Stream for change
A short documentary summing up the 9 months of Stream for Change Project:
Actions and reactions from 5 different countries: 5 creative activist concerned groups came together to bring street actions to street of our towns (Riedau, Austria; Prague, CR; Berlin, Germany; Athens, Greece; Tenerife, Spain, in order to raise awareness, animate our communities and bring good news into our living spaces.
Kulturlabor Trial&Error as a part of stream for change realized many actions and activities supported by the stream for change network. Now you can read and see what happened the past months.
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Colorize the city
with moss graffiti
It is said that moss absorbs large amounts of carbon dioxide; to benefit from this we would have to cover all of berlin to start purifying the air a little. We started with some ugly wall to hopefully makes someone else’s day a little better. You can find information online about how to make moss graffiti. We decided for a mixture with some fresh picked moss, buttermilk and sugar. Read more in the original post!
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Herb plant give away
with seed bombs and urban trash mobilee
The idea of this action is to promote people growing their own food and to understand plants. Seedbombs are designed to enable seeds to be sown in a hard to reach place. Perfect tool to go wild with flowers and reclaim your nature! Our invention of urban trash mobile is one of the most beautiful way to promote herbs growing in ones kitchen.
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Critical mass
with Critical Masks
Join your local critical mass and help animate it with costumes or noisy objects and musical instruments. With our handmade beautiful anti pollution masks we want to show that cycling is not only more fun but also healthier. Read more in this post.
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Ecological footprint
a dumpster diving comparison
We found it very interesting to see how our ecological footprint is actually influenced by dumpster diving. We collected data of our food consumption and data of our dumpster diving action. Analysis is coming soon.
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Lifestyle choices
Our choice swap your clothes!
There are so many clothes on this world created through exploration and under inhuman conditions. We decided to not be part of this any longer but the show alternatives and thus we opened our own swapshop! Here we exchange clothes and shoes and lern how to create our own.
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Open green tours
aka trash awareness walk
A real alternative to classic tours is the trash awareness walk. Not only realizing our own ecological footprint but also realizing the trash in our environment and figuring out how to prevent public pollution problems.
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Local Healthy food
in shape of vegan cakes
With really delicious vegan cakes, supported by local farmers carrots, apples and berries we invited to pure treat and pleasure. Starting with a communal vegan cake baking and the sharing of the recipes, we introducing some first time baker into its philosophy.
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A week without Plastic
- a closer examination of the plastic bottle
We realized that not touching plastic for one week is a too big task for us, but not knowing why plastic is actually so evil we decided to have closer at it: the plastic bottle. After experimenting with the material, Jorge, our in-house chemist introduced everyone to the world of plastic. Lesson learned: if there is one way, it’s try to avoid plastic. Check out this post to know more!
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Outdoor upcycling
– the Recycled Creativity Festival
We invited to a 10-days festival of outdoor upcycling activities to promote the concept of recycle, reuse and reduce and to have fun with trash! Check it out and come by next year. Read more about the festival fourth edition and about the festival in general.
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Independent week
- the Schrottregatta
Have u ever built your own trashboat? Did u ever see people floating on lots of trash, reusing flyer stand as an engine, frying pans as paddle and wheel chairs as seats including driving wheels? No? Well it is a lot of fun as you can see!
Do you dream that one day, you will open the newspaper only to find out that a woman became a prime minister in Afghanistan; that the sides of Somalian civil war decided to only compete in football from that day on; that the godfather of Mexican drug cartel donated all his fortune for reforestation of Amazonian rainforest and he himself moved there to plant trees? There’s a shortage of such good news, so why don’t we make some up and show them to public, to sparkle some collective wishful thinking - who knows the limits of such positive wishing?
At the end of October, the Prague group has invited the inhabitants of Prague, to create their own, made-up good news, and the mix of news in Czech and English was produced and subsequently shown on the street and subject to collective good wishing and positive thinking - who know, maybe all those good thoughts would bring a push and contribute to a revolution? You can now see the good news screened here and download the whole presentation!
You can download the complete presentation here: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/43652459/goodnewspreze.pdf
The Schrottregatta - what a crazy independent week
in Cooperation with Recycled Creativity, Stream for change, Bootschaft and the whole Funkhaus Grünau Crew.
Crazy Trashboat, funky wheelchair platforms, brilliant light taped folderboats, elaborate palettefloats, swimming ketchup and mayonaise buckets versus sinking desks and sweept off giant colored balls - a short summary of the first schrottregatta 2012. At least 12 Teams where building boats during a whole week at funkhaus grünau.
During the week the participants could use the open workshops, lern how to work with wood, fabric, metall and use the gamout of materials to be found at the funkhaus. At the big Schrottregatta day the community, neighbors, friends, makers, watersport friends, environmentalists and everybody who found his way on that stormy day to grünau, was invited to see the crazy trash boat race, listen to different concerts and shows, join the variety of upcycling workshops, lern about cradle to cradle processes, see dazzling artwork and circus shows, marvel at the pedal powered music stage, dance in undescribable dancefloors and enjoy amazing funkhaus atmosphere in nature.
