{"id":13772,"date":"2015-09-08T11:15:24","date_gmt":"2015-09-08T15:15:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/webmakerblog.wpengine.com\/?p=13772"},"modified":"2019-02-26T12:40:19","modified_gmt":"2019-02-26T20:40:19","slug":"hacking-mozillas-stories-for-local-impact","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/foundation-archive\/mozilla-learning\/hacking-mozillas-stories-for-local-impact\/","title":{"rendered":"Hacking Mozilla's Stories for Local Impact"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is a guest post by Sue Smith, Mozilla contractor and co-founder of Hack Aye.<\/em>
\nEver hear yourself explaining something and realise you\u2019re understanding it yourself for the first time? Storytelling helps us make sense of how we got to where we\u2019re at, formalising that understanding so that it can be reused later. It can also be a key ingredient in a culture of openness that fuels collaboration. By sharing resources, ideas and stories, encouraging others to reuse and remix them, we can stimulate creativity throughout a community. <\/span>
\nIn this post I\u2019d like to tell the story of how Mozilla\u2019s learning programs led me to co-found a new creative technology organisation in Scotland, and hopefully get my own head around what\u2019s been happening along the way.<\/span>
\n

\"Mozilla

Mozilla encouraging reuse of its stories.<\/p><\/div>
\nI\u2019ve worked in education technology for a number of years, creating digital resources to help people learn programming skills. Since early 2014 I\u2019ve been fortunate enough to work intermittently with Mozilla, initially as a technical writer on the Open Badges team, then assisting in storytelling and documentation with Hive NYC. It\u2019s no exaggeration to say that this experience has completely changed my perspective on work and learning, not to mention the impact on my own personal confidence, ambition and belief in the power of communities.<\/span><\/p>\n

Remixing Mozilla’s work<\/h2>\n

Earlier this year I started a new collaboration with my long-time friend Jen Hunter, who got here via arts development and trade union environments. With <\/span>Hack Aye<\/span><\/a>, our goal is to develop an engagement model exploring open source practice as a method to increase participation in work, education and community, initially via the arts, technology and activism. The idea is inspired by many of Mozilla\u2019s initiatives, particularly Hive Learning Networks.<\/span>
\nHives are city-wide networks of educators who come together to create new kinds of learning experiences for and with youth. With a focus on innovation, co-production and openness, Hive contributors connect participants to opportunity and empowerment. The flagship Hive NYC has generated a host of project ideas and practices we\u2019ve fed into our own model, such as <\/span>Design, Collaborate, Integrate<\/span><\/a>, through which Brooklyn Community College Partnership engaged young people in the co-design of a maker space. Mozilla\u2019s role is not to deliver the activity within a Hive itself, but to provide support for each Hive community in order to drive educational change within the local context.<\/span>
\n

\"BCCP

Youth co-designing BCCP\u2019s maker space project.<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n

Our local context<\/h2>\n

Last year\u2019s independence referendum in Scotland changed the cultural landscape in ways we\u2019re still trying to understand. It caused a huge upsurge in activism, with young people rejecting apathy and instead collectively <\/span>imagining the kind of country they wanted to live in<\/i><\/b>. For a generation with fewer options than at any time in recent history, this deeply creative act was itself an empowering one\u2014they felt able to express their vision of a better future for themselves and their communities. Journalist <\/span>George Monbiot commented<\/span><\/a> on the \u201coutbreak of hope\u201d spreading across the UK.<\/span>
\nThe type of activism that was on the rise was interesting, too. It wasn\u2019t coming from the mainstream political system\u2014local grass roots movements were connecting in creative, dynamic ways, with people engaging on their own terms. Like other recent movements such as Occupy, the Fast Food Campaign and Black Lives Matter, the activism we saw in Scotland last year was equitable and inclusive, connected to wider networks amidst a growing culture of international solidarity. <\/span>
\n

\"Scottish

Scottish hip hop artist (yes, you read that right) Loki, one of many creative voices during IndyRef, talking about class and communication at one of our first events.<\/p><\/div>
\nWe wanted to maximise on <\/span>the momentum created during IndyRef<\/span><\/a>. Looking at the groups involved in the Yes movement\u2014Radical Independence Campaign, Common Weal, National Collective and many others\u2014we saw similarities to open source communities like Hives.<\/span>
\nWhat if we could create opportunities for young people to again visualise change? Would it still be worthwhile? It would if we could also connect them to the skills, tools and networks to make that change happen. That might seem impossibly ambitious, but if I\u2019ve learned one thing working with Mozilla, it\u2019s to have a go at things that seem impossibly ambitious.<\/span><\/p>\n

Not more hacking of hacking..?<\/h2>\n

While I was in London last year (for <\/span>MozFest<\/span><\/a> obvs), I visited Disobedient Objects at the V&A museum. This record-breaking exhibition highlighted the role of making in collective action, innovations shared between movements\u2014exhibits included printouts of a <\/span>downloadable makeshift tear-gas mask “How To\u201d guide<\/span><\/a>, as shared between protesters all over the world, from Turkey to Ferguson. This is the hacker ethos we want to spread\u2014learning how things work, making new things out of them, sharing them around. As Hive Research Lab contributor <\/span>Rafi Santo explains<\/span><\/a>, the hacker mentality is fundamentally about <\/span>seeing things as changeable<\/i><\/b>.<\/span>
\n

\"Hack

Participant contributions during one of our brainstorming activities.<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n

Networked networks<\/h2>\n

Early partners in our work have included trade union organisations here in Scotland. We\u2019ve facilitated a few \u201ccampaign hacks\u201d\u2014hackdays engaging groups of young people in the design of campaigns on issues that matter to them. We use internet tools for collaboration, but more importantly we use open source organising principles to stay decentralised, with participants leading, deciding on direction and outcomes in cooperation with peers, their contributions recognised and valued. <\/span>
\n\"Hack
\nWe created the <\/span>Hack the Boss teaching kit<\/span><\/a> for one of our first events, using X-Ray Goggles to make opinionated remixes of employer websites as part of a campaign against insecure work. Vandalism? Aye! We could hardly use the word \u201chack\u201d <\/span>without being a wee bit subversive<\/span><\/a>.<\/span>
\n

\"Hacking

Hacking the boss…<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n

Open source stories<\/h2>\n

In the spirit of the programs we\u2019ve been influenced by, we\u2019re committed to sharing our stories openly. Making sense of your own story is often about figuring out how it relates to other, bigger stories. Intuitively, it seems like there is a general trend towards more distributed organising powered by the Internet, as well as <\/span>creative projects prioritising cooperation<\/span><\/a> and peer production, exploring <\/span>the intersections between art and the Web<\/span><\/a>. Whether or not all of this represents a truly meaningful shift away from prevailing social systems and structures remains to be seen, but as <\/span>journalist Paul Mason says<\/span><\/a>, it\u2019s time to be utopian.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a guest post by Sue Smith, Mozilla contractor and co-founder of Hack Aye. Ever hear yourself explaining something and realise you\u2019re understanding it yourself for the first time? Storytelling helps us make sense of how we got to … Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":144,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[378228],"tags":[330394,53,27996,23085],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/foundation-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13772"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/foundation-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/foundation-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/foundation-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/144"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/foundation-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13772"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/foundation-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13772\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/foundation-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/foundation-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/foundation-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}