierra.blogspot.mx/

• http://radicalimagination.org/free-school-2015/

• http://thepublicschool.org

Bibliography

• The Undercommons, Stefano Harney and Fred Moten

• Caring for the network, Manuela Zechner

• Imaginal Machines, Autonomy & Self-organization in the Revolutions of Everyday Life, Stevphen Shukaitis

• The Radical Imagination: Social Movement Research in the Age of Austerity, Max Haiven and Alex Khasnabish

• John Holloway’s talk part of the seminar Critical Thought Against the Capital Hydra, San Cristobal de las Cases, May 7, 2015, https://roarmag.org/essays/john-holloway-capitalist-hydra/

• Case Studies gathered by SOLE group (including examples from the Zapatista Movement, Sociocracy, the Art of Hosting, etc.)

You can find the texts here:

https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/0B0sBVUHGQzxERi1MSFdiYzhwY1k

Sources for Edition of Arts Collaboratory - Working Document

• Feedback 2015 https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-ARsh8AvN7CMsiPDD5U3qtpdQf5xWzDHbxrOQnBYnc8/edit?usp%3Dsharing_eixpa_np%26ts%3D5852b5cd&source=gmail&ust=1481901998915000&usg=AFQjCNGa_q3s4966IIgt5RBV7RsSiIETjA

• Feedback 2016

• Metaharvesting from Kirgyzstan Assembly: https://drive.google.com/drive/u/1/folders/0B3HvbM-bc3dHVURGWkE4UWRBVlU

• Guidelines

https://drive.google.com/drive/u/1/folders/0B1dvlBDD00WpOGVhMjJQNWVQZHM

• Common language updated in Kyrgyzstan

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Aw4CZcOtCpCxEqjLBtkxQoyoIsQlglOt51Wd-IqhS_8/edit

• Assembly & Bishkek info (includes the images) + Common Language (for the drawings)

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B2bYSqIN_KLrMEN6bk1FQmltUkk?usp=sharing

• Budget

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1SS6D-MyXI5AJsPEvDtLyVlcKubdnzhVvWtcKYcEW-LY/edit#gid=259931700

Study reference for digital platform:

http://www.resilience.org/stories/2015-03-06/barcelona-en-comu-the-city-as-horizon-for-radical-democracy

Study reference for Self-Organization:

Example of tools:

https://vimeo.com/125088390

http://www.enspiral.com/ Enspiral is a bold experiment to create a collaborative network that helps people do meaningful work.

http://www.enspiral.com/about/

• Loomio is an online tool for collaborative decision-making, built by a team of technologists, activists and social entrepreneurs in New Zealand

https://www.loomio.org/marketing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1gLEAKPkOc (how Loomio works)

please also check this story:

http://www.mixprize.org/story/collaborative-funding-dissolve-authority-empower-everyone-and-crowdsource-smarter-transparent

• Cobudget app:

https://vimeo.com/90498374 starting at 1:38 the explanation how the app works for collaborative budgeting

https://drive.google.com/drive/u/1/folders/0B5Dm5HzA0x7GT1NSd0RwVXdLTTA

P2P ethnography

http://www.artisopensource.net/2014/07/30/communication-knowledge-and-information-in-the-human-ecosystem-p2p-ethnography/

Responding to the current shift of ethnographic research towards the investigation of mobile and multi-sited communities, it is necessary to look at social formations that are dynamic and fluid, in constant movement across space(s) (Marcus 1998). The ethnographic methodology is shaped by, and mirror, the networks, spaces, practices of co-creation and collaborative ethos of the “subject” communities. This ethnography needs to be collaborative and ‘peer to peer’ (p2p). In “collaborative ethnography”, researcher and participants will share observations and fieldnotes (Holmes & Marcus 2008). This will enable multiple voices to contribute actively in the making of the ethnography. Complementary to this is the p2p ethnography to enable each participant – as a node within the network - to know, reflect upon and react to the various positions of other individuals and groups within it. P2p ethnography (Iaconesi et al. 2013) can be considered as a space in which participants position themselves, and from which they are able to observe the dynamic, emergent transformation of the network and of groups and individuals that constitute it. Shifts of position and movement within the network can be recorded and charted as maps. This ethnography, which also involves a self-reflexive exploration of the researcher’s position within/across/in-between the field-site, approaches the ‘field site as a network’ in which the researcher moves and dwells (Burrell 2009). [15]

