How to organize your own ErasmusPC Salon
Version 2.0 - ErasmusPC 11.2007
The ErasmusPC Salon Method
ErasmusPC
Contents 1. What is a Salon? ................................................................................................................................. 1 2. Why ErasmusPC Salons? ................................................................................................................... 1 3. How to Organize your own ErasmusPC Salon ................................................................................... 3 3.1 Six Basic Conditions ...................................................................................................................... 3 3.2 Guidelines For Your Inspiration ..................................................................................................... 3 3.3 The 20x20 Format.......................................................................................................................... 4 3.4 Salon Setup ................................................................................................................................... 4 3.5 The ErasmusPC Salons Toolkit..................................................................................................... 5 4. Creative Commons.............................................................................................................................. 5
1. What is a Salon? The ErasmusPC is a structured focus group set up to explore new urban topics or any urban cultural issue that we feel needs to be investigated. To do this we created a mechanism for generating integrated solutions through creative dialogue. We devised the mechanism so that it creates a level playing field between participants, professional and non-professional alike. At all times the focus is on creativity, innovation and accessibility.
2. Why ErasmusPC Salons? ErasmusPC is about international and interdisciplinary best practice in urban development. It is about the exchange of ideas and changing the way people think about the city. We believe in culture (in its broadest sense) as a way to help develop cities, to bring cities closer to what they are. ErasmusPC is about creating ideas for making cities better. ErasmusPC is a freezone on the internet. Our mission is searching for the soul of the city.
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The ErasmusPC Salon Method
ErasmusPC
‘Culture’ to some mean theatres and high art, but to us culture is everything that makes us human, everything that is passed from one generation to the other, everything that makes life in cities a positive experience. So we see culture in the broadest sense of the word. ‘What is the soul of the city?’ is the basic question that we search an answer to. If you’d want to build on the soul of the city, you’ll have to find it first. ‘3xI’ is our method to learn, cause interaction and action: • International: there is not one perspective for cities or culture. Someone from Hamburg will think completely different about them than someone from Xi-An or Maputo. Bringing these perspectives together and make them exchange will create new ideas. • Interdisciplinary: philosophers, architects, poets, politicians, film makers, sculptors, urban planners, sociologists, helicopter pilots, sound artists – they all have a different way of thinking about the city. And here to, opening up different worlds for each other will bring new ideas. • Inspiring: we focus only on the stuff that inspires and on generating new ideas through dialogue. When our imagination starts working, we learn best. Besides, there is so much information – why not go for the top? We gather and share inspiration from cities all over the world with our website www.erasmuspc.com and our newsletter. Subjects we deal with range from city poetry to ‘cult up your city’ projects, book reviews to urban thinkers, a UN Culture Campaign to the ‘lost and found department’. We cause interaction with a range of other tools: urban sound hunts, live interviews, the 8 Questions project, creative brainstorms, urban theme weeks, and most of all: the Salon. The non-profit network consists of people with a passion for cities and culture, and extends into cities all over the world. Our website attracts more than 10,000 unique visitors each month. Our readers are our contributors. To support the work of the network organisationally and financially, we have started the ErasmusPC Foundation. If you would like to become active, be inspired by one of our salons in your city, organize a salon yourself, become a member, contribute inspiring projects, donate, start an ErasmusPC Office in your city, receive our newsletter, or do something else, send a mail to hans.karssenberg@erasmuspc.com.
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The ErasmusPC Salon Method
ErasmusPC
3. How to Organize your own ErasmusPC Salon Regularly, ErasmusPC members from all over the world organize Salons, to debate and exchange experiences about topics of cities and culture such as pride, soul of the city, temporary use as urban catalyst, citypoems, cultural elite and subcultures, freezones, urban acoustics, suburbia. The aim of a Salon is to bring different perspectives together and to create new cross overs. Salons are visual and creativity-based events. A Salon only takes one hour, is fun to do and is surprisingly easy to organize yourself.
