Evokation: Curiosity Incorporated - building a curious future

Evokation: Curiosity Incorporated and the creation of a curious centre

So where do I want to make the change?

I want to make the change in libraries all over the world. From the new york public library and the seattle public library, to small town libraries, to rural villages in nepal and africa. Any community that does or could have a library, that’s where I want to make my change. So, essentially everywhere. I would, however, like to start right here in Ottawa, Ontario, where I live as they have just been given a huge budget to refurbish and redesign the libraries here.

So, what is the challenge I’ve decided to face?

Lofty as the goal may be I want to work towards the complete and total eradication of ignorance. Ignorance, by definition is a lack of knowledge, a lack of information, and it is the root of so many evils, poverty, violence, discrimination, disease, the list goes on.

Unfortunately, ignorance is something that pervades every part of our society, its a pernicious and at times subtle but always powerful. There is a culture of ignorance that has been created in so many ways, from peer pressure in schools, the bully picking on a kid just because he’s smart, or the girl thinking she has to act dumb in order to get the guy. There are religious pressures, with young girls risking there lives for the chance to gain knowledge to become less ignorant in the truest sense of the word. And there are people all over the world who are ignorant, not by choice, but simply from lack of resources, something that I think is one of the greatest injustices of our time.

Everyone, no matter where they live or who they are should have access to as much information as possible, to be as educated as they wish, no one should be ignorant in this day and age.

So what’s my idea? what’s my grand solution?

Well the basis of my idea is libraries. We as human beings have already come up with a great way of making information communal, the infrastructure is already there. What we need is a philosophical change. Libraries have become so much more than what they were originally designed for, as a place to keep books, the very word library has no real connection to what we mean today. Its root is the latin word liber, meaning to peel, which refers to peeling the bark from trees, which is what the first manuscripts were made from.

What we need now, and in a select few places in the world we have, is a community center, a place in which everyone and anyone, no matter what their learning style, or background or I.Q. level, can learn whatever they want to.

My organization, which I’m calling Curiosity Incorporated, would endeavour to create a place like this in every community, anywhere in the world. I call it a Curious Centre. Incidentally, after deciding on the name, my Mum and I realized that when said as one word, curious centre becomes a sort of invitation: Curious? Enter. Just another reason I am in love with this idea.

Curiosity is one of the human races greatest attributes, we are forever inquisitive, always wanting to know more. Curiosity is what made us travel to the moon, its what makes us contemplate ourselves and our existence, its why we still point telescopes up at the sky allowing us to see things like this http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100518.html

So many wonderful things have happened just because someone asked “I wonder what would happen if...” Its our curiosity that has brought us to where we are now, and it is my firm belief that it is our curiosity that will bring us on to bigger and better things.

And it is my dearest wish that there will one day be a curious centre in every community that will allow people to not only satisfy that curiosity, that drive to know more, that drive to step out of ignorance, but also provide them a space to create and discover and invent new things for the next generation to be curious about. A never ending cycle that will drive the human species onwards and upwards.

But many people will say, what need is there for a name change, we already have what you are suggesting, libraries. Why don’t we just keep building more of them, wouldn’t your goal be achieved just as well?

And though I love my libraries dearly, I have practically lived my entire life in them, I must disagree with my self-created critic.

Libraries are so much more than what they were first conceived to be, and they must continue to grow and become more than they are, and I don’t think they can do this when tied down by all of the preconceived notions of what a library is in today’s society. To many a library is simply a repository of knowledge, a place where information is kept, a static place where nothing really happens, it just is.

A curious centre would be a dynamic place, a place where anything and everything could happen, a space in which all knowledge is accessible and can be used.

In order to better illustrate my idea of what a curious centre is, I want to describe to you a dream building that I have longed to create for many years, long before Evoke came along.

My ideal curious centre, would be a library, community centre, fun house, amusement park and all around learning centre in one. I imagine a huge castle like building with rooms and rooms filled with books, organized by subject. In the mystery novel room there would be a smoke machine and thunder and lightening, with sliding book cases leading to small reading rooms. In the cooking section there would be working stoves with supplies and people standing by to help you execute a recipe or teach a patron knife skills, or the best way to boil an egg. There would be craft areas filled with paints and pencil crayons and all the old junk that people throw away. Egg cartons to make caterpillars, toilet rolls to make kaleidoscopes, old railings and windows and pieces of old cars, because with the right amount of creativity anything can be made into art. There would be an auditorium for performances and movie showings and massive multiplayer gaming sessions. A music room with instruments as well as materials to build your own, because with the right amount of creativity anything can be made into music. The latest technology, both hardware and software would be made available to allow a curious centre user to test his piloting skills through virtual reality, or reach out to a pilot living half across the world.

There would be cla**** of any and all kinds, where anyone could teach anything. Schools can only do so much, their curriculum is designed to teach the most vital information that will set pupils on their way. It is also necessary to structure the learning in order to ensure a certain amount of skill in each area is achieved. A curious centre would teach many things but require no proof, no tests, no evaluation, a space dedicated to learning for learnings sake.