DIWO : Do-It-With-Others

DIWO: http://www.furtherfield.org/features/articles/diwo-do-it-others-%E2%80%93-no-ecology-withot-social-ecologyu

DIWO, the acronym for Do-It-With-Others, is a "contemporary way of collaborating and exploiting the advantages of living in the Internet age that connected with the many art worlds that diverge from the market of commoditized objects—a network enabled art practice, drawing on everyday experience of many connected, open and distributed creative beings." (http://www.Furtherfield.org/features/articles/diwo-do-it-others---no-ecology-without-social-ecology).

For DIWO, collaborating with others is, thus paramount. Creative practices thrive in collaboration rather than competition. DIWO is an “artistic co-creation” and a “decentralized method of peer empowerment.” DIWO is like a progression from the DIY which was a kind of maverick, pioneers, like Internet pioneers, “we can do it ourselves” which was a kind of autonomy. While DIWO is about combining forces with others to move on and make things together.

DIWO requires openness, spaces where components from different sources meet, mix, crossover, and combine to build a hybrid experience. It challenges and renegotiates the respective power roles of artists and curators. It brings all actors to the fore: artists become co-curators; curators can also become co-creators. The source materials are open to all, to remix, re-edit, and redistribute, either within a particular DIWO event/longer-term project, or elsewhere. Significantly, the process is as important as the outcome: these mutually respective engagements constitute relationally aware peer enactments.

DIWO relies not only on skilled cooperation, but also on peer-to-peer (P2P) practices and Media Art Ecologies. [16]

Website Guidelines (Provisional)

Working Group: Barto, Ferdi (part-time), and Yolande (full time members); Wok The Rock (Designer); Thijs Gadiot (Programmer)

Recap

Our website is a repository for almost all of the material that we garner in AC as well as the “face” to the outside world.

When collecting feedback about the website the then communication group found that most are in favor of a relatively straightforward website that communicates and represents the current self-organized structure of AC. To that end, a mere update and not total re-design of the website seems sufficient, also complying with to our principle of self-sustainability, given the funds and labor that has been poured into the AC website already.

The updated website will focus on streamlining existing content, representing the new AC structure and centralizing AC communication whereby TAM TAM’s (the AC internal Newsletter) infrastructure will be annexed to the website along with Documentation WG as we are looking to share storage or sever space. That said, is important to view Website alongside TAM TAM and Documentation – their working groups are intertwined and have a habitual working process – as they are part of one AC communication organ after all.

The below guideline will serve more as an overview of the work to come, and suggested a production timeline. Once the website is settled a second guideline or user’s manual for the website will follow.

NEW website working fields

Details:

0. A digitizing organigram, introduced by the Meta working group, will be translated by the website designer Wok The Rock and will be the new homepage of the website!

1.1 Format of the Video should be established with Website Working Group (WWG), see production outline below.

And update to our current introduction (including our 1.2 history, mission and presentation) will be led by Presentation WG is to be approved by all members before update

1.3 Similarly, the update to the Future Plan (including our Ethical Principles) will be led by its working group. The suggestion it to also make our common language and ethical principles available besides the Future Plan as to make our mission more transparent

1.4 The list of AC Associate Partners can be also be updated, with the help of DOEN.

2.1 Each AC member may choose to update representation (traditionally the mission statement) to reflect our AC common language. Our suggestion is not to reproduce generic text but share a ±100-word blurb as a form of self-representation that speaks to the core of your organization (radical imagination!)

This text could be including formative books, encounters, travels, films. etc. The text should come together with a complimentary. This will be published together with the Lifelines on the website.

