RÄGASCHIARM
ISSUE SEVEN 18.10.2009 INCM009.li
Day Two of this years INCM will definitly be a night to remember. After discussing the role of the NC within the Network and all its elements, the EASA History Night was a wonderfull moment, but as usual, we cannot describe it with words. We were just sitting there, thinking, wow-and we are part of this wonderfull idea of a Network for european architecture students, that has been living on since almost 30 Years? COOL! One of the Founders of the Liverpool Workshops, Geoff Haslam was visiting us in Liechtenstein. He has been texting Richard Murphy and told us, that Richard is a bid jealous for not being here with us. Next time we want both!
“EASA lives on” Geoff Haslam Last night the male Easian population retreated into the shadows feeling small as two easian legends had the females of Easa on the edges of their increasingly damp seats. Even as a red blooded hetrosexual male i cannot profess to being impervious to the charms and linguistic dexterity of these two substantial chapters in Easa‘s history. >All aboard the love train I will begin this column with the presentation of Morten (the magnificent) Gehl and EASA ‚97 also known as the train EASA. This phenomenal architectural journey was a demonstration in just how boundless and without limits EASA really can be. The room sat, slack jawed as we were smoothly led through a slick presentation that clearly (apart from a bizarre metaphor about an eggy moon) explained how a fantastically ambitious idea became a fantastically ambitious reality. After the independently formidable feat of raising a budget $1,000,000, we learnt how during
the train ride to paradise the ‚97 team managed to fix two locomotive engines and a brake system. Intimidated? fear not! This moving assembly is inspiration for the future EASAs if we IMPROVISE and ADAPT.
from across europe. Local help, the wonderful RIBA, favours and Geoff‘s dad‘s tools all lead us to where we are now. Equipped with a shock of curly hair these architectural visionaries created an anarchaic architectural model that answered to no-one.
>Anarchy in the UK Geoff Haslam is where it all began. Almost 30 years ago the first ever Easians met up in Liverpool to discuss and change the social, educational and political problems they saw in the architecture of the time. Without any precedent and none of the modern technologies we now take for granted G-Dawg Haslam and Ragin‘ Richard Murphy managed to contact and round up a collection of architecture students
Morten and Geoff both descibed how they overcame problems to create something marvelous. Easa is a organic living thing and no measure of discussing can dictate or control it‘s future. Geoff-founder said „if EASA dies, it dies.“ but it ain‘t on it‘s last legs yet.
EASA LIVES ON!
“Improve and adapt” Morten Gehl
minutes and meetings Conclusion of the meeting 17Oct
hard to work as a group.
The conclusion of the first meeting on Saturday 17th October centred on the role of the NC, their responsibilities before EASA and how they can help the organisers on site. NCs should take a more active role during EASA. They could arrive a day or two early to help set up and get familiar with the site. An introduction to the event should be given to them so they will have more information for their participants and can take more responsibility. This will flatten the hierarchy within the event and take pressure off the organisers. NCs should schedule a country meeting after the NC meetings to keep participants informed. NCs should promote the idea of being a tutor within their country as well. They should have enough information to inform them for their proposal. If the proposal is accepted then the responsibility is transferred to the organisers. To help NCs a new improved NC guide is being written by the documentation group and will include their responsibilities and tips on how to promote EASA and get sponsorship.
They also informed us that they had a budget of 103.000 euro, which is less than half of the previous budgets.