Taking much inspiration from a wonderful place called The Forbidden Corner, and also Cedric Price’s Fun Palace, my curious centre headquarters would be a building unlike any before it, built with no other purpose than to keep people interested. Rooms that spin, reading areas that are revealed only if you tap the right sequence of floor tiles, gardens in the middle of the building, glass ceilings and floors, waterfalls in the basement and trees in the attic. This is the ideal curious centre, this is my dream.

Now, I am well aware that this building would be a one time building, and my goal is to have a curious centre everywhere and anywhere. So how would Curiosity Inc. take this grand idea and make it into a reality for every community?

The building I have just described is my ideal curious centre, but Curiosity Inc. would try to build the ideal curious centre for each and every community. Every community would have a curious centre tailored to them, based on resources, environment, population and other factors. The community would be able to access through Curiosity Incorporated a network of volunteers from all around the world in order to overcome any limitation in trying to build their ideal curious centre. Volunteers from all different industries and backgrounds would be invited to contribute. Engineers, architects, teachers, librarians, musicians, artists, anthropologists, sociologists, psychiatrists, marketing experts, economists, financial experts, no individual would be turned away, and volunteers from as many areas as possible would be sought.

The Curiosity Incorporated network would turn their attention to two different divisions attempting to achieve the goal of building a curious centre. One division would deal with communities in which there is already a library and therefore some infrastructure to build upon. The other division would deal with communities that do not have a pre-existing infrastructure on which to build, either due to the fact that funding has never been provided, or because the traditional library structure is not viable in the area. Ideas for these two different areas would be drastically different (or maybe they won’t be who knows) but in both cases they would endeavour to create a curious centre that is viable in each and every individual community.

The area of funding is going to be an important one when attempting to build a curious centre. A curious centre would be a sort of societal investment philosophically speaking, and we would encourage local companies to see it as exactly that. A sports wear store would be asked to “inspire” a sports fitness class, or possibly equipment for a gym. A bank would be encouraged to inspire a book keeping or financing class. A more knowledgeable, more interested populace would encourage more customers, and maybe even better future employees. Those areas without such local infrastructure would rely on the investment of international individuals and groups, who were interested in the long term betterment of an area, population and country. The financial as well as moral motivation would be the same as the local investors. A better informed, more knowledgeable populace, will be more apt to vote democratically, live healthily, and participate in the world more fully.

With so many different communities, and therefore so many different curious centres, it is necessary to define the main concepts that constitute a curious centre.

There are only two main principles that each and every curious centre would be guided by, regardless of what form they may take.

In every curious centre anyone should be able to learn whatever they want to.

Every curious centre should be well used.

Guided by the first principle, all curious centres and the services provided by them would be accessible to everyone, regardless of physical abilities, gender, culture, caste, language, or religious belief. Whatever other form it may take, every curious centre will be a space dedicated to the free flow of knowledge for everyone.

Guided by the second principle, every curious centre would endeavour to engage every part of the community. Curiosity Inc. would offer its services immediately if this goal was not being met. This may mean completely rebuilding from the ground up, this may mean a new marketing campaign, it may be an issue of accessibility, or new programs. Whatever it is Curiosity Inc. will diagnose the problem and come up with new and innovative solutions to ensure that every curious centre is well used.

So, what would I do with my first $1000?

My first one thousand dollars would go toward setting up and maintaining a virtual space in which the Curiosity Inc. network could begin to grow. Many people and many new ideas would need to be involved in the building of a curios centre. I have been looking at many social networking sites, as well as individual websites as possible models or platforms on which to mount the Curiosity Inc. website, the most interesting of which is actually another Evokation idea called Organism http://www.urgentevoke.com/profiles/blogs/organism-a-social?xg_sour... ; a collaborative platform that seems to best capture the kind of interaction I envision for the Curiosity Inc. network.

So there you have it, there’s my Evokation, but before I end I wanted to provide links to some of the people and places that have inspired this idea and to leave you with my favourite phrase: Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back!

The Forbidden Corner: http://www.theforbiddencorner.co.uk/testimonials.html

Cedric Price’s Fun Palace: http://www.cca.qc.ca/en/collection/283-cedric-price-fun-palace ; (thank you to David for this one, check out his library related evokation http://www.urgentevoke.com/profiles/blogs/evokation-spark-library )

Brewster Kahle: a brilliant man who I have learned a lot from with only a 20 minute talk!

http://ca.ted.com/talks/brewster_kahle_builds_a_free_digital_librar...

Idea Stores: Way to take it to the next level Tower Hamlets council!!! These guys are doing it for real (also great name, took me a long time to come up with something that I thought could compete) http://www.ideastore.co.uk/

Library of Human Imagination: Jay Walker http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/jay_walker_s_library_of_human_ima... http://blog.ted.com/2010/04/inside_the_libr.php

FAVL: an amazing organization http://www.favl.org/

Another amazing organization battling ignorance: http://www.nepallibrary.com/

http://brooklynfreeschool.org/ Not a library, but they have the same sort of spirit, the freedom of thought philosophy, if they ever needed a librarian/curious centre administrator, I would be there in a New York minute