3.1 In line with the communication’s survey findings during the assembly in Kyrgyzstan, AC will suspend its Twitter and Instagram accounts (Casco will take care of this) and its Facebook account will be maintained by its Working Group (Social Media WG). The Facebook newsfeed will no longer occur on the homepage of the website but will be tucked away and serve as the News update for the outside world.

4. Herein is one of the most complex parts of the website as we never managed to have the tooling workshop during assembly thus WWG’s proposal is to touch base with the Tooling WG and develop an interface for this part of the website together.

5. Similarly the resources section of the website is to be workshopped with the Resource WG in order to co-develop an Interface.

6. The shop will host any on sale merchandise and publications.

Here the proposal is not to have a centralized shop that will need administrative maintenance but to organize it such that each the producer(s) of each item are also responsible for its sale. For example, the Territories publications will be shown on the AC website and their sales directed to the Territory WG members (Art Group 705, Centre Soleil d'Afrique, Cráter Invertido, Doual’art, Más Arte Más Acción, and VANSA) to sell.

Territory is then responsible for collecting the profits for our common pot.

7. The info. account will be maintained by an administrator who is in charge of forwarding emails to the correct Working Group

8. A donate account will be made available, in collaboration with the Financial WG

Loose Production Schedule

SEP 2016: Website WG gets in touch with all contributing Working Droups, and establishes necessities to out forward in the design brief

OCT 2016:

- Website WG consolidates design update brief with TAM TAM and Documentation for the designer and programmer

- Fine tune brief with designer and programmer, and get a quote for costs

NOV 2016:

- Content production by working group

- Workshop the Tooling and Resources part of the website with WGs

- Design update from designer due

DEC 2016: Content production by working group

JAN 2017: All website material due

FEB 2017: Design & Programming

MAR 2017: Design & Programming

APR 2017: Editing, tweaking

MAY 2017: Website launch

The budget can only be determined once we get a quote from the

programmer and designer in October 2016.

1. See Unresolved Question. ↑

2. Based on comments by Abdallah Salisu, April 2017. ↑

3. Comment by Stefano Harney and Tonika Sealy after meeting in Utrecht, June 2015. ↑

4. Comment by Stefano Harney and Tonika Sealy after meeting in Utrecht, June 2015. ↑

5. Based on comment by Abdallah Silesu, April 2017 ↑

6. Based on comment by Abdallah Silesu, April 2017. ↑

7. The basis of this text was taken from the Arts Collaboratory website and was modified based on the activities that occurred before and after the Assembly in Kyrgyzstan. ↑

8. Comment by Stefano Harney and Tonika Sealy after meeting in Utrecht, June 2015. ↑

9. Comment by Stefano Harney and Tonika Sealy after meeting in Utrecht, June 2015. ↑

10. ibid.. ↑

11. Based on a comment by Abdallah Salisu, April 2017. ↑

12. This was taken from Attaya’s guidelines. ↑

13. AC aims to challenge traditional notions of “funder” / “grantees”. Here the term is used to refer to traditional system and how it is still impacting AC but aimed to be in practice challenged ↑

14. One of the founding organizations of the original AC and an organization that has already achieved a certain level of economic self-sustainability, they do not maintain one of the collective pots therefore the number of organizations differs from the number of organizations listed in the introduction. ↑

15. Addition from the comments of independent reviewer Penny Travlou, 2016. ↑

16. Ibid. ↑

PLEASE NOTE THIS DOCUMENT IS A WORK IN PROGRESS AND NEEDS ADDITIONAL MEMBERS TO CONTRIBUTE!

