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The Centre for Econics and Ecosystem Management is the product of six years of international collaborative research and sector-based consultancy between Writtle College and Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development (Germany). Activities at the Centre include developing a core body of internationally recognised research in the fields of non-equilibrium thermodynamics, complex systems science and adaptive management, and using the research to work with conservation organisations around the World to resolve significant environmental problems. Our sponsors include GIZ, Germany and WWF Germany, and our operations extend from Central America to the Ukraine, Russia, South Eastern Europe, China and Korea.
Furtherfield has inspired and supported new forms of collaborative practice and expression at the intersection of arts and technology cultures to co-create critical, contemporary public platforms and contexts for arts in networked society.
Furtherfield's innovative programmes have advanced practices and theories of collaboration, remix, and openness; inspiring and informing thinking in the UK Arts sector and international digital arts culture. This work has worldwide cultural and social impact. It reaches and engages new audiences through public gallery programmes, online collections, websites, and other award-winning virtual platforms, acknowledged by artists, curators and critics for their contribution to emerging digital art contexts.
Writtle College's Postharvest Technology Unit and the Mauritian Agriculture Research and Extension Unit (AREU) studied the use of returnable plastic crates (RPC's) to reduce food losses for subsistence farmers in Mauritius. This study demonstrated that the RPC's reduced damage caused by pressure, abrasion and lower temperatures. This study had a positive impact, mainly economic, on the postharvest losses of the "pomme d'amour" cooking tomatoes in Mauritius due to rot, damage and dehydration. As a result these stakeholders have increased their income through having a more marketable-quality crop to sell.
`Scenes of Provincial Life' exemplifies the practice based research of M. Szpakowski. It was ground breaking in its presentation of "art" video on the world wide web, and involved both conceptual and technical experimentation/research/ development which fed into other activities and outcomes offline, which then fed back into the work itself. The sequence generated offline presentations including 78 screenings of works from the sequence in the period Sept 2009 - Dec 13 at film festivals and galleries on 5 continents, fed into a substantial body of applied work with school students (2 DVDs and a CD ROM, screenings at the BFI and the Shortwave Cinema) and informed Szpakowski's approach as editor in chief, co-curator and writer on the pioneering online curated video resource DVblog (2005 - the present). This research has also fed into writing on short form and online video for the journal MIRAJ and for Furtherfield, the leading UK digital arts platform. It is important to note that, although this document covers the period 2009 -13 the project began in 2002/3, assuming its current format in 2006.