HOW TO PARTICIPATE
to the Design Futures of
I have set the licence of Intellectual Property Rights for the Sunon as Creative Commons, with recognition of each contributor that participates, with derived work allowed and share equal.
HOW
FROM THE CITIZENSHIP
As a citizen in the exercise of your luck of living in the 21st century, instead of the Stone Age or Mediaeval Age for instance.
We have now the right to participate in the public life. We women could not even vote not that long ago, nor have a personal bank account, or had to comply to lord rights such as ius primae noctis …such a barbarity!
How have all these rights and guaranties that we enjoy today been built? Sometimes from the indignity and revolutions, sometimes from the empathy and dialogue, sometimes from the scientific or artistic discourses amongst others:
1-We have now the possibility of empathy and dialogue, the most favourable situation for a change towards sustainability.
2-We have now the tools for citizen participation that the Public Administrations have been structuring for us all these years.
3-We have now the web infrastructures that allow us to participate from home.
4-We have now the favourable legal frame.
5-We have now the urgent need.
6-We have an environment free of violence or intimidations.
7-We have now the technology.
8-We have more affordable photovoltaic technology.
9-We have constant Investigation and innovation.
10-And you also have me, Nuria Cariad, a fictional character created with the purpose reaching where family life does not allow reaching, to design action and change.
We have Sunon at our reach!
PROJECT MANAGEMENT
WHO
The development of the Design Futures project Sunon, benefits the neighbourhoods, towns and cities as it claims back the sovereignty over the natural resources of their affiliated territory and to be able to locally manage their vital essential needs.
The inhabitants from a neighbourhood can participate, as well as the local traders, Councils, non-for profit entities and the professional neighbours that wish to collaborate in the development of this project in Catalonia. The only thing necessary is a truthful Identification form in front of the public administrations territorially relevant by public register or activities licence, in order to guarantee that is a serious project. Ways of ID: DNI, NIE, Digital Certificates, …
WHAT
To understand the type of knowledge of each profession o person is not an individual task, but of a plural society with highly specialised people.
What can you bring in?…explain it!
How will we combine different types of knowledge: the professional with the local? The specialised with the neighbours? With patience and mutual respect, and bit by bit, we keep on talking.
WHAT CAN THE SUNON OF TODAY OFFER?
SUPPORT AND ACCOMPANIMENT
The first edition of this project Sunon was a mere aesthetic and technical exercise of graphic and web design, under the discipline of Design Futures. This discipline enabled me for the exploration of the discourse around the electricity power narrative, and several aspects of the project were published between July and August 2021.
The second edition of the project does a step forward and converts the individual exploration into a collective one, using resources of philosophy, politics, art, law, analysis of data and the hyperlinked web narrative. This edition intends to provide support to all this knowledge coming from competent authorities, as much as to provide support and accompaniment to the citizens on the first step forward, the most difficult after the research, which is the Participation one.
The Sunon project at this moment, is only one person, therefore it does not contemplate any more phases of support and accompaniment. I have accompanied as much as I have been able to and known to. It is necessary to see which level of citizens participation there will be, if the public administration will take responsibility and will make the accompaniment in a local way on the third edition of the project, or maybe the accompaniment and leadership will be made by our teachers. Whoever will be, I wish it is fought to the maximum and then passed onto the next person.
DISCOURSE AND METHODOLOGY
The discourse presented already on the 1st edition of the Sunon is clearly for a change of a chronicled status quo that harms as all. The individual action, in a first instance, is the motor to overcome a social blockage of unimaginable magnitude. It is not right that there is only one electrical distributor in a whole entire country. What have we done wrong?
I have used resources from our history, philosophy and politics, however, this is not enough. We need that our intellectuals, jurists, students, artists, professionals, … take the Sunon and put it upside down, break it, shred it, redesign it and recompose it. The discourse requires more work, from all people and collectives. Please, talk about the subject while having lunch, while on the bus to work, while in a Pilates class, or at a cooking course, …think about more ideas for the discourse. If the participation is good and reach to the councils, there will be more focuses, ideas and weak points to overcome, all which will enrich the project, and therefore, the society and environment.
The methodology (who, what and how), are personal proposals based on the experience and work of many people that have passed through life before us, and on current social enterprises that already work this way. There is not only theory behind, but also practical experience and success. I invite you to observe the model of cooperative businesses and social education in Catalonia, which would symbiotically complement the Sunon.
Finally rolling the sleeves
THE ACTION
FAQs
Is it a real Project?