Facilitation Process

Facilitation of meetings is focussed on the process of the meeting. This process is both for plenary sessions and working groups. Depending on who is preparing a session, a working group or the facilitation group itself, these are the proposed responsibilities:

Before a meeting

• Create an agenda, ideally to be shared before the start of a meeting to create time for thought through feedback from others

• Proposed time schedule

• Collect proposals on which people are to take decisions

• If applicable, share action points from the previous session

During a meeting

• Creating space for all voices to be heard (including sometimes implementing step up, step down principles when people are not doing it themselves)

• Keeping conversation on topic

• Recap opinions when necessary to focus conversation

• Keep time

• Vibe watching

• Stack taking (keep track of who wants to speak)

• Harvesting the discussion

• Clear minutes, including an action list (meaning, dividing the brought up tasks immediately)

• Facilitate decision making processes

• Recap full conversation at the end of a meeting

• If necessary: plan date and location next session and appoint host

Roles: Host, Guardian of intent, Guardian of Process, Harvester, Minute taker

After a meeting

• Sending around the minutes, including analysis of the harvests

• Archiving the minutes

• Archiving documentation and analysis of harvests

Tasks for after this specific assembly

• Create and share manual for facilitation for working groups to refer back to in their own working processes

• Create and share manual for decision making process

• Create collective agenda, to have overview about when working groups are meeting

• Create and share list of working groups, participating members and contacts overview

• Facilitation participants are advised to arrive earlier to the host country to help in the preparations on-site.

All facilitation groups should rotate

*A Facilitation Guideline will be prepared and provided by the Assembly Working Group during the planning process for the next Assembly. The Guideline will be shared in advance of Assembly.

Banga Meeting Guidelines

Banga Working Group: Aline (Al-ma’mal), Barto (Ruangrupa), Lauren (VANSA), Reem (DARB 1718), Teesa (32° East) Tony (Casa Tres Patios)

What’s a Banga meeting?

This is proposed to be a Nomadic (or Know-madic) meeting that has its main purpose in care for a certain organisation at a certain moment in time, and knowledge sharing specific to the support of the organization and/or its programme(s). In other words, the Banga is a constructive tool that is both helpful to the organization and the ecosystem. It is where we practice collective study, care and skills sharing.

The Banga meeting results in tooling that is useful to the AC network as well as the group requesting the Banga and their ecosystem.

A Banga Meeting could cover:

• Caregiving: advising on a certain issue or project, strengthening and supporting a certain programme, discussing a crisis/emergency

• Collective study

• Skills sharing in a specific programme or project

A week-long Banga is a good amount of time for intense study and deep-diving. It also potentially puts less pressure on the host when it comes to organization. However, depending on the scale of the need and if the visiting group is small, then more time may be preferred.

Things to consider when organizing a Banga

The following is a list of points to consider, with accompanying questions, that are intended to help the organizing group in the conceptualization and planning of their Banga meeting. In the spirit of tooling and sharing knowledge that is intended to help the AC ecosystem, it is suggested that the answers to these questions be written down in order for the current and future AC partners to understand the questions, issues and processes that led to the Banga meeting, the planning processes that were involved, the activities planned and the tools that were generated. Considerations for a Banga should be made in line with our Ethical Principles—including the value of self-limitation and non-hierarchical self-organization.

The Need

- Why is the Banga important and necessary at this point in the evolution of your group? Your

Lifeline Plan should serve as a reference for establishing the need for the Banga, and your

Lifeline Triangle should help with this thinking process.

- Is a Banga the right tool to meet this need? Have other means been considered? Are there

alternative ways to share knowledge and care-giving than face-to-face?

The Participants

- Which AC members are you inviting?

- Will there be external participants?

- What expected added value are they bringing to the meeting?

- If you do not have a particular person/group in mind to match your need,

look through the AC Resource Map and talk it through with your lifeline triangle.

The Timeline

- Have you communicated to the AC network, through the Tam Tam, about your plan for a Banga?

(Who is coming? When is it happening? Why is it happening?)

- Have you given potential Banga participants enough notice for planning?

- Have you got enough time to work out visa arrangements and other logistics?

(Banga in Lubumbashi took 3 months to plan)

- Will there be a pre-study for the Banga?

The Methodology

- What forms are you going to use to introduce the group to your environment and to the specific

issue/project you’re gathering for?

- What material will you share with the group before the Banga?

- What will the tooling techniques consist of? (based on the Tooling Guidelines)

The Budget

- How will the Banga be funded? (see Administrative Guidelines)

• Funds generally come from the collective pot so self-limitation with spending ;)

- Will non-collective pot funds be used? Where will the funds come from? Share for tooling sake!

