if you look around where we are now, this is sort of the model I'll be talking about

and it's a new non-traditional way of receiving information

you don't go to school in traditional knowing of I'm gonna go through this level and this is what I'm gonna get

We're in an old city and this is just landed in the middle and now it's feeding you knowledge

about the future of vehicles, the future of gardening, the power of makers

I'm gonna talk about education as a project and how important it is to look at education as a major agent in making the future

and it has always been this urge of artist, maker of revolution to change old ways

in order to make the new, you have to change the pattern of thinking

and to change that pattern, you have to make new schools

and we all know when we look around when we look at this world

there is not a linear way to learn

There's not this thing that'll get you in one path

There's all these little bits and pieces we gather in this wider context

and what I suggest is when we look outside, when we look our cities

what if our city was giving us answers for questions we were asking

what if the cities contain tools we already need to make the change

This is a project that I work on in San Francisco since I was there in 2006

With a collective of rebar that was kind of a gathering of artists,landscape designers

the concept here was when the city was in crisis in 2008, there was no construction

Why can't the city give us the tools they have laying around?

Why can't they teach us to make our own cities?

Why can't we make our own bicycles with the tools they already have?

Why can't we find something that we can use in order to make our dreams happen

This is sort of a carnival of make yourself, do yourself, dig under the ground, see how your city build

learn your city, learn from it

and we also have representatives from the government here

and they are looking to us for answers

so we propose this kind of ridiculous carnivals, do it yourself, take the tools

they say, well, you know, we don't have much money

but we have this place that we've been thinking about changing a bit because of the bureacracy and lack of money

what we have is maybe this, can you use this and we give you some money

can you make something happen?

and we make this a temporary space

that create this kind of rescue from the traffic that brings some green space

that it's cheap, it's a task, we're doing something

you know, can it lead to something, we don't know, but we're gonna watch

whether the people are gonna come, whether the people are gonna love it

whether they gonna take ownership of the space, and if they are, the city is watching us

and they're seeing there's actions, activities, that people love it

so maybe in the next 5 years they'll give more money to other people, to create this kind of spaces

city give us old parking meters, we made a sculpture

and this sort of iniatives were popping up everywhere in the city in the moment of crisis

in the moment of economy being low

what does that tell you? That we can take advantage of any situation we just have to really know the context we're in.

This is a project that uses temporary space on this big lot that'll become a multi-residential new space

But why not use it for a farm for 3 years

Why not teach the people the ways that what we're talking about today, the empowerment

Why can't we gather, build a community, plant the seeds, learn how to do all these things

if you remember the illustration I showed you in the beginning, this ridiculous, let's drive the machine

dig up the city, well, it happend, you know, a year or later

in a way it was a surprise to us, somehow deep inside we knew that if you initiate the change, it leads to something

you just gotta try and do

and also for me, symbol of self for empowerment as a bicycle

In Shanghai I saw a lot of bicycles

Here, I haven't been here long enough

This is a bicycle music festival that I participated

to us, to this big group of people that put together, the musicians

it's a self empowerment symbols

we take them music through symbols, we take the music through the cities

but not even not, we have empowered the sound

we give all the sound to all the speakers

to ourselves it take 7 people to power a giant band

and this image represents to me, this combination of the few efforts that we brought together

the pedal power music, the pedal, the lighting, the square that was once, you know, hustling with traffic

and this is all made by efforts of the few people who are wanting to change something

and what I represent today is Strelka Institute, and I come from Moscow

which I don't know how many of you know much about

it's a big city, it's a huge city, it's growing, it's becoming out of control

it is out of orders, and what the city is really trying to do is grow

but how does the city grow, who makes it grow,is it the government, are we looking to government for answers?

we don't really know, this is where the institute is situated

right in the center, in an old factory

that used to make chocolate, now it's a creative cluster

and it was founded by a board of trustees

but only in Russia is this possible and there's this kind of spirit in Russia where

you have to find an opportunity and if you do, you jump on it

These people saw an opportunity and creating a new square, urban planning

and there is this whole missing level of layer of people who can speak the language of the govenment and connect them to designers

architects, it's privately funded by these people

and they contacted the rancohouse in the first year, who if you know, architects in the leading practitioners in urban design and architecture

So he created this program, the school

on the parallel effort, there's this interesting dynamic of spreading to these different directions

