Designing for the 21st Century: Using Web 2.0 Technologies (and Social Networking Tools) for Social Action March 11, 2008

This workshop costs £5 to attend, including lunch

We invite you to attend this PRaDSA workshop on "Designing for the 21st Century: Using Web 2.0 Technologies and (Social Networking Tools) for Social Action" to be held in north-east London at Space on 11/12th March.

Social networking tools and Web 2.0 have become great talking points. But the chatter hides their growing history as means to contact, link and engage a broad range of friends, strangers, existing and emergent groups in forms of work and play that build (or challenge) civil society. Their effect has been seen in charity fundraising, community decision-making and political mobilisation. Their use has created shadows (see, for instance: http://partnerships.typepad.com/civic/2006/12/social_media_su.html) that altered the strategy of organisations and changed the shape of projects to include greater and wider participation.

But tools alone don't make things happen. So this is an opportunity to explore the practices that lead to change and share ideas about the use of these tools to democratise consultation processes, win hearts and minds and turn thoughts into action. Please bring your experience of working in this way and the potential – and challenges - you see in the new forms of social organisation supported by these developments.

To attend, please send a description of your interests in this area to Kutoma Wakunuma at as soon as possible. She will be the first port of call for any questions you have.

Notes:
• Day one will start at 1pm with a keynote talk by Caroline Bassett of the University of Sussex and the Fiankoma Project (www.fiankoma.org) on "Fans or Citizens: 2.0 and the politics of participation".
• Day two ends at 4pm to allow for travelling.
• This workshop is organised by Ann Light, Kutoma Wakunuma, David Wilcox, Paula Graham, Clodagh Miskelly, Josef Davies-Coates, Andy Dearden, Wendy Olphert and Steve Walker.

About PRaDSA
PRaDSA stands for "Practical Design for Social Action". The PRaDSA project's goal is to develop and extend the capability of social action organisations to creatively design new practices by appropriating and adapting ICTs. There are three strands to the project, of which the workshop series is one. The other two are:
. To develop a new understanding of designing in social action settings, grounded in detailed contextual studies of design in practice.
. To create a collection of practical resources to support the work of practitioners (and others) including workshop materials and easy-to-use (open-source) on-line community communications systems.

PRaDSA is a project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) as part of its Designing for the 21st Century programme.

If you would like to know more about the PRaDSA project, please see:
http://www.technologyandsocialaction.org.