Post Banga

Share your experience in the next Tam Tam (See Tam Tam guidelines)

Share your tooling (See Tooling guidelines)

This section below is from the Future Plan and speaks to the principles behind a Banga. It served as an important reference for the preparation of these guidelines.

Practical Framework

● Before calling a Banga meeting, AC members should first look at the AC Resource Map to see if the desired support can otherwise be found;

● Partners should also first make a ‘self-diagnosis’ through Study Buddying (interview chains, Skype discussions with AC partners) in order to check if a Banga would be resourceful;

● Banga meetings can also be proposed at the Assembly in order to get collective feedback. During the assembly, a Banga team/committee will be formed, consisting of three AC organizations, in order to decide on which Banga calls to support, based on practical considerations. Decisions will be made in line with our Ethical Principles—including the value of self-limitation and non-hierarchical self-organization. The team will look at whether the meeting should take place with the other AC members and/or whether there is a translocal benefit as it could be held with other local organizations or practitioners. AC will also investigate if the Banga meeting could be of benefit to AC in light of its resource map;

● The organization of a Banga is to be carried out by the host organization, including the travel arrangements;

● Each Banga has a budget of a maximum 8,000 Euro. In case a bigger budget is needed the remainder will need to come from the host or the Collective Pot. (This should be deleted if the text below is correct.)

• Each Banga budget is a maximum of 8,000 Euros, which will be used to cover all of the costs of the Banga meeting. These funds come from the Collective Pot of the host organization, or the organization that is calling for the Banga. If the costs of the Banga exceed the 8,000 Euros the host organization will have the choice of either paying the difference from its own funds (not the collective pot funds) or requesting permission from Attaya to use funds from the Collective Savings. (This needs to be verified.)

TAM-TAM GUIDELINES

What is TAM TAM? TAM-TAM is one of our internal communication tools/mechanisms for accountability, update and sharing of important, relevant and synthesized information with the rest of the AC network about ongoing of AC processes.

Who is sharing in TAM-TAM?

All the activities and working groups (temporary and permanent)

TAM-TAM content/structure format

TAM-TAM will be set up on FreshMail as a provisional platform until AC internal website is ready. For the first editions, information will be collected through the Google Drive and set up by TAM TAM working group for delivery. (see procedure description below).

IMPORTANT: TAM TAM is proposed to work as a platform within the AC internal website area. We have been in conversations with Website WG, and this process of re-adjusting and programming will take some time. So TAM TAM has decided to set up a provisional platform for the first editions, until the new website is ready. Guidelines will be updated and shared when this is ready.

TAM TAM TEAM + TASKS:

• Teesa: In charge of call for contributions and reminders

• Andrés and Platohedro (Lina+Luci): In charge of proofreading final content. Checking if there is any content missing. / Also Andres contribution with template design /visual identity.

• Dani: In charge of setting up TAM TAM on platform and distribution to all AC mailing list.

Financial resources

We are as of right now working with an online platform. In the future we will be discussing this with Website working group.

Proposal for centralizing the information for TAM-TAM

We have created a shared folder containing subfolders with the name of each working group. Each working group will be responsible of generating the content they want to share with AC network. We have also created a subfolder for each triangle, so that each one can upload important information they wish to share (text, images).

In the future when temporary groups dissolve we will only have sub-folders for the permanent groups and activities, in agreeance with what was discussed during the assembly.

FOLDERS: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B1gO2lObS7TEdUczYTN0dnZtY2M

Working Plan

TAM-TAM will be delivered every 3 months.

(September 30th 2016, December 31 2016, March 31 2017 and June 30 2017)

IMPORTANT: As soon as all the guidelines arrive from their working group we will complete this document with more accurate content suggestions for each working group and activity.

Content can be uploaded anytime in between editions. TAM TAM will make contact with each working group through email two times to remind everyone of delivery dates.

• FIRST REMINDER: A first reminder will be sent by Teesa via email a month before TAM TAM delivery date. Ideally each working group can chose one person from their group to be the contact between TAM TAM and their group.

