Meeting Cancelled

Tonights Free Culture meeting has unfortunately been cancelled.

We will be meeting in Laings next Wednesday (the 6th) instead.

Free Culture Meeting

It’s been a while since the last Free Culture Dundee meeting.  Primarily because we’ve been focusing on other things (like our day jobs).

There’ll be a meeting tommorow (Thursday 30th November 2006) at Laings bar at 7pm.  As always, all are welcome.

Free Culture Meeting this Wednesday

There’s another Free Culture Dundee meeting scheduled for this Wednesday (18th October). Again we’ll be meeting in Laings at 7:30pm. As always anyone who’s interested is free to attend. The agenda can be found on the Free Culture UK wiki.

Free Culture at The DCA

Having previously had the pleasure of talking to Clive Gillman (Director of the DCA) I recently approached him with the aim of potentially getting the DCA and the wider arts community in Dundee involved in a variety of Free Culture projects. I suspected that Clive would already have been aware of the potential for such movements, but it still came as a timely surprise when I learned that the DCA was already organising a public research group to actively involve itself in this space.

Thursday 9th November

6pm – 8:30pm

Free just come along on the night.

It needn’t cost the earth to get hold of powerful, creative, digital tools. This meeting is aimed at bringing together a group to experiment with art and technology, and self-teach tools such as Korsakow, Pure Data, and Audacity. We’ll look at developments which allow for new ways of making and experiencing art: Open Source software, distributed creativity and interactive artworks.

Guests from Glasgow’s Openlab will share their approach to creative dialogue. Everyone welcome. [The DCA Guide, October – December 2006]

Simon Yuill, a programmer and artist involved in various Free Culture activities such as Glasgow’s Electron Club and Your Machines will be giving a talk. Given the quality of a previous presentation of his that I saw, it’s lining up to be an interesting meeting. Simon is also exhibiting spring-alpha, a Free Culture inspired art project at the Abertay University gallery, spring-alpha is a gaming/simulation project that makes links between the Free Culture ethos and allotments and old-fashioned self-sufficiency.

Needless to say we’ll be attending the event at the DCA, as we hope to involve ourselves with these exciting initiatives and hopefully develop a broader interest in Free Culture. I’d also urge anyone else who’s interested to attend.

Free Culture Meeting

We’re having another Free Culture Dundee meeting on Thursday 21st October 2006, at Laings Bar on Roseangle.  All are welcome to attend.  As usual, be sure to put any items for the agenda on the Free Culture Dundee Wiki Page.

Free Culture Recruitment Poster

Most groups when they’re starting up need to recruit new members to their cause. Free Culture Dundee are no different, and are hoping to recruit artists, writers, musicians, film makers, technologists and anyone who’s interested in Free Culture or creating things.  If you’re interested in helping then you can email us at common[.]ends[@]gmail[.]com

To help us out in recruiting volunteers to our cause, I mashed up a quick poster, with an cartoon picture of Lawrence Lessig as the Statue of Liberty from the excellent Bound By Law comic book. A comic introduction to Creative Commons licenses. The A4 poster was created in the great free software (GPL) desktop publishing application Scribus.

You can help us out by downloading a copy of the PDF, printing it and posting it all over Dundee, alternatively feel free to remix the poster as you see fit. The picture used in the poster (and shown above) is licensed by Bound By Law under a non commercial license, but feel free to alter the rest of the poster as if it were public domain.

(Another) Free Culture Dundee Meeting

There will be another Free Culture Dundee meeting held on (Wednesday 23rd August 2006) at 7.00pm in Laings bar at the top of Roseangle, off the Perth Road.  As always anyone who is interested in free culture and our plans for projects within Scotland and Dundee is welcome to attend.

More details on the meeting can be found on the on the Free Culture Uk Wiki

Free Culture Dundee Meeting

There will be a Free Culture Dundee meeting held tonight (Wednesday 9th August 2006) at 7.30pm in Laings bar at the top of Roseangle, off the Perth Road.  Apologies for the short notice.  Anyone who is interested in free culture and our plans for projects within Scotland and Dundee is welcome to attend.

Items for the agenda can be found on the Dundee Group page on the Free Culture Uk Wiki.

Free Culture Dundee (and Scotland)

The Common Ends project is proud to announce that we’re now a member of Free Culture UK. Free Culture Uk is an established grassroots movement promoting an open, participatory culture. This vision is shared by the Common Ends project, so rather than attempt to do what has already been done, we plan to follow their lead by adopting the Free Culture Uk constitution and following their objectives, as a local group. In addition to our already stated aims we now plan to work in accordance with the following objectives:

• Draw on the resources, skills and experiences of Free Culture (Uk) members, to document the problems faced by free culture as well as their solutions.
• Make and facilitate projects being made on free culture issues.
• Acquire and pass on the skills required by free culture activists.
• To create access to a skills and equipment pool for the projects the group makes.
• Present interesting, thought-provoking free culture projects and exhibitions in pubs, clubs, community centres, cinemas and muddy fields across the country
• Promote the distribution of free culture made by or in connection with Free Culture UK
• Act as a point of contact and reference for campaigners and like-minded individuals
• Collaborate with community groups in furtherance of our purpose and other objectivies
• Develop and maintain an archive of grassroots political free culture activity.

Commons Culture Is Coming to Scotland…

This Blog is the beginnings of a much bigger project to advocate the Creative Commons and open participatory culture.

We are based in Dundee, Scotland, but our plans are global in scope. Our initial aims are broadly:

1. To support individuals and communities; assisting them in collaborating freely with others in open, democratic ways.
2. To support individuals and communities wishing to allow others to share and build upon their works (artistic or otherwise)
3. To support cultures of openness, participation and transparency for the betterment of humanity.
4. To better articulate our goals and refine our organisational aims.

To get things off the ground we plan to collaborate, join and support other initiatives that aim to democratise media, further enable commons based peer production and change the world for the better. We do not believe in reinventing the wheel unless it means developing a better wheel, so we view collaboration as a key principle in fullfilling our mission.

We have strong sympathies with the philosophies behind participatory and free culture, Creative Commons, and the Free and Libre Open Source Software movement. Technology and the Internet in particular will play a significant part in freeing people and empowering them to change culture and the world for the better. It is our belief however that to influence significant change technology is only part of the solution. True change can only come if people understand the array of tools they can use, of which technology is just one.

One of our initial plans is to assist in establishing a locally based community in Dundee & Scotland based around the transparent sharing of information and artistic works through Creative Commons and FLOSS licenses.

As you can no doubt see we are at the start of our journey, we have lots of ideas and plans and are in need of assistance. If you’re interested in what we’re trying to do and want to help then you can contact us at common.ends [at] gmail.com. We plan to assemble some online community forums and mailing lists in the near future to help get our ideas off the ground. Stay tuned to this blog for more details.