There's a consultancy that's developing

There's a publishing house, introducing books on urbanism

that Russia has been missing because of all different reasons you might know that we've been blocked off from the world for a long time

we didn't know much about the problems of the city, urbanism, the kind of humanistic approach

the public space, all this discourse is going on in the 60's and the growing cities

and U.S., Europe, for example

so now we're republishing the old works

and introducing the language of urbanism to Russia

and to top it off, we have a really popular bar

so bar, is one of the hubs for young people to come together, to also attract the energy

just like this space, you know, you have the bypassers, the people who walk by

and they might come in, they might get this part of the knowledge

and the bar is similar, it's so close to the institute, it intertwine together

so it attracts this kind of visitors

that might not know something about, but get interested

the heart of the space is really the open courtyard

which is a public space, and it introduces a series of events in summer where it opens up for all the public

that it invites experts from all over the world, to talk about issues of urbanism, public space, growing cities, data,

that we can now gather, and also economists, historians, political experts

that tell us about the context of Russia

the topics range, and there's is this multi discipline areas that introduces that just one way of thinking

but all these ways of thinking combine together

there's theme that really of course, architecture, urbanism,

but the topic of Moscow is really one main theme that we're noticing

the reason is because Moscow is changing

and what is happening in Moscow is the mayor has changed

the one has built the city for the last decade

we have this new, not new government, new people, young people in the government who are wanting the new

wanting the city to grow in certain way

but they are looking for answers from people

we have no people to tell them what we want

so Strelka is in part

responsible for creating this dialogue

the dialogue on changing Mosco

and the change is happening in Moscow

We're branding the change

We're participating in big Moscow compeition

which is the expansion of Moscow, the smart growth of Moscow

putting out to the public, the books, the publishing that I was talking about

also putting together Moscow urban forum for the second year which is a first attempt to introduce to the government, the discourse

because the government is very close to the institution and they do not,

they are not always eager to hear, you know, the experts, the international speakers

but here, we bring them together for 3, 4 days

and they're able to get into discussion, dialogue

and this is the way we learn, we learn through dialogue and discussion

Strelka is gonna be the one to put together the Russian pavilion for 2014 Venice Biennale

so it's a big opportunity to introduce to its discourse

and of course educational program, which feeds the brain and the heart of institute

it's only 37 students this year

most of the time it's 38, 40 students

an international crowd of researchers, professionals,journalist, economists

geographers, I'm an architect, and it's a mixture that create for 9 months we come together in this very intense program together

it's a series of workshop, simulators, discussions, forums

and they teach us , really, at the end of summer

reduce this critical outlook on what we on the problems that Moscow faces

future of Moscow and the problem that it exists now

the international students really add to the discourse because we all introduce different perspectives

of course there's lots of Russians because the discourse in Russia

But think of all these people from Columbia, China, Greece, India that come to Russia

and look at Moscow with fresh eyes, and they offer new perspectives

There's expertise in different fields and becoming more disciplinary which

we all work in different groups with each other

really listen to each other to understand how we think

because nobody thinks the same, we're all different

and then the program leads to summer events

so all the findings during the year we can all reintroduce in the events

we can lead the workshops that we will with our educational studios we will lead this year of workshops for the public

these are series of workshops in the past that really range from art, media, design, architect, urbanism

we also have this important factor, and this I think, one of the reason why I'm here

is this geographic field trip, this year we went to Shanghai, the founder of the school really believe that the school has to be about playing

and it has to be different, you know, it can't not be based on traditional institution

not only they pay us to be there through the year, but they also pay for our trips

they pay for our field trips to investigate

but we are responsible for the outcomes, responsible for the contents

so for example, I put together Moscow Shanghai Urban Forum with Richard

and we introduced this topic of microcity

the power of networks

and we created this forum that brought together leading professionals, activists, designers, who are really doing something in Shanghai

and they were able to share with us what they are doing, what are their problems

what is the issues they're dealing and talk to us

so in a way, this is also an urban forum that I help put together in Moscow which we talk to government, also to activists

and architects, and how do we talk to each other

what is the language we use, when the activists talk to the government

what is the pathway he can reach the government

and how should he do it, what is the languague

so in a way we are teaching, and we are being taught, how to be agent of change

how to introduce change into our environment and how to follow it up

how to make it a more social city, how to awaken

how to have an intuition to see this change in coming and also engage and be a part of it

these are the themes this year that are current in Moscow, it is everywhere we're looking into the future

but we do not want to forget about our past

we want to gather all these datas, becoming really prevalent with digital communications and all the things

and we talk about how to use these datats to inform the growing of the cities

we want to talk about the pattern of cohabitation, all the post Soviet landscape we're left with, which is mass sea of housing

and how do we introduce a human element to the socialists, this landscape

and the project I'm working on is education as a project

and how do we look at past of educaiton, what it is now and what are the things the learning is going to become in the future

of course we look at self education all the way

we look at institutions, the current state of institutions, I'm looking at problems of mobilities

which in Russia is really prevalent because what happens is

periphery empties all the people, and they go to all the big towns to study to the best university

that leave us with empty periphery, with a small town that's really asking for help

so I'm looking at ways we can introduce some sort of educational component into the periphery, into the regions

and interestingly, I come here, and this kind of maker movement, and this networking

if you see, this map I created before I came here, before I knew you, before I landed in this historic forum, this kind of agent