The first reminder of the call for contributions for the first edition on the AC general list will be August 30th 2016.

• SECOND REMINDER: The second and final reminder of the call for contributions will be sent by Teesa 2 weeks before TAM TAM delivery date.

The second reminder of the call for contributions for the first edition on the AC general list will be September 19th 2016.

• FINAL CONTENT: Platohedro (Lina + Luci) and Andrés will be proof reading content, after this Dani will be uploading all the material to FreshMail platform to send out to all of AC mailing list.

CONTENT FOR TAM TAM

Each working group will be responsible of generating a document with their attached images/graphics and/or links to information already online. Therefore TAM TAM thinks each working group should have autonomy on what they want to share with everyone. So we decided we would give everyone some very basic guidelines on how or what content to share.

Keep it nice and simple: TAM TAM will be delivered every 3 months so maybe working groups will have a LOT of information to share. Try to keep it simple and straightforward, don't be afraid of using bullet points. We want information to be concise so it's easy to read.

Think outside of the box: Don't be afraid to share pictures, audio or videos of your process. Also links to videos, music or other documents.

Have fun: This is the way we stay in touch with each other. So try and make this an easygoing process. Think of it as sending out an email to your friends to tell them what's up with your life. Keep it cool and casual.

CONTENT STRUCTURE:

The structure of the FINAL content each working group uploads to their folder on Google Drive should be the following:

• 1. Title: Please be clear and concise.

  2. Topic: Add the name of your activity or working group. Example: #Banga #Fundraising

  3. Cover image: Suggest an outstanding image to accompany your publication.

  4. Synapse: All posts must have a short text description of 550 characters maximum (including spaces). Please be clear and concise in your description.This will be in english ONLY.

  5. Full content: You can use other creative formats like images, video, and audio are welcomed, following this:

     - Images: Images must uploaded in jpg and compressed (no more than 350 kb per image)

- Video and audio: This information should be shared from links from other platforms such as youtube, vimeo, soundcloud, archive.org, etc. In case you want to keep your content private/only for AC members, some of this platforms allow the private use with password (like vimeo). In this case, please remember to also share the password to access the content.

IMPORTANT: (Please follow each working group guidelines for preparing your material related to triangles, financial, etc.)

Length

• Texts: We don’t suggest a max of words.

• Images: 1 to 3 images. Only JPG. compressed (no more than 350 kb per image)

• Audio/videos: As links.

Document extensions

• Texts: Editable version (google docs)

• Images: JPG. compressed (no more than 350 kb per image)

• Videos/audios: they must be previously online, share the link

Languages/translations

The content should be sent in english, but ideally published in 3 languages (English, Spanish, French). Working groups are responsible for providing their content in English and at least one more language.

AC Presentation - Guidelines Document

Tony Evanko, Casa Tres Patios;

OVERVIEW

The presentation of the Arts Collaboratory is a component that is related to both the mediums of communication; Web Site and AC Tam Tam, the fundraising group, the documentation group and to the ways in which the AC network is presented to the world.

The image at the right was produced in the AC Assembly in Kyrgyzstan in June of 2016.

It shows 3 points, which are listed below with comments or clarifications in parenthesis:

1. Modes of Presentations or media in which the AC will appear.

   1. AC TamTam

   2. Website

   3. Graphic Design

   4. Publications

   5. Manuals

   6. Videos / YouTube

   7. Fundraising

   8. Introductory Letters

   9. Briefs

   10. Blurbs (press)

2. Audiences for presentations

   1. To itself (internal)

   2. To interested parties (visitors to web page)

   3. To funders (potential and existing)

   4. To general public

   5. To state parties (institutions)

   6. To inter-governmental organizations (UNESCO, EU, etc.)

3. Questions (to be resolved either through the guidelines that will be produced in this document or that need to be addressed by other working groups or the AC Assembly.)