See yourself what one can do when using trash as a material, having a place to create and build and being surrounded by like-minded competition :)
It was a warm autumn afternoon when the Mediterranean SOS Network’s volunteers gathered in one of the most central squares of Athens, Monastiraki, to raise awareness regarding water resources protection. In a time when the Greek government is contemplating water privitazation contributing to this valuable resources’s protection and saving is more crucial than ever!
Passers-by were asked to express their concerns and share their ideas by writing their message on a water drop! Many of these were collected in order to create a unified message that will be distributed via numerous online resources!
Stay tuned!
on 22 of Septmeber 2012, the streets of Prague were transformed. Zazit Mesto Jinak - Experience City Differently - was a festival that encouraged people to get out into the streets of their neighbourhoods, spent time with their neighbours, learn something new or share what they know and have. All day long people were dancing on the streets, taking part in workshops, picnicking and experiencing completely different connection with their communities.
Prague’s Stream for Change group used the occasion to promote a thing we find especially important, especially now with winter on the horizon: using local and seasonal products, like fruits and veggies, rather than imported ones.
The group prepared industrial quantities of delicious, healthy sweets from 100% Czech apples: a mousse, apple crisps, and a large tray of an apple pie. Everybody, who wanted to receive a piece, had to got through a test where they had to answer various questions, in the process finding out about benefits of buying local products, or, if we go for imported ones - of buying fairtrade. the response was very positive and everyone who tasted our sweets, solemnly declared to only eat Czech pears and apples, until natural strawberries don’t show up next year!
At the end of August 2012, the Prague Stream for Change group has organized an open Green Tour for foreigners visiting Prague. We took a stroll around Holesovice, a district which normally not frequented by tourists. Originally industrial, and slightly run-down, in recent years it has been an arena of dynamic development and is hosting many interesting social, environmental and cultural initiatives. here are some highlights of the tour:
1) PRAZELENINA - an open space for communal urban gardening. It’s founder, Matej Petranek answered our question about calm and green space located on the crossroads of several busy street.
As an architect, he is interested in planning the urban areas in innovative ways, that truly serve its inhabitants. After finding this rundown space, which main purpose was scaring people and causing safety hazard to local children, he decide to open a communal garden.
Now, every neighbour can rent a bag with earth and together, they are growing organic, delicious veggies and fruit. As Matej told us, he thought the space will be used for growing food. instead, as it turned out, the space is used for growing community and human relationships.
The are also has a small bar with refreshments, a sandbox for children and a stage where local theatres and groups can perform.
2) DOX - centre for contemporary art
The participant of our tour were invited to the centre of contemporary art which brings to Prague a lot of world-class contemporary art. The item we were most interested in was the Jesus Christ sculpture made from… shoes - the ultimate example of upcycling in art. Do you know other artist that use trash as a material for their art?
3) CROSS CLUB - and yet again, upcycling is on the stage. Cross club can serve as one of the ultimate upcycling examples: it’s exterior and interior was built (and still is), throughout many years with wires, poles, screws, lamps, cables, bus seats, etc etc collected in landfills and given new life and use. What is most interesting, that at night, when the place gets alive, the post-industrial structure serve not only as a static decoration: they are actually converted into small, movable robots for an even better upcycled party experience!
There was no way we could possibly squeeze all the amazing green initiatives that are going on in Prague in a 1.5 hour tour, so we presented them on virtual stations while strolling the streets of Holesovice. these included forest-kindergartens, “don’t throw me away” good exchange website nevyhazujto, a green map of prague, a cinema where you can come with a dog and many others. feel free to contact us if you visit Prague for more green-touring tips!
DIY OR DIE
The Stream for Change group has been invited to join a D.I.Y. festival of Prague’s cultural magazine A Dvojka, where they organized an upcycling workshop with a theme just right at the brink of autumn: how to make a bird feeder from used plastic plates and plastic bottles.
All you need is some trash, a glue gun, scissors, garden wire and something to decorate the feeder (and of course the seeds for the birds):
You can use a used plastic bottle to make a bird feeder during the holidays. Various type of birds will attracted. At the same time, you can use your camera to snap photos of them. Then, you can upload the photos to any social network such as Facebook and get likes from your friends.
Steps:
1) Prepare a plastic bottle, a plastic plate, hot glue, string or wire, scissors, knife and wild bird seeds.
2) Remove any label from the plastic bottle and clean it with soap and warm water. Then, cut the bottom half of the bottle off using a sharp knife.
3) Cut a small dome shaped area from the bottom of the cut bottle. This will be the opening where the bird seed comes out.
4) Get your plastic plate ready and using the hot glue gun. Run a line of glue around the bottom of the bottle but do not glue the dome shaped section.
5) Firmly affix the bottle to the ‘eating surface’ of the plate, directly in the middle. Hold the bottle down for a few minutes to ensure that the glue is dried.
6) Poke 2 holes carefully through the top of the 2 liter bottle using the scissors. Then, thread your wire or string through the holes and tie it.
7) Fill the bottle with the seeds.
8) Hang your bird feeder on the tree branch, window sill or wherever you feel like, really.
After some trials and errors we recommend using natural elements (leaves, needles…) to decorate the bottles and… encourage the birds :)
