First Friday is a monthly social event open to anyone. These events are somewhere between the last meeting of the week and the first event of your weekend. You might meet an artist or an engineer, a school teacher or a city leader. It is a place to connect with someone you might not otherwise meet, and hear about stuff you didn’t already know. All are welcome - from inside and outside the city, online or in the Watershed building.

If you're joining us in person, you will have the opportunity to have a look around Pervasive Media Studio. You can also find out more about some of the work that happens here. There will also be some equipment set up to chat with people joining the event online.

Attendees joining us in-person can see work by the teams who were awarded funding through Grounding Technologies:

• Eyes on Bristol Airport Bristol Airport Action Network will be showing their new platform Eyes on Bristol Airport. The project captures data to hold the airport accountable to its planning conditions and climate pledges.
• The Apothecary Network Marcus Berdaut will be demonstrating a new app which supports a network of decolonial community apothecaries.
• Focus, But where? The team will be showing two chapters of their playful interactive web-based game. The game explores the intersection between climate change activism and our media/information environment.
• Garden Lab Whispers Grow The Knowle West Media Team will be reflecting on their project based on an allotment in Knowle West. They have been investigating how to combine new sensor technology with local, embodied and non-human knowledge to further climate action.
• Greenbelt 2.0, Rings of Resilience Resistance + Renewal The team will be sharing the outcomes of their project that reimagine the use of the Bristol greenbelt. The project uses data from communities to co-create mapping and animation .
• Where Do We Go When We ____, The team will be sharing their exploration into co-designing immersive spaces. These spaces are aimed at marginalised and neurodivergent communities to connect to nature.

The hosted element of the event will finish at 18:00. After that, in-person attendees can continue conversations in the Café & Bar.

People joining online can take part in short speed networking conversations. We make this happen with our chat roulette style software. The software pairs you up at random for a series of five minute conversations. There is an option to take a break between each chat and you are welcome to pop in and out whenever you like. It's fine to join the event late and leave the event early.

Join the First Friday mailing list here.

Grounding Technologies is a 6 month programme funded by Arts and Humanities Research Council’s (AHRC) and Department for Media, Culture and Sport (DCMS) as part of its Demonstrator programme. It is also supported by Bristol+Bath Creative R+D, part of AHRC's Creative Industries Clusters Programme, and for this programme we’re also joined by the West of England Combined Authority.

This event is supported by MyWorld.

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