   1. Do we think of processing levels of presentation across the AC system?

      1. Local, Regional, Global (Is the presentation the same on all levels?

   2. Content management? Standardising of Content? (Should the content regarding the AC be standardized? What is the key information? Who will develop it? Coordinate with Documentation Group)

   3. Who presents in person? (Who are the spokespersons? Everyone in AC?)

      1. Guidelines should address the ethics of fundraising (what are our ethics about fundraising?) + fundraising (what should be presented to funders? Is the presentation of AC the presentation of the AC Network as an entity comprised of individual initiatives that form a group whose sum is greater than any individual group?) + present.

GUIDELINES

1. The presentation of the Arts Collaboratory is the presentation of the totality of the ecosystem including the history of the AC, a description of the range of interests, projects and accomplishments that is represented by work of the groups in the network. (This strategy should be coordinated with the Fundraising Group. The word network may be changed depending upon the conclusions of the Legal Entity group and the decisions of the AC regarding the organizational structure.)

2. The content of the presentation of the Arts Collaboratory should be standardized and consistent and carry the same core message at the local, regional and national levels.

   1. Details may deleted or emphasized depending on the purpose of the presentation.

3. The presentation of the Arts Collaboratory should be integrated into other media platforms in which the individual initiatives are also included. (Tam, Tam and Web Page)

4. The shorter or longer presentations of the AC should be developed considering different possible modes of presentation including, but not limited to the following:

   1. AC TamTam

   2. Website

   3. Graphic Design

   4. Publications

   5. Manuals

   6. Videos / YouTube

   7. Fundraising

   8. Introductory Letters

   9. Briefs

   10. Blurbs (press releases)

5. When writing the content of the presentation of the Arts Collaboratory the different possible audiences should be taken into consideration. Some of the possible audiences are the following:

   1. To itself (internal)

   2. To interested parties (visitors to web page)

   3. To funders (potential and existing)

   4. To general public

   5. To state parties (institutions)

   6. To inter-governmental organizations (UNESCO, EU, etc.)

6. A system for translation and style checking should be implemented for the development of the content of the presentation.

   1. The native speakers of French, Spanish and English in the AC Ecosystem should be considered for these tasks. If they are not available, outside translators and style checkers may be employed.

   2. It may be a good idea to set up network of ‘Study Buddy Writers’

7. As presentation opportunities arise for international and transnational organizations the spokesperson(s) should be selected by the AC Group. (to be coordinated with Fundraising Group).

8. Each organization in the AC ecosystem should have the right to use the AC presentation materials to promote the work of their organization while respecting the AC family principles and ethics.

9. Costs for participating in presentations, if they require travel and lodging etc., that will benefit the entire AC ecosystem should be assumed by the ecosystem. (The form of payment and this idea in general has not yet been approved by the assembly.)

WORK IN PROGRESS

In case anyone is interested in following this process we have added the links to the documents we have been working on since we came back from the assembly:

https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/0B1dvlBDD00WpTFZUN1hNRHJCblk

Idea for internal AC platform

The current website hosting runs with a CMS (Content Management System) that all the organizations already know and have access to publish news in the AC website. We also have a tutorial for publishing on the current AC website.

For the internal platform, a simple way could be to generate a folder inside the hosting where we can install and configure the same CMS, with the same users database, for facilitate the use of it, and the access will be restricted in the home page (front end), this means to see the content you have to login and use each organization password.

This option allows to maintain the current styles (CSS) and plugins of the “public” CMS for publication and content visualization.

Consultation on Legal Entity options – from Alejandra Montiel

Dear Paula,

Thanks for the meeting we had this weekend as well as for the information you have provided. As discussed, the group of organizations we discussed (the Group) is interested in exploring possible legal organization options that would consider the diversity of the members of the Group in order to keep operating as a sole Group and face the upcoming changes in investment, funds, operation, self-sustainability, etc.

A preliminary and very basic analysis shows the following:

1. Merge possibility

• This would imply creating a new entity by merging all the existent members of the Group.

• This is simply not feasible due to the current conditions of the members, which are all dully organized and registered in their correspondent jurisdictions.

• It is almost impossible to find a jurisdiction in the world that would allow such a large merge of organizations with such diverse legal back ground.

