All of our projects are aligned to the Mtracs Flavours in various blends. These flavours form the philosophical underpinnings of everything we do. They help us in mixing our diverse backgrounds and passions into a coherent range of projects. The flavours are:
M – Meta-dissemination through continuous discussions about dissemination practices;
T – Tractability of resources through multimodality and tiny recontextualisable artefacts;
R – Reflection on professional practice to facilitate lifelong learning about the self and other;
A – Alternative approaches to knowledge practices, involving the notions of “documented coffee breaks” and “scaffolded informality”;
C – Cross-sectoral and cross-domain collaboration through engaged scholarship and community participation initiatives;
S – Sustainable development goals alignment through blends of our three overarching themes: cities, practices and technologies.
THE
FLAVOURS
Meta-dissemination refers to the facilitation of explicit discourse surrounding dissemination practices, something which is often neglected in the knowledge creation and dissemination world. Communication about dissemination could take many forms: it could happen during workshops, coffee breaks and online forums, for example. These discussions could help to reinvigorate how we see dissemination, ensuring that the knowledge we work so hard to create reaches audiences that will find it relevant and useful.
The tractability of resources encapsulates our efforts to design resources that are accessible to all, rendering our resources inclusive, so to speak. These resources have to be easy to understand and use, while being ‘recontextualisable‘ in the sense that they can be engaged with in numerous contexts. Thinking in terms of multimodal meaning-making, where language is not always central to communication, helps in providing access to meaning. Keeping resources ‘tiny‘ (concise, well-defined, with clear boundaries) aids in mediating effortless practical interactions with resources during events like meetings, lessons and presentations.
We are strong proponents of lifelong learning. We do not only believe that lifelong learning should occur in order to hone our professional practices but we think that reflecting upon these practices could help us understand ourselves and others also. Reflection is not necessarily restricted to ‘thinking’. Indeed, reflection can be mediated or made explicit through writing or producing other multimodal resources, helping us to make sense of our experiences, solve problems and even foster empathy for others. Reflecting on professional practice and identity formation are therefore viewed as the cornerstone for knowledge creation and dissemination.
We often found that some of the most useful knowledge is shared not only during presentations at conferences but during the coffee breaks between them too. For some, the alleviation of presentation pressures in a more informal atmosphere could be inspiring. We therefore attempt to document informal interactions properly (“documented coffee breaks“), elevating their importance by allowing them to shape our resources, as an alternative approach to conventional knowledge practices. Similarly we (re)structure knowledge events in ways that foreground constant dialogue, while retaining some structure and all of the rigour, in what we call “scaffolded informality“.
Knowledge is created through collaboration of diverse individuals, who each contribute something unique and refreshing. We like to break the silos of knowledge creation and dissemination, partnering groups of people from all over the world, who would not normally interact with one another. This is done through cross-sectoral and cross-domain collaborations that could bring academic departments in contact with NGOs that work in similar fields, transport researchers with government officials, musicology researchers with local musicians, or librarians with teachers, for example. This collaboration facilitates the careful identification and description of target groups to whom our resources could be disseminated.
Finally, we would like any individual or group that we work with to simply be themselves and do what they do best. We do not believe in forcing people into pre-determined directions. That is why our three overarching themes are incredibly broad: cities, practices and technologies. We view anybody whose work intersects with these themes, even if just remotely, as fit to make contributions to our projects. From there on, we see it as our special prerogative to connect various dots during our dissemination efforts: linking the knowledge created with all of our themes, as well as with United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Of course, those who choose to volunteer in joining these linking processes, are welcome!
