Post Social Media Club investigates and explores the post social media landscape. Using Speculative Design, 25 young promising creatives from Greece, Sweden, Serbia, France and Turkey are brought together to explore, investigate and speculate on a world post-social media, and then create artwork that reflects these interpretations. The participants will first undergo a unique four-part virtual masterclass series led by prominent design experts and thinkers. Through this process, the participants will gain a deeper understanding of Speculative Design: an approach based on fiction, imagination and X factors to frame alternative futures. After this, all of the participants will gather together IRL at STPLN, a unique Creative Hub and Makerspace in Malmö, Sweden where they will be guided by the partner organisations to produce interdisciplinary collaborations resulting in a series of art pieces, with full access to a range of workshop and studio spaces. The final artwork will be shared at The Showcase, an interactive site-specific event happening simultaneously at all five cities, for a public audience. The objectives of the project are: (1) Understand the needs of young creatives within the CCI in order to better attract youth to Creative Hubs and provide them with relevant tools, support and facilitation (2) Promote Active Citizenship: by sharpening the tools of young creatives to actively use their skills to engage in society (3) Investigating and exploring future “post social media” scenarios through speculative design (4) Building network: expanding on the existing European Creative Hubs Network (ECHN), developing a youth-oriented extension that can operate as a creative-to-creative support network This project applies Iterative Design and a heavy interdisciplinary approach. Iterative Design is the notion of working in iterations towards an end goal, continuously evaluating and adjusting the process at intervals. The project will also result in the production and launch of two Intellectual Outputs.: (1) The Vortex: This will be a four-part virtual masterclass series on Speculative Design and design thinking. This will be licensed under Creative Commons 4.0 International Attribution and will be freely available online. (2) The Toolkit: This will be a user-designed toolkit for Creative Hubs to better attract, facilitate and support young up-and-coming creative youth. The facilitators of this project (organisation representatives) will explore and investigate to develop a deeper understanding of the landscape the young participants are faced with in regards to working in the CCIs.
The project had four defined objectives: - To understand the needs of young creatives in order to better attract youth to Creative Hubs and provide them with relevant tools, support and facilitation. - To promote Active Citizenship: by sharpening the tools of young creatives to actively use their skills to engage in society. - Investigating and exploring future “post social media” scenarios through speculative design. - Building network: expanding on the existing European Creative Hubs Network (ECHN), developing a youth-oriented extension that can operate as a creative-to-creative support network. The primary target groups were young creatives at an early stage in their careers. A group who have clearly demonstrated experience developing their own creative projects independently or in a group. The primary target group was expected to actively take part in all the activities including planning, developing and dissemination.
After having hosted volunteers in EVS and ESC respectively for three rounds of ten months each, we wanted to investigate whether the methods with interdisciplinary groups and clear topic choices could be developed also in larger groups and for a shorter period of time (we usually receive three volunteers in a ten-month period). For us as an organization and creative hub, it is important to develop and to meet a young audience with relevant methods and tools. We believe that their role in societal development is inalienable and that creative hubs such as STPLN and networks such as the European Creative Hubs Network have an important role to play. To be relevant to a younger group of creators, we chose a topic close to them; namely to artistically examine the relevance of social media in the near future. And we chose Speculative Design as a tool.