• In my opinion, this is simply not feasible.

1. New organization

• The members could serve as founders or shareholders or a new organization to be created (the Neworg)

• Said Neworg would possibly need to be created in a so called tax haven, which allows for easier conditions for founders of such diverse origin, v.g, BBVI, Delaware, Nebraska, etc, just to mention some in the American continent.

• Even if this was possible it would be necessary to obtain and secure the legal documents from all members, apostille and legalized these documents in order to have then create a Neworg as founders and/or shareholders

• Once created, the Neworg would possible require a director, administrative staff and there is a risk that a new level of bureaucracy and thus expense would be created.

• The main question here is: does the Group really need a new entity and all the expenses associated to is creation and maintenance?

1. A new idea

Let’s look at the EU from a bird’s eye perspective:

• It is a supranational organization composed by different countries, with their own regulations, identity and conditions.

• Its motto: United in Diversity

• The members have agreed to abide by a common document or constitution, approved according to the methods established by the legislation of each country.

• In those cases in which the country’s legislation does not allow them to accept all the conditions, exceptions are made, v.g. the English case, in which monetary integration has not occurred.

• Its main goals are integration and multinational cooperation.

• The EU is not registered in any world registry. Nonetheless, due to its organization and the behavior of its members, it is acknowledged world wide as a valid counterpart, with cooperation offices and embassies.

• It follows, in general terms, the concept of confederation or federation.

• It’s modus operandi is defined as follows:

“through common policies regarding different fields of action”

“In order to achieve common goals, the members appoint the Union several attributions, powers or competence and the Union exercises a common or share sovereign authority”

• It has an internal system based on the representative democracy regime and 7 main institutions:

1. European Parliament.

2. European Council- in charge of general political orientation and appointment of representatives before third parties.

3. Council.

4. European Commission

5. Justice Tribunal

6. Accountability Tribunal

7. European Central Bank

• There are as well many sub committees or smaller institutions for specific activities.

• Although the origin EU dates back from the end of the IIWW, it is not an original ideal. The British had already developed something similar through not as complicated through the concept of the Commonwealth for all countries which once were British colonies.

So, let’s explore the possibility of creating our very own version of the UE. How shall we call it? Arts Union? Commonwealth of Arts? International Arts Collective? Global Arts Community? Shall we let the advertisers, marketing people or best yet, the members decide?

Why does it seem to be a good idea?

• The Group members are already dully organized in their own countries.

• The Group already has drafted its basic document of principles (a constitution if you will), approved by all members according to its own internal regulation.

• The Group has a clear vision of activity distribution, which coincidentally includes seven different areas.

• Each section could issue the Group regulation for its area considering the wellbeing and needs of the organization and submit it to the comments, observations and approval of the rest of the members.

• The Group already has ample experience on negotiating and agreeing on documents across the borders.

• The Group requires a supranational form of organization, based on self-regulation, and based on integration, collaboration, diversity and unity concepts.

• The Group is not looking form complicated national changes such as change of currency, strong economical adjustments, customs regulations, common air space, common criminal regulation- which should make it easier. Also, any elections of representatives would be easier among 25 members as compared to 500 million (approx.) citizens.

• The Group could allow for exceptions in the memberships or level of memberships according to its need.

• It may require additional bureaucracy, just as the EU does, but not new organization

• The head of the organization could rotate every X time.

• It is a flexible organization form.

• Keeping the reasonable distance and concept-wise, the UE scheme and the direction the Group has taken is very similar.

So, just do it!

Not yet. In my opinion, it is worth exploring.

It must have cons, right?

Yes and this is something that must be studied.

For instance, one non-legal question is how would such an organization be received by world funds that may provide further funding for self-sustainability projects? Maybe they will give it only to an individual member, but then the member could distribute or contribute the amount received to the Group’s finance. Maybe some funds would be willing to provide funding to strengthen this type of organization.

I’ll be more than willing to discuss this in further detail with you or the members of the Group if necessary.

Thanks for the opportunity to participate in this. I love the idea.

Alejandra