OuiShare is about the sharing economy. The festival is nominated for this year's NICE Award.
In your own view, what challenges does your project address?
Our Fest programme has been through strict content curation and weak signals analysis, to better detect and interpret what would be tomorrow’s challenges. Our Fest intends to enhance systemic change by questioning three of them: “How can the people regain agency collectively?” as we believe the change we want won’t come from institutions alone but from engaged citizens; “How can sovereign cities bring balance to globalisation?” as they are open laboratories for change and could be leaders in creating foundation for a resilient and inclusive economy; “How can cities build new alliances to tackle global challenges?” as networks of cities might become the precursors of something bigger, yet to be invented?
In how far do culture and creativity contribute to your project’s innovative and inclusive character?
The Fest reflects our steady effort to reinvent ourselves both in style and content, in line with our motto “permanent beta”. This call for experimentation gets its bearings in innovative formats such as pop-up artistic experiences (from live music and street theatre to meditation), self-organized sessions (unplanned participant-driven meetings), fishbowls (participative formats where the audience takes part in the debate) and other disruptive events. Creativity helps us knocking-down silo mentality, thinking differently collectively, by arranging friction between various ecosystems (cultural, geographical, sectorial,...) often apart from each others, in a holistic vision of society.
Please describe the transformative potentials of your project and explain its innovative character.
How the magic happens? Through an immersive and holistic event where co-creation and collaboration are guiding philosophies. Gathering international changemakers, creating meaningful connections through our extensive network is catalytic in bringing disruptive ideas to the debate. Above all, it inspires. Valuing inspiration as a common, we have opened our resource to the benefit of all: a free “Fest tool kit” is available online. And it duplicated already in Rio and Barcelona in 2016, and soon in Montreal. For this 5th edition, we also take the youth with us on a learning expedition designed for secondary school students of priority neighborhoods. Sparks of change are here. Let’s start a fire now!
OuiShare is nominated for this year's NICE Award. All shortlisted projects can be seen here.