SESAM009 Rome presentation: The organizing team presented SESAM009 in Rome. They thanked their sponsors and the participants. They also presented their budget which had a minor profit thanks to a lot of help from sponsors. EASA009, Italy presentation The organizers of EASA009 explained that the most important things you need when organizing an EASA is: 1. A good team 2. Written contracts and signatures from sponsors and fundings 3. A lot of time and energy to dedicate to the profit. Problems: 1. Italy had a lot of sponsors bailing on them in the last minute. 2. The organising team was spread all over Italy which made it very
EASA010 Manchester presentation Information: dates: 31th of july to 15th of august: www.easauk.net Theme: „Identity“ The chosen theme is identity because it is a broad term, but also a term that is hard to describe and define. Manchester wants to interact more with the surroundings of the EASA camp and has therefore chosen to place the EASA010 in a city and spread out the camp to different locations in the city. There will be one or two main centres as an infopoint and lounge and a main powertool and workshop space. The workshops will take place around the city and force it‘s participants to interact more with the city and move around in it. Some of the ways the Manchester team will experiment with the theme „Identity“ can for instance be experiments with the nationalities of the participating countries. A suggestion could be, that the nationalities have to swap identities on national evening and investigate and present a foreign country. This can be done in a number of ways, but the aim is to force the countries to interact and to learn more about each others cultures. Excursion destination: It is also debated at the moment whether or not the excursion of EASA010 should go all the way to Liverpool or to a mill at the countryside nearby. Number of participants: EASA010 can host up to 500 participants. Workshops: The first tutorpack was presented. This
tutorpack is only the first edition and will change and improve over the next six months. The workshops will be divided into theoretical and practical workshops as seen at previous EASA‘s. Tutors will probably pay half of the participant‘s fee which created a debate but ended up with the agreement that it is up to the organizers. Umbrella and Small interventions: EASA010 want to redefine and develop veteran workshops as Umbrella and small interventions. The goal is to allow these workshops to be represented every year but also allow them to change and grow. A way to do that could be to auction them away. Meaning that people can apply/win the job as tutors in these workshop by proposing interesting ideas and goals of how to run the workshop. This will allow the workshop not to die or be run by the same group of Easians year after year. Lectures: Manchester would prefer if more participants participate in the debates and lectures and suggest to encourage participants to do small lectures about a topic of their choice that is relevant for the location, site, workshop or profession. Questions and comments from NC‘s Security: concerns about the security of EASA when the event is spread out over a large area and the students have to walk around the city at all times in the day. the organizers promise to protect the campsites and workshops from theft but want participants to be responsible for themselves when they move around in the city. The theme: It was suggested that the organizers of EASA010 clarify the theme more to provide a greater understanding of the theme and better workshops. This will be done as the tutorpack evolves.
The Swedish magazine called „IDENTITY“ Kajsa from Sweden made the NC‘s aware of a Swedish magazine called Identity that is being published this fall. She would really encourage people to write contributions to this magazine, especially the organizers of EASA010. Suggested Improvements from the NC‘s: A library close to or in the lounge created by the participants. It could consist of magazines etc. brought from everyone‘s home country and field of architecture to EASA010. An improved information system to inform the participants about the activities of the workshops in the city. This could be a mobile phone chain or by filming the activities in the workshops and project the film on screens in the lounge. This would allow the participants to know when ever something interesting was going on in a workshop and encourage the participants to move and attend the event. It is also very essential that the participants know where the workshops are located in the city for instance on a map and allowing accessible conditions between the main camps and the workshops so that the workshops will be places in a reasonable walking distance from the main camps. Bustickets or similar is given to the participant in order to make the process of transportation as smooth as possible between the activities. Participants should be involved in EASA earlier in the process. They could be given small tasks and information before attending EASA. The workshop fair-system There was also a common interest in redefining and changing the structure of the workshops-introduction-fair to ensure that the participants get one of their workshop-top priorities. This should be done through a workshopintroduction-presentation as well as using priority notes that the participants fill out and hands to the organisers. This should lower the stress and
