Idea Festival '08 (Louisville: homeless, food, rich)

[louroclou]

I spent most of last week at Idea Kentucky and the Idea Festival, and am still in a kind of heightened state because of those events. While the madness and stupidity of the last 8 years were coming to their climactic Thud outside, inside the Ali Center, the Convention Center and the Kentucky Center could be heard the rising voices of a better future, and things more resonant than the white noise of public discourse...

Mark Beasley of Creative Time, which will be working on public art in Louisville, spoke of the transformative importance if innovative use of that art. The finalists of the Curry Stone award showed how small technologies can lead us to big changes, how actually listening to the worst off among us - the hungry and homeless and disenfranchised can feed us quiet ideas that may save us - chief among them what I'll call 'bricolarchitecture' - architecture using what is at hand, what is cast off, what is cheap and readily available (from bricoleur)...

Amy Chua talked convincingly of the significance of 'tolerance' in the rise of powers... something for Kentucky, for Louisville to take to heart: The more we open our doors to the Other, the Outsider, the more we grow and gain power. I'm doing a creative mishearing of her talk - her discussion was of Hyperpowers, but the sideglance thought is inevitable: the more voices, talents, variations in a society, the more it grows and produces.

Jane McGonigal, video game creator, is taking lessons from the virtual world to use as templates on new real world platforms. There are so many ideas she had I can't summarize them all here, but there is much the city of Louisville can use from her coopting of gaming for civic action...

One idea more and I'll see if there were any more people on city-data who went to IF and came away with rich insights, too. Idea Kentucky generated tons of insights and possible actions. But there seemed no real outlet of continuing the brainstorming. McGonigal's ideas have me wanting to organize an ongoing public face-to-face Idea Feast - food and talk, a way to keep the ideas coming and to put the best into effect. Check out this (scroll down to 'Real world discussion forums')

For four days I was in the heady atmosphere of smart people talking smart ideas, creative people inspiring us and each other. This was here in our town and our smart and creative people were there in large numbers. We asked good questions, we talked, we were engaged and we engaged ourselves. The participants and audience from outside - from around the country and around the world were impressed with the event, the city, the people, the response. To all the negative-thinking folks on this forum, I just have to say, "I wish you had been there."

Who else was there?

[I'll be putting up some links and ideas as I find them.]

[louroclou]

Some IF videos

CreativeTime These guys are going to be doing stuff in town...

As is Arne Quinze, who spoke at IF

McGonigal talked about this fascinating site

[Peter1948]

man i would have loved to have gone but I have been in and out of town on business. i think its great the ville is really buillding a creative class, despite what the naysayers say, this is one creative town. this is from one well traveled guy.

[Windwalker]

I agree about the creativity. My daughter, a young sculptor, is impressed with all the public sculpture here. And the funky art.

[missymomof3]

I also posted a link to stories on the general Kentucky page Louroclou if you would like to see it.