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CoDE – Connected Digital Europe

A new EU-wide network for creative collaboration

Author: Claire Tymon

Artists, technologists, designers, and all creative practitioners have a crucial role to play in how we make decisions about our future. Future of work, education, communication, climate, even the new products and emerging technologies which receive approval for market distribution. Creating conditions for inclusivity, diversity, equality and sustainability requires a humanitarian contribution or approach and this is achieved by ensuring artists and creatives are engaged in the decision-making processes. 

Taking an action-research, artist-led and human-centred approach we are passionate about building opportunities to connect and open up conversations between different people and places, to empower citizens to interrogate reality and imagine better futures while encouraging cross-sector dialogue and collaboration. It is for these reasons that we joined forces with other like-minded arts organisations across Europe to establish a new network – CoDE.

FutureEverything has a rich history of collaboration and cooperation with art and digital culture organisations in Europe. Since establishing our first festival of digital culture, we have continued to push creative boundaries and stimulate new ways of thinking, across a diverse range of sectors, disciplines and audiences. Working with Sensorium (Slovakia), IMPAKT (Netherlands), and School of Machines (Germany), we have initiated a new EU-wide collaborative network Connected Digital Europe (CoDE) to test ideas and share the knowledge, capacity and experience through a specially curated conversations, events, workshops, and art commissions, developing an evidence base in which we can use to empower others to lead from. 

CoDE responds to the new possibilities and concerns that have emerged because of the Digital Shift. Artists working with digital media are on the forefront of the creative use of and the critical thinking about digital technologies. The field of digital arts is rapidly expanding and becoming even more important and relevant and requires organisations like ours to advocate for best practice in curation, engagement, evaluation and dissemination. 

CoDE aims to connect forward-looking artists working in the digital realm with underrepresented groups, policy makers and groups concerned with digital agency and the ecological impact of technology in order to organise collective processes that will lead to a technological future that is more inclusive, transparent and sustainable. They are well connected in their communities and their communities have trust in them. These programme ambassadors will participate on project’s events in the role of constructive reference and critique and bring new ideas relevant to their communities and elevate our capacity to help create a long-term vision to embed creativity within policy-making processes.

We are aware the biggest challenge within this context is bringing creative practitioners together with industry, research, policy-makers, change-makers, to discuss, debate, collaborate and implement policy. We will work together to provide support, advice, contacts across the various new projects. The partnership will deliver evaluation and facilitate the City Lab concept and provide organisational, facilitation, co-curation, and mentorship design and support to educational aspects of our collaborative programme and manage the creation and production of the visual identity and visual guidelines for the project and digital methodology toolkit. 

Further information about our projects and processes will be shared soon.

 

(Hero image credit: 108 Steps, Matthew Rosier)

About the partners

Sensorium

In the past five years, Sensorium has established itself as a unique platform inviting active generations to imagine & create their future. The festival brings together international communities of creative minds to enhance the level of multidisciplinary collaboration and its impact on society through discussion, experiments and showcasing groundbreaking works.

Pioneering artists, designers and performers discuss their work and critically reflect on where the contemporary creative landscape is headed. Through its focussed programme the festival strives to harness contemporary creative power to contribute to a future where technology is applied in creative, thoughtful and humane ways.

School of Machines

The School of Machines, Making & Make Believe (SoM) provides one-of-a-kind hands-on learning experiences in the areas of art, technology, design, and human connection. Over five years we’ve run twenty-four four-week, full-time programs in various countries including Germany, Italy, Serbia, China, and Ireland. We’ve also run a handful of online programs and various shorter workshops and other events designed to bring humans together in thoughtful conversation about humans, technology, individuality and our roles in society.

SoM aims for our students to leave our programs activated; not only equipped with technical and hands-on tools and skill sets, but also critically-minded, more deeply engaged with their surroundings and with themselves. SoM has a final exhibition of student projects at the end of each program. Additionally we strive to be inclusive as each class boasts 60%+ female participants, an often under-represented group in technology.

IMPAKT

With over 30 years experience in media and the cross-sections between arts, technology and society, IMPAKT will help the project to successfully engage artists, creative communities and audiences and share the topics the project addresses with policy makers, politicians, journalists and activists in order to increase awareness regarding digital agency, the ecological footprint of our use of technology and the visibility and involvement of underrepresented groups in society. They will use their experience in presenting art projects as generators of discussions regarding urgent topics in society and the capacity of artists to speak to the imagination of wider audiences and inform them of the possibilities and pitfalls that come with the digital shift in our societies. 

IMPAKT has a long history in supporting artists with residencies and commissions in order to allow them to produce high quality works of art that will get international attention and exposure. By embedding the production process of the artists we work with in our discursive programmes they contribute to the artistic quality of the productions, their capacity to address urgent and emerging discussions and their connection with the programmes of partners in our networks, leading to follow up presentations on international levels. IMPAKT will use its facilities in the IMPAKT Centre for Media Culture in Utrecht to hosts the final exhibition that will be the closing public event of CODE.