Empty Shops project sets challenge for Brighton Future of News Group
Dan Thompson from the Empty Shops project, part of the West Sussex based Revolutionary Arts Group, came along to speak to the Brighton Future of News Group last week.
Dan’s organisation (@artistsmakers on Twitter) takes over empty building space to install exhibitions or interactive projects. You can find out about the background here.
You can read excellent accounts of the meeting on:
Dan, not to miss a social media opportunity, recorded some of the meeting for this podcast: http://www.emptyshopsradio.com/. It’s near the five minute mark of the July 20th episode – Dan does a great job of explaining the ‘Future of News’ meetup concept to his audio companion.
As Cathy comments on her Posterous, the connection between an arts project and journalism might not be immediately obvious. Dan’s contribution, however, was about community activity and information gathering, the exact themes of our journalism meetup group.
What’s more, Dan offered the Future of News group the opportunity to use an empty shop in Shoreham for our own media project.
We had plenty of ideas for a weekend later this year, and we hope that everyone’s enthusiasm will make some of these happen. As Dan explains in the podcast, we have two ideas: one, to use the Shoreham High Street shop to swap skills (knitting, wood whittling etc…); and secondly, to use it as a news hub to produce some kind of multimedia project, incorporating historical as well as material from 2010.
If you’d like to participate please contact Sarah Booker via the meetup group (@sarah_booker on Twitter). Join the discussion here.
This was actually my last Brighton Future of News meeting as I’m moving to London in the autumn, but I’ll definitely be back to help out with the Bfong Empty Shop. And if it works, other Future of News-ers might think about setting them up in their own areas.
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