confusion of the participants due to the present non-functional workshop-fair and sign-up sheets system.. EASA007 in Greece was mentioned as a good example of a functional workshop-fair system. Greece started the workshop fair by having all the workshop present their workshop in a small presentation. Thereafter the workshop answered questions at their workshop table. In the end the participants handed in a note with the workshop-priority of their choice to the organizers. By using this method everyone got a fair chance getting the workshop they wanted without fighting over the signup-sheet. If this system need further adjustment a note with several priorities will allow the participants to get one of their top priorities and avoid the situation where participants are forced into workshops where they find no interest and therefore choose either to skip the workshop or show a low level of enthusiasm and participation. Former organizers pointed out that it was of great importance that the participants committed to the workshops and stayed there for the whole time to create the best outcome, interaction and group work in the workshop. Discussion about fees and payment roups. The organizers of EASA010 in Manchester suggested to minimize the number of payment groups from 5 to 3. This would be done by combining group 2 and 3 and group 4 and 5. This would mean that group 1: pay 100% of the fee group (2-3): pays 60% of the fee group (4-5) pays 30% of the fee. This suggestion caused a lot of debate and at the end it was decided that the organizers of Manchester EASA010 wont change the groups. The idea came up to get team UK to make a suggestion of the fees and the division of the countries in the five groups and present it to the NC‘s. Due to the amount of work and the doubt of being essential it was declined. The countries of group 5 made the NC‘s aware of the big prob-
lems associated with the VISA application process in their countries and they would really encourage the organizers to take this issue seriously and maybe provide some financial support as well as free VISA support. The travel issues such as costs and distance should also be taken into consideration when the group-division is made by organizers of future EASA‘s. The current participant 270 euro fee was set in Ireland and kept since in Italy and now in Manchester. This price made a little debate because it was decided in Moscow that the price should be 240 euros and kept on that level for a couple of years. In the end it was decided that the price could stay on 270 euros due to the increase in food prices and inflation in Europe. Tutor fees. The tutor fee was up for debate. There was a lot of different opinions on whether or not the tutors should be paying full or half of their participant fee. In the end it was decided that it should be up to the organizers of EASA‘s to decide the prices for the tutors based on the organizers wishes and financial situation. The relationship between the organizers and NC‘s. It was decided that the NC‘s should help the organizers as much as possible with fundraising as well as the updating of the tutorpack. We were in the end all invited to a big brainstorm with the organizers of EASA010 after dinner so we could all contribute to the creation of a super cool EASA010. The meeting was held when these minutes went into the press. The topic of fundraising should be brought up again later that week parallel to the work that has been done in the document group concerning sponsorship-gaining from the NC‘s.
Other Elisa Maceratini from Italy asked for help at a project in Columbia in october 2010, where she would like to take10 Easians. Interested people can write to her for further information: elisa.maceratini@gmail.com
What was the surprise!?
“XL, L, M, S, FL� *After The lectures, the organizers had prepared a surprise. Each country was lured into the dark sexy cloakroom. Anyone trying to sneak in was well and truly faced, ask Jeannestoff. Once inside, confused people were force fed skank booze (unless your nation is after the letter U in the alphabet) and given an original INCM009 hoody (american apparrell too! oh la la). Your letter on your hoody represents the size of your country, with Russia being the only XL going, the organizers obviously forgetting that the sun never sets on the British Empire. Upping the UK quota to include the overseas territories will be discussed at length soon. The night continued on with Betty Swollocks (Fr) making many appearences thanks to the newly aquired garments. The Rune (Dk) shaped hole on the dance floor was well and truly filled by a dark and mysterious creature of night.
Now with everyone in the hostel wearing the same hoody, we look like a bunch of mentalists in a cult. Theres is a mass suicide meeting at the info point at 02:00. Bring three empty beer bottles, two aspirins, and a bottle of rum , and expect to get wet in the crop fields. *The 2nd Surprise was: The Presentation of the Final report and the exhibition of EASA007 in Greece! We celebrated this with all of them with a glas of Wine!
Info
Breakfast 7-9 Meeting on 19Oct Workgroups 9-11 EASA011 Biding Romania/Spain >Open End! >BBQ
XL XL XL
Russia Turkey Ukraine
17,000,000 km2 783,000 603,000
L L L L L L L L L L L
France Spain Sweden Norway Germany Poland Finland Italy UK Romania Belarus
543,000 505,000 410,000 385,000 357,000 312,000 304,000 301,000 240,000 238,000 207,000
M M M M M M M M M M M M M
Georgia Greece Bulgaria Iceland Hungary Portugal Azerbaijan Austria Czech Serbia Ireland Lithuania Latvia
153,909 131,000 111,000 103,000 93,000 92,000 86,000 83,000 78,000 77,000 70,000 65,000 64,000
S S S S S S S S S S S S S
Bosnia Slowakia Denmark Switzerland Moldova Netherlands Belgium Albania Macedonia Slowenija Montenegro Kosovo Cyprus
51,129 49,000 43,000 41,000 33,000 33,000 30,000 28,748 25,000 20,000 13,000 10,000 9,000
FL
Liechtenstein 160