Inspiring Digital Engagement Festival, Sheffield

This should be really interesting:

Inspiring Digital Engagement - 15th September

Date: 15 September 2010

Location: SIA Gallery, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield

The Inspiring Digital Engagement Festival is a one-day event that explores the contribution of arts practice to the business of digital inclusion. Local art practitioners, digital inclusion researchers, public sector professionals and community development workers are invited to join us for an active investigation into how socially engaged arts practice promotes, enriches and challenges notions of digital inclusion.

We increasingly use digital tools for everything: to find jobs, to socialise, to shop, even to define who we are. Thus it is urgent to ensure that everyone is able to make an informed choice about using the Internet and related technologies. Of the 17 million people in the UK who currently don’t use the Internet it is believed that 6 million of these are both socially and digitally excluded. We celebrate the arrival of the Digital Region in South Yorkshire by asking: beyond access what is necessary to support people in exploring their potential?

Socially engaged art projects are the unsung success stories of digital engagement. They may be small in scope and intensive in execution, but they point the way to new processes and methods of interest in enfranchising the communities overlooked by more broadbrushed or centralised approaches. Through panel discussions, talks, demonstrations and participatory activities the Inspiring Digital Engagement Festival will focus on the following questions:

- What does art bring that policy doesn’t?

- How far can digital inclusion be facilitated without personal mediation and stewardship?

- Is it appropriate to expect artistic practice to conform to public sector metrics?

Take away:
-        Inspiration for digital inclusion strategies
-        New networks of practitioners facing the same challenges as you
-        A more rounded sense of what we can hope for and why we are trying to achieve digital interdependence.

To sign up to the event, please go to http://www.eventelephant.com/inspiringdigitalengagementfestival.

For more information and to start a conversation, sign up at http://grou.ps/inspiringdigitalengagement

Follow the Facebook event buzz…
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=111044618946008&index=1#!/event.php?eid=108562659198925&ref=mf