FUSPEY main event fun sustainable peaceful existence

4pm to 7pm Tuesday 13th May

Come to the Main Lecture Theatre at Oxford Brookes University, Gipsy Lane for an afternoon of films, activities, talks and discussions with guest speakers. Find out more about who is doing what in Oxford and how you can get involved.

And more: party, make music, make posters, make love and get people talking.

What’s on

Undercurrents film: Globalisation and the Media

Guest speakers

Lucy Ford- Lecturer in International Relations- international security and sustainability. Pritam Singh- Senior Lecturer, Business School- the global implications of the neo-conservative agenda in the USA. Paul Kingsworth- author and journalist for the Ecologist, Andy Taylor- conflict, respect and compassion. Richard Thompson- Quakers and peace. Fiyaz Mughal- Liberal Democrat Councillor- activity in the local community

WORLD BANK BOYCOTT

last night we had an economist from senegal, demba dembele, talk to us about the world bank and its negative affects on africa and in particular senegal.

he was joined by a lady from india too.

basically WTO, IMF, world bank, pump money into "developing nations" knowing full well that it comes right back to the leading nations through debt.

a new global network has started up from some "developing nations" and grown into a very well worked out system BOYCOTT WORLD BANK, it tries to get groups to not support the world bank by not usings its BONDS.

already many city municipalities, universities and groups have signed up to this boycott, its modelled on the method which got rid of apartheid in south africa. cities in the united states which have signed up are san fancisco boulder milwakee

university of new mexico wadham college, oxford, england

we are trying to get brookes to sign up to this boycott, we encourage you to find out about the boycott at

www.wbbeurope.org

and try to get your uni/ group to sign up

this is architectural. if you explore its details you see why. also many NGO environmental groups are behind this boycott due to the UNSUSTAINABLE systems the WORLD BANK enforces, ie dam building and forcing african countries to start buying U.S tomatoes and stop planting their own

more info on our campaign as it develops at uk.indymedia.org

Duncan organized a group to go on a green walk around Dublin that culminated in Grafton st where we gave out free organic lettuce. We wore posters that promoted sustainable living and overalls. We got a positive response. The event brought awareness and fun to Dublin and was great outlet to express our enthusiasm and energy about working for a greener Dublin.

I'll send you photos Duncan. I don't have the net at home so I'll save them and bring them in. My assesments are comming up It could be after.

FUSPEY comes to brookes. lots of fun for ark school

hello all duncan here from DS4, 5th year diploma. just letting you know about a few very exciting things you might want to get involved with both in and out of brookes

• student regeneration of heart of the architectural school; crit space, info and computer area, social space (and possibly the new cafe?) first meeting to discuss things thr @ 1pm - crit space

• the FUSPEY lecture, lloyd lecture theatre thr 6pm. given by myself and will include first presentation to brookes students of EASA, the european architectural student assembly. 1000 + of us will be going to a danish island for a 2 week long workshop this summer, theme; sustainability. lots of fun.

this event will be followed by the showing of 2 short films in the crit space @ 7pm. tea, coffee and biscuits will be served, and possibly some free wine, check website for updates on this

• there is an ongoing project; "experimental communication space" which happens in the crit space every thursday, 6pm onward. it is a social space for interaction between the whole school of architecture

see you thursday

dunk

for more info see easa.antville.org

global network community comes to the new digital studio at brookes.

window to the world.

can people please add interesting website links and why you think they are interesting. more sharing of ideas leads to healthier diverse systems

www.csl.sony.co.jp

shows some of the latest technological developments, nash showed us a 2 minute film about "datatiles" small handsized glass panels that work almost like complete hard drives. that film can be downloaded from the link

"Hyperdragging: A direct manipulation technique for moving information across the boundary of computers and surfaces. (a) A user can start moving an object on a computer in the normal manner by dragging it with the pointing device. (b) When the cursor reaches the edge of the screen, it ``jumps'' to the table surface. (c) The user can also drop an item on a physical object, such as a VCR tape, to make a link between real and virtual objects." inventor-rekimoto

Hi Dunk (and all the others of course) alx here ... some thoughts about your pre-occupations you mentioned in my weblog.

easa I think that the weakness and at the same time the strength of easa might be it's impermanent aspect.

People meeting there are having their lives and most probably a lot to do else than trying to hold permanent contact. That might be considered being weakness.

On the other hand, just becos they are living their very different lives without being in touch all the time, it's all the more interesting to meet once or twice a year altogether (300-500 people - you should take care not to exagerate ;-) ). I think what matters is not the quantity of inforamtion we communicate but the quality and density.

Certain things are meant to emerge for a certain time and then disapear for another while to better re-appear later again (remember those kinda mushrooms in the woods which are constituted of a multitude of individual "units" that small that they cannot be seen and which are forming something strong when conditions are good? and then disappering later).

Most easa people are having some few contacts according to their affinities, but those contacts are not necessarily "big movements" and they don't have to to be efficient. It's in those little links that easa-spirit is kept alive.

If people do not communicate here, it might be because it's a public place. People behave differently when being in different groups and differently than they would when being alone. The whole is not just the sum of the parts - remember? So people being at home in their context and "social networks" do not behave as they did in the easa-network which emerges once a year. Sorry if I'm not very clear ... I hope most of you should be able to understand in between the written lines what I meant.

ark-schools There too I'd think about the scale of steps to take and to consider. As I said already somewhere else here: little steps on a way - quite unseen - are often more efficient than big once. If big once can be taken - all the better, but no one should be frustrated if that doesnt work when trying to make big steps. Most important is not the speed at which a way is gone but the fact that it is gone. And making little steps you often can be more careful about "details" you oversee when trying to take several stairs at once. (You remember the hypersensibility of any system to it's initial conditions? slight differences in "details" can make a big big difference. We should be careful about details).

In my school infrastructure is bad, very bad. But in some way, just because there's just nothing, we - or most of us - learned and are learning a lot. And some of us learned about the importance of communication (intuitively). We had a drawing room, where some years ago a class started just selling drinks (it's very hot there in summer), and little by little, that became a real little bar given over year by year from one class to another. After selling just drinks, some made it more comfortable bringing some seads along, another year we changed the whole configuration of the room - and every two years it seems that it's getting more and more an experimental field for little interventions on a space we - as a group - appropriate ourselves. There's work there, exchange, laughing, thinking together (all through the different years/classes), a year ago even the civil engineers discovered this room as being not that bad and they are spending their lunchtime with us sometimes and evenare working sometimes with us.

It's actually not a big deal, but if I tell you that, it's just to show you that little steps - just done because some small group of person thought them right to be taken - are moving things ahead. But one has to be patient to realize that they did.

Recently I wanted to try to get them to online com-spaces and made another weblog: macademia.antville.org It's not a big deal neither - just a little step in a direction I feel being right. I'm curious to see at what pace that way is gonna be taken - either way it's gonna be okay.

So, yes, I'm still networking ... alx