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Common Ground – The Global Flickr Commons Meetup October 2 & 3

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Common Ground – The Global Flickr Commons Meetup October 2 & 3

On October 2 & 3, depending on where you are in the world a group of institutions who have put photographs into the Commons on Flickr are having a ‘meet up’. The Powerhouse is hosting the Sydney one on Saturday October 3, 630-9pm.

What, who & why?
Common Ground began as an idea that was bounced around via email – “Could a global meetup happen that involves local communities, the global community around Commons on Flickr and be on at the same time in different locations around the world?”

Between Shelley Bernstein (Brooklyn Museum), Ryan Donahue (George Eastman House) and Paula Bray at the Powerhouse the notion took form. So the work on Common Ground formed as the idea of a projection onto the participating institutions’ buildings at night using a slideshow of content from all of the Commons on Flickr accounts and curated by the Flickr community.

Common Ground is a chance to say ‘thank you‘ to the community that has spent many hours devouring these collections online and giving them a new life outside the vaults of the institutions that they have been housed in for many years.

The meetup also provides an opportunity to get to know the online community face-to-face and engage in conversations that may not happen online – or are just best handled in face-to-face in meatspace.

We are also very interested in bringing the online community into the physical institution space and we were inspired by Kevin von Appen et al’s work at the Ontario Science Centre (documented at MW09).

The Commons is a very inclusive and global project and it didn’t seem quite right to do this in isolation at just one institution. Hence the attempt at making a global meetup that happens at the same time (albeit time differences).

Who is it for?
Common Ground is for and about community.

The Flickr community is curating the content that will make up the slideshow but the meetup is open to all.

Common Ground is challenging the notion of the museum professional selecting images to show the public. The aim of Common Ground is to have the community-curated slideshow seen by as many people as possible even after the event is over. We want this to be available for other purposes too – it will be able to be downloaded and used by teachers and others after Common Ground is finished.

Come celebrate this crowd-curated slideshow with a participating institution.

To vote you need to

– first log in to Flickr
– go to the voting web application
– then check out the Flickr discussion for updated information.

Remember voting closes on the 9th September.

We can’t wait to meet you!

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Photography by Marinco Kojdanovski
License: Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0