Nurope VII Copenhagen as-well-as Nurope and me

Posted on November 19, 2008 by Peter Fagerström

Just back from a few days of talks and discussions in Copenhagen with a bunch of really smart people. Yet again a success as it has been the six times before this Oasis ( http://www.nurope.eu ). The Nurope Project is in it’s last phase and a new direction and form is in the making, however this process is not as easy as one could think as the group is very diverse and the process itself very open.

The project has created a strong network between the participants and spin-off projects have emerged during these two years that the project has been going on. Some of them were presented in Copenhagen as a basis for future discussions.

For me personally these seven Oases (conferences) have formed a kind of, vision of, what I want to develop in regard to a personal development regarding issues discussed on these meetings. The very open and including atmosphere during these oases has for me been most important, even though I have no or near to no background in Art, Philosophy and Enterprise. I feel like I have been a part of the group and there has always been someone that explains this part or that to me even though some of my questions have been very basic.

When this journey started out I frequently called myself an Art Virgin - meaning that before this moment I’d had no “real” contact with art (if i exclude music that is). Now during two years I’ve had the pleasure of experiencing a multitude of artwork with a growing interest.

In Stockholm about 7 months ago someone guided me gently through a part of the “Moderna Museet” and opened my eyes. Before that I’d felt some pieces “talk to me” but I’d not really had the confidence to trust myself in regard to that experience. The Truth is Out There, as well as in here. This is part of the Nurope experience to me.

to be continued…
This Text is powered by Nurope.

Filed under: Events, Linked to, Seminars and Conferences, awareness, culture, education, nurope, social networks, travel | Tagged: , , , , , | No Comments »

The speech by Al Gore, climate change and sustainability. rel: the post below.

Posted on August 7, 2008 by Peter Fagerström

The most interesting part of Gores speech for me was the strong point he made (oh he’s not the first or last) about dependence  on foreign oil and renewables for the U.S. The economic, social and political, for this is surely big politics I argue not, points of his speech are the most interesting part of that speech. The American culture shines for me very strongly through as well as he as a person and a speaker but this also a very American thing, hmm perhaps…we do have these “strong leaders”, patriarchs, in other parts of the world as well.

Sustainability as is, that is the survival of the human race as a dominant species and in a society in which we can uphold this state for generations to come, is only partly about the ecological dimension of this planet. This is the part that is mostly talked about, details about how and what affects what in an ecological sense, which is all good and well as for we humans do need some sort of fairly stable environment to survive. But the other 2-3 aspects, (depending on who you talk to in the sustainability science  field) social/cultural, economical and (institutional), are at least as important in the system of sustainability. It all links together.

Relating to climate change which is what I hope we are talking about here (whoever presents it and whatever “truths” are told or not).

“With the July 2007 release of the revised statement by the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, no remaining scientific body of national or international standing is known to reject the basic findings of human influence on recent climate”

Now thats a cut from wikipedia Scientific opinion on climate change so I suppose I should dig something up from a nice journal like Nature or the like, but this was taken from Eos, Transactions, American Geophysical Union so I suppose it’ll have to do (for now).

Connected to the economic sphere; “The Stern Review on the economics of climate change” executive summaries can be found here, and the full review here. Now the yay and the nay has been loud on this one almost as loud as the yes and nos regarding climate change itself and understandably so we were built (Oh no I do NOT mean intelligent design…) to go for minimum energy…just something about this universe that wants it that way.

Now we live on a planet that has been around for about 4,5billion years. And a certainty is that our impact on this planet has during the last 200 years increased enormously (from about 1 billion to 6,5 billion! in population) somewhat related to fossil fuels and cheap energy? perhaps?

If not the population increase then at least the unbalancing effect we have on this balanced system called earth?

Thank you Thomas for inspiring me to clarify

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Filed under: Sustainability, citizen awareness, climate change, environment, politics, society | 2 Comments »

Two speeches everyone should hear

Posted on July 25, 2008 by Peter Fagerström

Vice President Al Gore as well as citizen and presidential candidate Barak Obama.

Filed under: Sustainability, citizen awareness, climate change, politics, security, society | 4 Comments »

Eco vacation in a box? or not?

Posted on June 15, 2008 by Peter Fagerström

Regarding the “eco vacations” some travel agencies sell these days;

One of the best eco vacations would be local travel by bicycle or by foot. I’m sure there are many a location fairly near to where one lives that you have not visited or don’t know much about.

For a more distant location rail is by far the best (most efficient regarding energy) trips under a 1000km should if at all possible be done by rail. If you have to fly try to book your flights so that you fly non-stop as takeoff takes up to 25% of the total fuel consumption during a flight.

For accommodation, camping (in a responsible way), certified hostels hotels and the like by any “green” standard, The Green key, ISO etc. or otherwise proof of the fact that the place you stay really does something for the environment. These places might do a minimum for getting the piece of paper that says they are “green” but they are promoting environmentally friendly lodgings and you know that they will have had to at least think about these issues.

I think part of the ideal eco vacation is the process of planning an eco vacation it’s a very informative process that more of us should go through.

