Local Place & its Co-construction in the Global Network Society

Film and Communication Technologies For Inclusive, Locally Grounded

Civic Cosmopolitan Projects in a New

“Network Locality”

Hazel Ashton (SPEaR Linkages & BRCSS)

Local place in a globally interdependent world

Pressures & Problems on Localities & Inhabitants

* Continual bombardment on screens about problems that we can’t seem to control: economic, ecological, violence, social breakdown

* Difficulty connectingto create sharednarratives to live by

Who creates our stories?

We need new stories to live by

• “We are in trouble just now because we do not have a good story. We are in between stories. The old story, the account of how the world came to be and how we fit into it, is no longer effective. Yet we have not learned the new story. Our traditional story of the universe sustained us for a long period of time. It shaped our emotional attitudes, provided us with life purposes, and energised action…” (Thomas Berry 1989 cited in Grassie, 1994)

Developmental narrative-based methodology

• Contextualization by local people around their needs & aspirations

• Screen-based communicative platform to open up new possibilities

• Cosmopolitan

• Transdisciplinary

• Locality-policy-academia communication tripod (within & between)

Creating new local-cosmopolitan stories & projects

• Qiyun from China• Member of local web project• Uncovering so see more• Local contextualisation so globally street-wise• Socially robust policy

The story of the unworthy tree

• Not native

• Not special

• Not qualified

• Not networked

• No connections

• No power

Then the tree became worthy

Co-constructing local place in a globally interdependent world

• First recognise the affordances & benefits of communication technologies for building shared local agency & local-through-to-global connections

• So as to create new stories & relevant social action around needs & aspirations

• So balancing quadruple bottom line – economic, ecological, social and cultural – factors

• Well-connected “Network Localities” can do anything (well almost )

Sometown migrants connect with each other,

disconnected from the locality

Whilhelm Koff, the café-owner, fearing the worst is disconnected

Reacting with ‘ready-to-hand’ tools’

Methodology via a discThe screen platform• Film (aesthetically engaging & developmental):

viewed & discussed together• Internet: cumulative, online contributions &

interaction by any or all, 24/7 –

New accessibility post 1990s• Combining miniaturised hardware & digitised

software • Internet access & use increasingly diffused • Newly portable affordable cameras & PC film editing

Unprecedented transdisciplinary locality/academia/policy connection• On the one hand, local inhabitants’ everyday

situations, perceptions, feelings & aspirations conveyed in their own language & expression

• On the other this becomes available for multiple forms of multi/trans- disciplinary analyses & contributions by academics & policy makers

• So this compact, portable & shareable disk can now become a “2-sided lifeworld/research coin”

Acknowledgements

Dare to create! (J. Wall, 2003)

For conditions to support creativity:

• Mother: Frances Ashton (picture slide 3 of Hiroshima)

• Supervisors: David Thorns & Geoff Fougere• SPEaR: Linkages doctoral scholarship • BRCSS: Networking, Access Grid, scholarship &

possible post doc