And this is how it starts: Inviting in a collaborative approach to find new solutions to today's challenges

Bowing down to the revelation of our emerging Future, which is calling us….

Connecting heart, technology, vocational skills and art in new international collaboration. To unleash our enormous creative potential - in Malawi- in Norway – everywhere.

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Rjukan Solarpunk Academy is partnering up with the Malawian organization Youth Code to explore new opportunities of what we do not know yet. Youth Code is a Malawian Vocational Skills School and Art and Cultural Centre supporting young people in the rural district of Nkhotakota to become self-reliant through vocational skills and working with the traditional arts.

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This connection is the first step in inviting in a collaborative approach to finding new solutions to today's current challenges. We strongly believe that we all have something to learn from each other and our various ways of thinking, being and connecting around the world and that learning from fresh perspectives may inspire us in our own local context.

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As the partners are sitting down in conversations to explore the vision and the practical steps on how to get there, these are the questions that we are currently working with:

• The world is changing. Wherever we are, whether we are in Rjukan or in a village in Malawi - something is dying, old structures, industries, ways of living and leading organizations and cities. On the other hand - new technologies are emerging, which represent both enormous challenges - and unimagined possibilities. So how may we create and facilitate this new potential in line with values that make all of humanity and the earth flourish?
   

• And what may be possible if we allow ourselves to be inspired by the Sun Mirror in international collaboration as a way to bridge technology with a human-centred approach?
   

• And what may be possible if we allow ourselves to be inspired by vocational skills and art centre in a rural Malawian set-up to create projects, products and ways of making a living with relevance for and humility for our shared global diversity?
   

So here we are and we come together to learn from and inspire each other across countries and contexts. It can be done in the form of international exchange programs, which in an elegant way combines art, vocational skills and entrepreneurship, working to discover solutions for technology, management and education that combine the new with holistic humanity that cares about nature - for the present and for the future.

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Some examples

• International exchange programs. Keywords: Art, vocational skills, entrepreneurship 

• Artist or entrepreneurs in residency

• Product development and sales

• Educational models that educate people for self-management, self-reliance, relational competence and social responsibility in combination with art / technology for a sustainable now - and future

 

Anyone curious or interested in being part of shaping the vision and way forward? Please get in touch, all of your inputs are so very much welcome. 

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Emilie Larsen Øvreeidet, developing the INITIATIVE as Solarpunk in Residence,

Rjukan,  March 2021.