When considering activities try to consume services and experiences that has a minimum impact on the local environment but brings a maximum revenue (that you can afford) to the local population. Try not to consume goods, one of the reasons being it’s very hard to know what impact that little hand-painted-made on the other side of the world souvenir has on the environment.

You can of course buy a “eco-vacation” from a travel agency but an important part of the eco is to understand and know what exactly is your impact on the environment when you do go on vacation.

For more information have a look at this site as an example http://www.ecotourism.org/index.html

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Oasis in the City of Ljubljana

Posted on January 15, 2008 by Peter Fagerström

The latest oasis, the first in the 2nd expedition of the Nurope has just finished and I was again happy that I attended. During the days we met a lot of different people, to describe it a bit, we met “1/4th” of Laibach something of a national icon part of an awakening in Slovenia regarding media censorship public participation democracy philosophy etc. They told us about the process how they came to be, what the reactions were to their work, how they overcame some of the negative reactions and described to an extent how they work. One thing they said I can’t help but repeat

“You can’t come with flowers or you can but the idea is bizarre.”

This is I suppose is part of what I think art is, simple sometimes everyday things that can move or affect in a great way, “…a little bit”.

On Saturday a party was arranged in the City Museum, DJ Emil was playing. We, me and Kim had our first public screening of our road movie a rough cut version. To which we got some really good feedback and even some professional advice as some of the participants have a little experience in cultural productions.
The local hosts had done a wonderful job and everything worked very smoothly. We were mostly working in the City Museum but also had sessions walking around the city, at the ministry for commerce and Moderna Gallerija.

Ljubljana is one of my favourite cities in Europe and not because of the nice riverbank cafés or the great architecture, the nice small squares, the castle looking down over the city, no, those are just a small part, the nicest part of Ljubljana by far was the people! Friendly, helpful, nice, beautiful and smart :o) Thank you all for making my stay a great one.

But back to the culturally vibrant side of town or in this case the capital of Slovenia. Ljubljana felt more alive than many other cities, and for me I think it’s partly because of the graffiti. The art form was everywhere but in most cases done very tastefully and with great skill. You often see graffiti and tags written all over and with most larger works on smooth surfaces. I was impressed that they in Ljubljana used the weave of the surface as a part of the piece. As an example, there was a city painted on a wall at an under-pass, however the wall was made up of vertical lines in the cement  ||||||||||||||||| this pattern was simply used as a part of the work and made into sky rises by painting windows on them short black lines simulating windows and floors the material painted on did the rest.

In ten days I will be attending the oasis in Istanbul and I look forward to the experience immensely.

Filed under: Linked to, Seminars and Conferences, citizen action, citizen design, culture, education, nurope, social networks, sustainable cities, travel | No Comments »

Flickr e-mail posting

Posted on January 14, 2008 by Peter Fagerström

This is a test post from flickr, a fancy photo sharing thing.

That has been edited by me =o)

Neat little feature that allows one to
e-mail-post pictures via flickr straight
onto ones blog.

As as-far-as I know it’s not possible to do that here on wordpress.com yet.

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Åbo in winter. a panorama.

Posted on December 9, 2007 by Peter Fagerström

I do so look forward to scenes like this again, this picture(s) was taken last year walking from the castle by the harbour towards the city centre. It was stitched together by Windows Live Photo Gallery which is part of the same “family” of tools as the Windows Live Writer that has been used to post these words.

IMG_7310 Stitch

The stitching worked well enough except one little detail, the white church tower in the middle which look a little bit like a crooked stick, well I suppose you can’t get everything. All-in-all the software works well enough as well as is very user friendly.

Filed under: pictures, software, web tools | No Comments »

Blog Stats

Posted on December 8, 2007 by Peter Fagerström

image

Just thought I’d save that for the archives, perhaps I should write something of use too…There is a Link list, on the right hand side” that I call “Living List” it tracks/posts my del.icio.us links here. A small selection of what I think important or not, that I come across during “surfs up”.

Filed under: Blogroll, Informative, The web, web tools | No Comments »

OER, Open Educational Resources

Posted on October 30, 2007 by Peter Fagerström

OER is the new milennia for online educational resources a change in paradigms can be seen slowly changing from private information and copyright to open information and copyleft. Open courses and the exchange of coursematerial between educators and the possibility for students anywhere and whomever to take courses for free online is very important for us all to be able to reach a just society where everyone has access to the same level of education. On a global scale this movement for OER is very important, as it gives people in developing countries the possibility to utilize the resources and know-how of old from developed countries. However countries in Africa for example are working very vigorously at providing e-learning resources for their citizens developing new modes of e-learning as well as implementing state-of-the-art tecniques and technology to be in the forefront of this very important field.

Check out:

(in no specific order a random selection)

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Filed under: ESD, Informative, OER, The web, awareness, citizen awareness, education, open source, web tools | No Comments »

Re-greening Chicago

Posted on October 11, 2007 by Peter Fagerström

Re-greening Chicago is a short video about greening urban space and other environmental actions within the urban area.

Filed under: Sustainability, carbon neutral, citizen action, citizen awareness, environment, home and living, sustainable cities | No Comments »

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