Future Places: Digital Media Tools for Citizenship · Global Voices
Sara Moreira

Future Places: Media Lab for Citizenship. Website: futureplaces.org | Facebook | Twitter: @futureplacespt
Future Places, a former digital media festival that is turning into a “media lab for citizenship” for its sixth edition, will take place in Porto, Portugal, from October 28 to November 2, 2013.
“A festival without an audience, where everyone who is present participates and discovers in real time ways of collaborating”, explained curator Heitor Alvelos in an inspiring closing note [pt] of 2012's edition, recalling the ongoing motto since 2008 “technology are potential tools for the emancipation of citizens”:
não subscrevemos o paradigma que está por detrás da instantaneidade vertiginosa e auto-referente dos gadgets digitais. Queremos usá-los, sim, mas recusamos a amnésia que muitas vezes transportam e induzem. Queremos simultaneamente honrar uma herança histórica, analógica, que atribui sentido e explica o que somos hoje; queremos cultivar a determinação que permite revoluções lentas, mudanças de paradigma a longo prazo; e participando em actos de contestação ao que é socialmente injusto, queremos simultaneamente propor.
we do not endorse the paradigm that lies behind the dizzying instantaneity and self-reference of digital gadgets. We want to use them, yes, but we refuse the amnesia that they often carry and induce. We both honor a historic and analog inheritance which gives sense and explains what we are today; we want to cultivate the determination that allows for slow revolutions, paradigm shifts in the long term; and while actively contesting what is socially unjust, we want to simultaneously make proposals.
The event will bring together scholars, artists, scientists and technologists for a week of practices and debate on digital media. A series of citizen labs will offer workshops on stopmotion, music, gaming, photography, and more.