This Project is as real as our determination to develop it. If we have the determination, it exists, if we do not have the determination, it does not exist. Is a bit like what Descartes used to say: “I think, therefore I exist”. At this time, it already exists as a Design Futures project, however, for it to become our Present it is not a matter of only one person but a matter of many.
Is it a legal Project?
Yes. You can find a copy of the Spanish Constitution in the public bulletin BOE.
What are the origins of the Project?
Not accepting an abusive budget of electrical connection to the network in 2016, and all the following blockage endured after that and not yet solved.
What is the territorial scope of the Project?
I began this project on a course of continuous professional development offered by the SOC in Mataró in 2021. Within the exploration discipline of Design Futures, I decided to develop for the course work, a fictional scenario with the design of new access to electricity supply with its own brand, shown in the Prototype section of this website.
After I finished the course, I kept on exploring and investigating because of pure curiosity and the project kept on growing organically. I did not know what was I doing, nor where it was going, nor if it was doable or simply a fantasy. The question that kept on leading the path was: is it possible?
I back-engineered my ideas, where did they come from? I search legal grounds, philosophical theories, institutional work and published papers and I found my self nicely surprised when I came across with the work from the United Cities, the Statistics Institute of Catalonia, the Observatory of Human Rights and Businesses, the websites of the Councils in Catalonia as they are being standardised to make the citizens’ participation more accessible… A massive volume of work in accessibility is being done in our territory, as well as in other cities around the glove. This previous work is what enables the Sunon to become possible, as we have now the necessary conditions to talk about the idea in a legal, safe, private and public environment.
Initially, I thought about the campaign for Catalonia, my home, as we have a way with freedom and democracy. However, in a few months, a global scale energetic crisis has risen, so we have to be quick: all citizens of neighbourhoods and municipalities from everywhere, that have enough hours of sun to exploit and wish to be part of the Sunon project, are welcome to develop it in their territory.
The design of the trademark as I designed it initially, can be transportable and further develop with local suffixes. It does not matter if is from here or from there, as long as there are enough sun hours. The idea is to build always from small to big. The small should not be left abandoned, nor silenced, and ocal support is the key need to be in place. To retain the energetic sovereignty through the physical person, so that no institutions nor business takes it away, therefore, not allowing centralization. To avoid centralization is the key.
As a historical reference for example, I would like to mention the United Kingdom, which was bombarded during the Second World War onto their basic infrastructures amongst others, like the train tracks and stations, the neighbourhoods where engineers used to live, … so they decided to disperse their infrastructures power around several areas around the country. They also sent their little kids way into the countryside, to live out of the danger of the cities which were strategic conquest targets. The spread of the infrastructures power and the care for the little ones, were, amongst others, their strategies of defence. Those are as well the same ones I have design for the Sunon to be able to defend ourselves as well from the new energetic challenges.
To conclude, you are welcome to take this work in energetic accessibility, energetic sovereignty and trademark and make it yours for your neighbourhood and municipality, wherever it is, with the territorial and cultural peculiarities agreed from your own local democracies.
What is the time scope of the Project?
Now!, although tomorrow is also good. Have you got ten spare minutes anytime?
Is Society ready for a neighbourghood project like Sunon?
At the Greek Socratic times, the City was the political centre, with its Agora where men could discuss matters in public. Nowadays, we are organised as towns/cities, provinces, autonomic communities, countries and international community. Who has the economic, legal and administrative resources to play in the big league are not the individual citizens, but the corporations that debate in their private agora, how to make more money from us, and the governments humbly comply, because they do not have many more options.
In these last two decades, people and organisations have tried to confront this last type of corporative domination in many ways, but weirdly enough, the rooting to the land, to the most immediate space where we live, it does not have much value, when in fact, is the value most connected to the world of matter, with real knowledge and empirical experience by the inhabitants, therefore with the most scientific basis for the project Sunon on energetic sovereignty.
Who has the right to manage the day to day of people who live at hundreds or thousands of kilometres away and have no clue about the living conditions of these people? How have we accepted this type of vital resources’ management? We are supposed to be a rational world that proclaims to be scientific, but instead we are organising ourselves in an irrational way that is not at all scientific.
Harmony and harmonisation can only be built from the person towards up. From up to down, harmony does not get built, but submission. Rousseau said: the basis to understand how to guarantee freedom is the person. A person is the commune minimum multiple, as it measures the level of equality in between people. Little equality means little guaranties for freedom, or a similar idea, that few are free at the expense that others cease to be free. Therefore, harmony and the work towards equality can only be built from the “greatness of the small”, and harmonise with understanding, bit by bit towards the bigger picture.
Yes!, we are ready, and very used to the duality flow between big and small. We only need to change the direction of the flow, because of pure scientific rationality.