Welcome! This page is under construction. Join us in gathering materials to help people host Barnraisings!

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What makes a Public Lab Barnraising?

There are several important traits that all Public Lab events have. If you’re coming to an event for the first time, they are things you can expect to happen, and what makes a Public Lab event unique.

All Public Lab events:

• Follow the Public Lab Code of Conduct,
• Create learning moments,
• Level the playing field for people to participate,
• Increase collective understanding of environmental issues and community science,
• Allow space for people to think and act creatively, use available resources, and move towards action.

These are further explained at publiclab.org/events

A Public Lab Barnraisings is unique in that it also follows open space technology (read more here). The main principles behind Open Space Technology are that:

• Every person here is the right person,
• Whatever happens is the only thing that could have,
• Be prepared to be surprised,
• Whenever it starts is the right time, and
• The Law of Mobility Everyone or that is responsible for themselves and using their time to their best judgement.

Together, these guiding principles help to create the space for the unique and genuine collaboration that only Barnraisings have!

Why host a Barnraising?

Sharing a physical space with others can be extremely productive and rewarding. Barnraisings, in particular, help people to share and build knowledge with others. Barnraisigns have been known to help people:

• connect with others and build social bonds,
• dive into local issues,
• share a physical space to be creative, and
• work on projects, and bringing newcomers in.

Unlike other events like workshops or conferences, a unique aspect of the Barnraising is that it's a multiday event hosted in an unconference style. While we all come to the space with our own ideas and interests on what we would like to do, we actually set the schedule together. This means that everyone who is there is part of the process of deciding what happens with the shared time and space.

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Barnraising Hosting Resources:

Activities for the day before a barnraising

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Activities for the night before a barnraising

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Activities during a barnraising

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Documentation Resources

There are a lot of really creative ways people can captured notes, photos, resources, questions, and even write event publications. Do you have activities to help people do this? Best practices or creative ideas on how to do documentation at events?

Edit this page and add your resources here, or post an activity on how to do this with the link below.

Resources:

• The Barnraiser: "The Barnraiser" is a 1-page daily "newspaper." In many Barnraising it has become a useful way to summarize and share in a succinct, low-burden, but regular way. The nature of "The Barnraiser" is lighthearted, but helps capture some outputs and take aways from the event.

KidCom resources

Edit this page and add your resources here, or post an activity on how to do this with the link below.

FunCom resources and activities

Edit this page and add your resources here, or post an activity on how to do this with the link below.

Best practices for hosting family friendly events

Edit the page and add your resources here!

Resources for organizing supplies and materials people are planning to bring to events

Edit the page and add your resources here!

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What else will be on this page:

Resources:

• Logistics and planning resources: location and space requirements, materials needed,
• Hosting the event: Setting up the meeting space, making the schedule, intro to the Marketplace - open space technology

the image below shows what a great Welcome/Registration table looks like: alphabetized namebadges, stickers for customizing name badges, waivers to sign, pens to sign with, copies of the Code of Conduct, and free Public Lab stuff that people can take if they like: