A Do-It-Yourself CC Birthday Celebration
The fourth annivesary of the founding of Creative Commons coincided in Poland with a Do-It-Yourself festival called “PrzeTWORY”, which stretched over a weekend in Warsaw, Poland. Creative Commons Poland used the opportunity to celebrate the birthday by handing out gifts - DIY style.
The event was a two-day market of independent and DIY art, design and crafts, including works made during the festival from recycled goods provided by the organizers. The festival’s name, loosely translated, means both “recycled things” and “food preserves” - playfully showing roots of modern independent crafts.
A small company was selling professionally-made bags from recycled ad banners next to a group of young girls offering homemade earring and brooches. In another room, handbags were made from recycled plastic and young fashion designers customized second-hand clothing, which was sold on the spot.
I feel there is much in common between independent art, crafts or design and the free culture movement. They are all about taking creativity into your own hands, creatively reusing found material, and fostering not just a market, but also a community, around your work.
Creative Commons Poland set up a stand at “PrzeTWORY”, where visitors to the festival could not only learn about free culture, but receive a gift of a CD copied on the spot, with freely licenced music they had selected. The inspiration came from a project called Burnstation, a “mobile copying station” created by Platoniq, a group of cultural producers, curators and programmers located in Spain.
The original Burnstation is a silvery container with three CD-burning stations in it. But the concept can easily be replicated on a smaller scale - we used just one laptop, which was constantly burning out CDs during both days of the festival. In this time, we managed to hand out several dozen discs to visitors. Our music catalog included a wide range of material, most importantly songs from all Polish netlabels using free licenses.
Unfortunately, the Burnstation application, which is a piece of free software, proved difficult to set up at short notice without expert help - this seems one of the risks one runs when trying to use a still widely unfamiliar free application. In the end we used a combination of generic music-listening and CD-burning software.
In the spirit of the whole festival, we also created a little workshop at which people could make covers for their CDs from recycled materials.
This DIY cover-creating process was an even greater success, in my opinion, as it gave us a bit of time to talk with people, and also gave them something that made the CD more personal. Most importantly, it was fun - how often does an average adult get a chance to play around with crayons, old magazines, spray paint, scissors and glue?
I also feel that when giving out things for free one runs the risk of people not appreciating enough the thing they receive. Freebies easily come and easily go. A handmade cover turns a freebie into a good gift for someone else, or might just make you think a second before you dump it.
There are plenty of opportunities to set up Burnstations - one needs little more than just a computer, though I also dream of a whole bank of Burnstations churning out CDs at the coming iSummit. The more computers you have, the merrier - with just one laptop, the experience felt a bit rushed. There was little time to select and preview the music, as a queue was constantly forming. It is also a good idea to print out basic licensing information in a format that fits a CD box. This way a bit of crucial knowledge is passed on with the CD. Finally, an event of this sort should be supported with a webpage. This way people can go back and discover more free music at their leisure.
I’d love to see temporary Burnstations set up at talks and conferences, and permanent ones running at cultural centers or cafes. Music spreads easily, and concepts of the commons, sharing and free culture can easily piggyback on free songs.
Photographs:
CC Birthday in Warsaw, Poland @ PrzeTWORY, by Anira, CC BY SA
CD design by Andrzej Wieteszka, CC BY SA
CD cover design by Jan, CC BY SA