Online Activities
Call for participants: Urbanism for everyone
Deadline for applying 30th of September 2024 23:59 CEST
Soko is announcing a worldwide call for participants of an online course “Urbanism for everyone - Global online course” that will take place from 6th of October till 2nd of November 2024.
Aim: To introduce the Alternatives to the current status quo of Urbanisation to wider masses of civil society.
Objectives:
- To explore with the participants of the Online Course the theory of creating fair and green cities.
- To analyse the cities of the participants through the practical exercises.
- To bring together civil society members from all over the world to share the vision of the cities.
This online course will consist of theoretical materials, webinars, practical exercises that the participants will do in the work book, individually in their city or on the model that they will create from scratch.
Theoretical content:
Reading and watching materials - 1.5 hours per week
Webinars (1.5 hour each maximum):
(please, consider that the times and dates of the webinars might change. We tried our best to allocate them the way that they are most convenient for the speakers, as well as covering the waking hours of diverse time zones. We do not expect everyone to join the webinars live, but hope you will do your best. All the webinars will be shared with those that did not manage to join, so they can catch up and implement the tasks that are tied to the webinar content.)
19th of October 15:00 CEST
23rd of October 19:00 CEST
26th of October 11:00 CEST
2nd of November 15:00 CEST
Tasks:
Workbook (1 hour) - The participants will be sent a workbook in PDF format, that they are encouraged to print out and work in, or fill it out digitally. Participants will be invited to share their results in chat.
Individual (1,5 hours) - The participants will be given tasks to analyse their city’s aspects and present their thoughts in the chat.
Model (1,5 hours) - The participants will be asked to collect various materials for upcycling: boxes, bottles, textile, buttons, sponges, basically everything that can be cut and glued together to represent participants’ very own model of a perfect city. Detailed instructions and help will be provided while creating the model. Every week the participants will work on the model and add different layers, based on the content they have learnt.
Disclaimer: this is a beginner course. We do not expect you to have a professional architect’s sketching or model making skills. Tasks are a fun way to memorise and practise the theoretical content, be creative and express yourself. And if someone has some impressive skills, let’s celebrate it together. This course is all about sharing and learning together and not a competition for aesthetics. So do not let imposter syndrome stop you from participating in this course.
You will need some basic tools and materials, depending on how far you want to go with your model: Scissors, universal glue, markers/pencils. + whatever else you have.
Alternatively, if you have CAD, or any other digital skills, you are welcome to have your model not in the physical, but in the digital form.
For sharing the results of the tasks, we will use Signal chat. It is the most safe application and you can install it on your laptop or phone. Please, indicate the phone number that you will use for this app in your application.
Before applying for the course, please, get to know your Safe Space Policy and Political Platform.
Upon completion of the course, the participants will be issued a certificate.
Looking forward,
Soko team
In case of having any technical issues, do write us on info@sokofoundation.org
Webinar series: Scaling the Urban protest
The cities are often the cradles of the democratic change. However, in the conditions, when the protest outgrows the main parts of the cities, such as squares and big streets aligning to the governmental buildings, where do all the protesters go and how is the communication organised among tens and sometimes hundreds of thousands of people?!
Organising on the neighbourhood level is one of the efficient methods of scaling the non violent protest. Many movements have organised and scaled their actions through evolving from one street/centre movements into city wide movements that spread their work to diverse groups of society by organising protest actions in the neighbourhood, workplace, school, university, and other levels.
This webinar series aims to raise the awareness of the Urban civil society regarding the non violent direct actions (NVDA) in the city and will concentrate on the following topics:
- The power of the community and how to harness it
- NVDA methods: economic boycott and occupation
- Communication within non violent movements
The webinars:
9th of May at 18:00 CEST
The speaker:
Palina Burko (Belarus) - green activist, a member of the Belarusian Young Greens. Since 2017, she was involved in protests in Belarus and in 2020 actively participated in demonstrations against the rigged elections in Belarus. In 2021, she had to leave Belarus due to political prosecution.
14th of May at 18:00 CEST
The speaker: Predrag Momčilović is a researcher, journalist, and political activist from Belgrade. His work focusing on political ecology, degrowth, urban environment, social aspects of climate change, food production, and just energy transition. He is executive director of Center for Green Politics, political foundation connected with Serbian green-left party, also he is a member and co-founder of different platforms, organizations and cooperatives. He published book “Sustainability, degrowth and food production” and “Air as commons”.
21st of May at 16:00 CEST
The speaker:
Artem Tidva (Ukraine) - trade unionsʼ organizer, activist of Ukrainian left-wing NGO Social Movement (Соціальний рух), researcher of labor movement in Easter Europe and Central Asia.
All of our activities implement our safe space policy and are based on the views outlined in our political platform.