Collaborative Creation Gigs

Good for Nothing is an event that brings together a variety of people with different skills to do some “good for nothing.” In a cool workspace, with three causes that face particular challenges and a bunch of strangers, participants spend the weekend brainstorming and collaborating with (and for) social enterprise start-ups.

The next Good for Nothing event will take place from May 20 to May 22, 2011 at Splendid Communications in London, England. The Good for Nothing event will start off nice and slow with some drinks and music on Friday night. Then, get ready for forty-eight hours of hardcore doing. The end goal is to give time, money and energy to people who are creating positive social change in various communities. Talking the talk is the easiest part, but making an impact -- especially a collaborative one -- has to be more than that.

Anyone interested in making a change -- a real change -- in these various groups is welcome to register. This May, the participants are: GnewtCargo, the United Kingdom's first 100 percent zero-emission logistics organization; FoodCycle, a group of youth using free kitchen space and surplus food to create healthy meals; and Saving Bletchley Park, which is a campaign that hopes to raise awareness on the importance of Bletchey Park, a code-breaking center that is heralded as the birthplace of the modern computer. According to the Good for Nothing website, the partners were chosen based on three main criteria: must be up-and-running; must be a disruptive idea that is tackling a social and/or environmental issue; and must be up for anything, that is, must let the folks at Good for Nothing work openly and freely on their brief.

All three of the innovators are committed to making positive social and environmental change. Their briefs are available on the Good for Nothing website. Event-goers are able to choose which brief sounds the most interesting to them and decide to work on that cause exclusively for the rest of the weekend. With no commercial agenda, there are three main principles that Good for Nothing is founded on: doing, not talking; true collaboration and experimentation; and supporting the true social innovators.

Everyone from planners, makers, coders, photographers, hackers, bloggers, animators, musicians, artists, filmmakers, copywriters, designers, developers, communicators, makers and strategists can lend a helping hand -- as long as you're up for some hands-on doing so that the three participants have benefited in a tangible way. At the end of the event, those who participated in the Good for Nothing gig will have a show-and-tell debrief in order to share the various impacts on positive social change that took place over forty-eight hours.

Good for Nothing is a weekend full of knowledge, inspiration, energy and positive social change. You'll be surprised at how much can actually get done in a small amount of time. Despite the intensity of the weekend -- forty-eight hours of creating with purpose -- there will be fun too. Drinks, food, music, dancing can all be part of the fun of doing some good for nothing.

Contact Information:
Good for Nothing Website
Good for Nothing Twitter
Good for Nothing Ning