ALT OTB Support Bundle
For the occasion of the Occupying the Border project at Drielandenpunt, Alternative Learning Tank is creating a comprehensive media platform called "Support Bundle" that will empower its users to become their own media. Developed in dialogue with the collectives of Oranienplatz in Berlin, Lampedusa in Hamburg, members of the different sans-papiers collectives in Brussels, We Are Here in Amsterdam and Right to Exist in The Hague.
The ‘Occupying the Border’ forum in Vaals should be seen as a kick-start of the creation of sustainable collaboration between the refugee collectives, that should eventually lead to a strong and empowering lobby directed at the European Council.
The goal is to implement a critical and conscious use of technology, conceptually consequent with the values of the Forum and the specific situations of the collectives involved. The platform aims to use values of the free software and open source movements, as they resonate as necessary for the struggle towards a free and open society.
In parallel with the development of the Support Bundle, the We Are Here Media Academy creates courses focusing on developing different journalistic and media skills, working towards establishing an independent media platform that is run autonomously by the collectives.
With the support of Here to Support, BAK and Internet Society.
The goal of the website is to serve as a tool for the refugee
collectives to visualize and progress in their quest for human
rights and develop their own language to represent themselves and
their struggles towards a broader public as well as to enable the
audience to get a bigger picture, deepen and recognize
(interconnected) problematics. It will also provide tools and a
framework for citizens to organize in order to support and
contribute the cause. The aim is that it becomes a source of
knowledge and documentation of the refugee struggle categorized and
searchable through year, topics, collectives, alliances,
supportive/obstructive organizations, laws... this will
automatically map out organizations that engage(d) in the same
problematic, just in another place or time. This will ideally
connect groups / individuals who are fighting for the same goal.
A mobile device to remove the obstacles that refugees face when it comes to access the internet, this devices will provide connectivity in each of the collectives physical locations and thanks to its batteries will keep providing connectivity in the situation on which a collective is being evicted from their location. The device can be taken into demonstrations, marches or specific actions operating as a media center in combination with the rest of the Support Bundle. It will be possible to distribute files, images, statements and flyers wireless while using the device in the collectives locations but also in demonstrations, beyond connectivity it also functions as a portable digital toolkit and library for the collectives.
An online campaign will be launched to spread and expand the development and reach of the device, being easy to scale up and distribute to other places. The campaign includes basic user guides accessible for refugees in different languages and an awareness campaign about the refugee struggle and the access to internet as a right for everyone. The campaign will use crowdfunding and it could be open for new partners that will help and support the further diffusion of the device and how-to to as many collectives as possible.
We are starting a documentary of the different refugee collectives,
the participants and supporters of the forum, and documenting the
project from the preparatory process towards the forum. Aiming to
start a closer dialogue between the ALT team, the other working
groups and the collectives, we would like to speak with them about
the media platform, as strategic way towards developing it in closer
dialogue with the members of the refugee collectives. This material
is used for episodes/teasers that will be published as part of the
media campaign before the forum starts. We want to show the common
interaction between refugees, volunteers, artists, local citizens,
institutions, to show how the forum is being prepared and to
document how the collectives continue afterwards.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
