[-empyre-] Creativity as a social ontology

[carol-ann braun]

In response to Julian's remark :

> In consideration of this topic, one
> could say any social network is the industrialisation of social exclusion
> (network anxiety) - "Am I your friend or not"?

Hard to disagree.  

There are other ways of broaching the idea of exclusion and the creative
potential of a given on-line community, however.

The approach is a hybrid of local and networked initiatives.
 
The objective:  build social networks that give a voice to those excluded
from democratic institutions or processes.

Here's a modest example of what such hybrid initiatives can entail:

Phase 1: get actors to prepare sketches on a given question; get kids from
community centers to see the sketches; have a web site archive reactions to
the topic. 

Phase 2: get kids to use their mobile phones to make their own reportages on
the questions raised; actors and coaches help structure the process.

Phase 3:  bring the web-site into the creative process : people "vote" on
each reportage, the website helps visualize opinion trends.

Phase 3: Organize several "restitutions" of the contents during neighborhood
fairs, picnics or during specific evenings at the local theater (in which
case, the website serves both as a "décor" and an "actor" in its own right)

Phase 4: Link this work up to town-hall meetings.  The website serves -
again, in a hybrid fashion - to include the voices of people who might not
be present in the flesh, but who have had their word to say on a given
topic. 

Ongoing : Continue to focus on bridging the gap between local issues, local
telephone-reportages, networked responses and local events.


The mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoe, and one of his top advisors, Pierre
Mansat, are funding such initiatives in an effort to use digital
technologies to include Paris' suburbs in the construction of "Le Grand
Paris", or Paris-Metropole...a vast, emerging "community".


Carol-Ann Holzberger-Braun
Paris, France.