Erasmuspc

ErasmusPC is an online international non-commercial network on cities and culture. It's a place where people with a passion for cities and culture share ideas, inspiring articles and events. "It is an open source network, open for everyone to join."

History

ErasmusPC was founded during the [http://www.filmfestivalrotterdam.com International Film Festival Rotterdam] in January 2004; a place where fans of the cinema and its influence on the development of cities meet every year.

ErasmusPC started off with a group of people in the Netherlands and Dublin. It now has city offices in Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Almere, Utrecht, Dublin, Barcelona, Hamburg and Sao Paolo. Professionals in many urban related fields meet in these city offices (on line or live) and share ideas and inspiration on culture and cities.

ErasmusPC is not a company. There is no commercial intent. It's a network based on the believe that sharing information, sharing passion and building a network with people with a similar intent can help to improve cities.

About ErasmusPC

ErasmusPC explores new urban topics or any urban cultural issue. To do this ErasmusPC created a mechanism for generating integrated solutions through creative dialogue. ErasmusPC devised the mechanism so that it creates a level playing field between participants, professional and non-professional alike. At all times the focus is on creativity, innovation and accessibility.

ErasmusPC is about international and interdisciplinary best practice in urban development. It is about the exchange of ideas and changing the way people think about the city. ErasmusPC believes in culture (in its broadest sense) as a way to help develop cities, to bring cities closer to what they are. ErasmusPC is about creating ideas for making cities better. ErasmusPC is a freezone on the internet. The mission is to search for the soul of the city.

‘Culture' to some mean theatres and high art, but to ErasmusPC culture is everything that makes us human, everything that is passed from one generation to the other, everything that makes life in cities a positive experience. So ErasmusPC sees culture in the broadest sense of the word.

‘What is the soul of the city?' is the basic question that ErasmusPC searches an answer to. If you'd want to build on the soul of the city, you'll have to find it first.

Interaction and action

‘3xI' is the method to learn, cause interaction and action:

"'International:"' there is not one perspective for cities or culture. Someone from [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamburg Hamburg] will think completely different about them than someone from Xi-An or Maputo. Bringing these perspectives together and make them exchange will create new ideas.Interdisciplinary: philosophers, architects, poets, politicians, film commissioners, sculptors, urban planners, sociologists, helicopter pilots, sound artists - they all have a different way of thinking about the city. And here to, opening up different worlds for each other will bring new ideas.

Inspiring: ErasmusPC focuses only on the stuff that inspires and on generating new ideas through dialogue. When our imagination starts working, we learn best. Besides, there is so much information - why not go for the top?ErasmusPC gathers and shares inspiration from cities all over the world with the website [www.erasmuspc.com] and the newsletter. Subjects ErasmusPC deals with range from city poetry to ‘cult up your city' projects, book reviews to urban thinkers, a UN Culture Campaign to the ‘lost and found department'.

ErasmusPC causes interaction with a range of other tools: urban sound hunts, live interviews, the 8 Questions project, creative brainstorms, urban theme weeks, and most of all: the Salon.

Who is involved?

The non-profit network consists of people with a passion for cities and culture, and extends into cities all over the world. The ErasmusPC website attracts more than 10,000 unique visitors each month. The readers are the contributors. To support the work of the network organisationally and financially, the ErasmusPC Foundation was founded in 2008.

References

[http://www.geheugenvanalmere.nl/article-2044-nl.html Geheugen van Almere - the collective memory of Almere project writes about ErasmusPC]

[http://www.eukn.org/eukn/themes/Urban_Policy/Urban_environment/erasmus-PC_1058.html The European Urban Knowledge Network writes about ErasmusPC:] "ErasmusPC’s base is the network of EU’s Erasmus exchange students, who met the first time 15 years ago in Dublin. ErasmusPC is a belated spin-off of this network of friends, who kept meeting annually at the film festival in Rotterdam. In 2005, they decided to start the network ErasmusPC on what brings them together: a passion for cities and a passion for culture. Otherwise, there is no direct EU involvement (yet)."

[http://www.kei-centrum.nl/view.cfm?page_id=1905&item_type=link&item_id=262 KEI on ErasmusPC]

Links

" [http://www.erasmuspc.com/index.php?id=44&type=section City Poems] "The online museum of city poems consists of dozens of poems from all over the world than can be found in the public realm.

" [http://www.erasmuspc.com/index.php?id=583&type=section The lost and found department] " is a collection of new and disappearing elements in cities.

" [http://www.erasmuspc.com/index.php?id=756&type=section City Sounds] " focuses on the positive effect of sound in cities.