3.1 Six Basic Conditions The method is open, there is not a strict template to organize your own ErasmusPC Salon – let your imagination go! However, there are six basic conditions: 1. participants must be from different backgrounds / disciplines – so no discussions between urban planners only, but opening up completely new worlds of ideas for each other 2. participants must be from different countries or cultural backgrounds: invite people from abroad, immigrants or representatives from a subculture and you will get entirely new worlds of thought in your debate 3. participants should be from practice and the community, who can tell about existing and inspiring projects or events, otherwise the debate will remain too abstract or theoretical 4. presentations should be about ideas and inspiration, not about promoting private companies 5. if you use the name of the international network ErasmusPC, we ask one thing in return: the results must be presented on www.erasmuspc.com (preferably by film and in written report) – it is your chance to reach an international audience of readers from cities all over the world. Your inspiration may even trigger a similar debate elsewhere 6. Presentations must be short and have a high visual content. See information about the 20x20 format in Section 2.3.
3.2 Guidelines For Your Inspiration The following layout could be successful for your Salon: -
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start with a clear single topic or question, such as ‘what is the soul of the city?’, or ‘how can investment in culture make your city better?’ have 4 to 5 short presentations in a row, without debate in between have a follow-up with a debate between the presenters and with the audience – in our experience, after 4 to 5 presentations in a row, the themes will follow automatically.
Inviting people, go for the most inspiring examples you know. Use your network to find new inspiring people, you may not know them, but someone around you always will. When inviting, try to think not only about what people would contribute to the power of the exchange, but also: what’s in it for them?
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The ErasmusPC Salon Method
ErasmusPC
Help us spread ideas and inspiration as much as possible! We invite you to have your Salon in English, and to film it, so that we can share the presentations between a much larger audience than the people present at the Salon. You can upload your film on www.youtube.com and then link it to an article on www.ErasmusPC.com.
3.3 The 20x20 Format One method of presenting ideas that we have found very successful is the 20x20 format. This method originates in Japan where it was develop to share creative ideas. It is meant as a fast and imaginative presentation form: -
Make a Power Point Presentation of 20 slides Each slide is installed to shift automatically after 20 seconds 20x20: the total presentation therefore lasts exactly 6 minutes and 40 seconds Each slide contains an image, and no, or hardly any words The last slide is an exception to this rule: this one contains a challenging position for the debate.
The advantages of this way of making your presentation are that you are compelled to be brief and imaginative. The short presentation enables several perspectives and examples to be presented one after the other, so that the salon can be really interdisciplinary and international. This format does require some practice beforehand. Try to time yourself – you only have 6’40’’! The first time, you will probably tend to talk too long. Also, try to let go of the idea to tell something with each slide exactly – consider the images as a flow in the background of your key message. For each Salon you can appoint a chairman, whom you could ask to give a short introduction of the key question or topic of the Salon. What are you looking for? In this case, you can use a 10x20 presentation, so ten slides of twenty seconds each.
3.4 Salon Setup In this set-up, the Salon lasts one hour: -
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3-4 minutes: a 10x20 introduction by the Chairman 20-33 minutes: three to five 20x20 presentations, each ending with a challenging position o not more than one discipline presenting at the same time o at least one person presenting from an international background o at least one person presenting based on a concrete existing inspiring project or event 25-35 minutes: flash debate between presenters and audience, lead by the chairman.
You can have several Salons in one day or evening. It is fun to organize and amazing to see so many inspiring results in such a short time.
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The ErasmusPC Salon Method
ErasmusPC
3.5 The ErasmusPC Salons Toolkit To help you organize your ErasmusPC Salon, we have prepared templates for: -
the 20x20 presentation the 10x20 introductory presentation of the chairman instructions for the chairman of the Salon a list to gather names and e-mail addresses of your audience.
On the ErasmusPC website, you can find examples of recent and upcoming Salons. Click on the Agenda button and find previous examples in Rotterdam, Dublin, Madurodam, Almere and Hamburg.
4. Creative Commons
ErasmusPC stimulates gathering, developing and spreading ideas for better cities. Everything we do is open source. After all, our aim is to inspire as many people as we can. The ErasmusPC network therefore is under the Creative Commons Licence “Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0”. This means that the user is free to copy, distribute, display and perform the work, and to make derivate works, under the following conditions: Attribution. You must give the ErasmusPC credit. Share Alike. If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same, similar or a compatible license. www.erasmuspc.com / hans.karssenberg@erasmuspc.com
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