Ben Fox | Creative collaboration, intercultural innovation and making stuff

Wonderful crowd sourced and collaborative fire recovery study

June 3, 2014 — Leave a comment

I found this wonderful fire recovery study via Twitter the other day via @Samsamum. It’s a wonderful example of crowd sourcing and collaborative creative practice. I particularly appreciate the clear visual instructions and elegant construction. The results are cool and getting a lot of media attention and developing daily.

“Nerds for Nature is bringing together environmental professionals with technologists and designers, first in dialogue and then to collaboratively create awesome new tools to help people discover, protect, and understand the world around them”

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Here is all their press / web coverage

In Uncategorized

Thanks Rebecca Brewen @BecBrewin for the pics from this article on #KBVID (Kalgoorlie Boulder VideoClip)

Arts & Edges Highlights Launch and early bird open.

May 2, 2014 — Leave a comment

The Arts & Edges highlights launch was a huge success! The response has been overwhelming and positive. We had so much web traffic our site was temporarily overloaded.

You can register early here

Stream the launch videos here ( you just need to give email and name to register)

Or if you are more inclined to read and have a text adventure download transcripts of my highlights speech from the links below. .

ADSummitHighlightsLaunchspeechRAAsummit (PDF)

ADSummitHighlightsLaunchspeechRAAsummit (RTF)

In Art, Ideas, RAA2014

Inside Australia? – Let me take a #Selfie

April 21, 2014 — Leave a comment

Anthony Gormley’s inside Australia is iconic. One of the most unforgettable pieces of art in Australia, it is also one of the most inaccessible. Getting there is a half day drive (no public transport) from the Western Australian regional town Kalgoorlie-Boulder into the remote western desert. Parts of the road are unsealed, un-fenced and prone to closing from flooding.

Visiting is an incredible unforgettable thing, an experience of an artwork, a place and a world that your mind sears into itself. And importantly it photographs very well for good social media posting.

The statues are an adventurous lot, based very loosely on local people. As well as featuring in many, many photos, I have been told they also get bits cut off and welded back on, used as four-wheel-drive recovery tools, and have some serious rust issues. They are serious rock-stars of the international art scene, hanging on their salt-lake, casually headlining the cultural tourism list of Menzies year after year.

I could go on, but first, wait – let me take a #selfie.

In Art, RAA2014, Social Media

This week in the Goldfields Art Centre I met Alan Radford and Steve Austin of the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Alan and Steve are both working as Engagement managers.

They have – as we discussed – possibly the most nerdy activities in the world competing with the CERN orienteering club. (If you know of more nerdy jobs, let me know)

Anyway – they let me know about Table Builder (read more cut/paste info after the break) which is a new system that allows you to make your own data products from the ABS data pool. We also discussed that as the census happens every 5 years and the population of Kalgoorlie changes by 50% every 2 years (completely ambit claim that they agreed with in a completely ambit manner) then the census probably is only a snapshot in a rapidly changing stream, (like a cross-section of a breaking wave – it is true, but may not reflect what’s before and after the snapshot). Venkat’s article on stream citizens is relevant in the Goldfields – FIFO miners, snowbirds, Aboriginal people, Highschool students, expat New Zealanders ( The greatest concentration of Kiwis outside NZ is here) all share high-mobility in common.

So, how can Australia measure it’s flowing cultures better?

Image: Animated screen showing a pile of suitcases in an Airport somewhere in the Stream.