Global Urbanist<\/a>. After thinking about it, I agreed that, now that I have created an entire organization revolving around the idea of doing things slowly (or rather, at an appropriate speed), I would have to be able to describe in great detail why the Foundation exists, what it wants to do and how. This is a humble attempt to answer those questions, starting by defining what exactly Despacio is (wish me luck):<\/p>\nWhat<\/strong>
\nSlow Research is the name I\u2019ve always thought that the organization should be called. However, due to a legal requirement in Colombia and to some marketing rules (i.e. \u201cnever ever give something a long name when it can be short\u201d), it\u2019s now called \u201cSlow Foundation\u201d (in Spanish, \u201cFundaci\u00f3n Despacio\u201d (later we chose to use \u201cDespacio\u201d everywhere and just use the \u201cFundaci\u00f3n\u201d for legal purposes and documents). But in English I will continue to call it Slow Research, for reasons I\u2019ll outline below. The slogan is \u201cchallenging the intuitive\u201d, and the symbol (and logo) of Despacio is a flying kite. None of these choices have been the product of a marketing advisory service, and the \u201cexperts\u201d to whom we have asked opinions have said that we are crazy to have that name, that logo and that slogan. From these reactions, I feel we are on the right track.
\nIn order to define Despacio, I will provide three definitions based on all our legal and conceptual documents. Here they go:
\n–\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0It is a non-profit organization that does research on the Slow philosophy and apply its results to improve quality of life and wellbeing in people. It promotes a slow lifestyle (or rather, a tempo giusto lifestyle) that is sustainable and humane.
\n–\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0It does research to promote quality of life in all stages of the life cycle, working in productive, educational, reproductive sectors of human activity, looking to challenge the intuitive in its respective fields through applied research, acting to improve the wellbeing of community in general.
\n–\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0It formulates and develops projects to make people feel well, generally based on the Slow Movement (Slow Food, Slow Living, Citta Slow, etc) and based on its own (or others\u2019) research which are rigorous and can contribute to improve situations that require help.
\nBased on the above, keywords of what we do could be: applied research, sustainability, unorthodox approaches, wellbeing, quality of life.
\nThis raises more questions than answers, but possibly a good idea of how we approach our work.<\/p>\nWhy<\/strong>
\nMore importantly, the reasons for having created Slow Research are the following:
\n–\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0There is a pressing need to reevaluate the role of speed in all human activities and restore balance;
\n–\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0There are some examples of how to restore such balance, many of which are not well known, seldom understood but generally simple to implement;
\n–\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Generally, the Slow philosophy is seen (and to an extent it is an appropriate perception of reality) as la-di-da ideas and nobody really knows what their impacts can be (or are);
\n–\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0The existent alternatives to \u201cfast living\u201d are too extreme or inadequate to be realistic and applicable in modern society\u00a0 (e.g. the back-to-the-lands movements, Amish communities, Kibbutz, etc);
\n–\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0We must make it clear that \u201cgoing slow\u201d doesn\u2019t mean moving at 2 km\/h. It means finding the appropriate speed to live and work, and understand how to manage such speed (or slowness). We literally despise the invitation to \u201cgo slow period\u201d without a comprehensive analysis of a situation.
\n–\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0People don\u2019t know how to use technology (i.e. they are stuck to the screen of their BlackBerry, they play videogames until they drop, they drive at excessive speeds);
\n–\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0and finally:
\no\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0People are feeling miserably\u2026
\no\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Cities are doing miserably\u2026
\no\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0the economy is doing miserably\u2026
\nand they shouldn\u2019t.\u00a0 And we can help.<\/p>\nWhat<\/strong>
\nSlow Research is currently just a small puddle of project ideas that need adequate financing, and short (and cheap) activities that try to demonstrate how the slow philosophy can be implemented.\u00a0 In general, we want to do the following:
\n–\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Write documents\/papers
\n–\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Deliver courses\/workshops
\n–\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Provide advisory services
\n–\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Continue doing small but significant activities.<\/p>\nWith whom!<\/strong>
\nDespacio begun with an idea by me which was scrutinized and discussed with two other people (Adriana Hurtado and Natalia Ucr\u00f3s) in early 2010. Then I chose a friend (Juanita S\u00e1nchez) as our President of the Board (we didn\u2019t even have legal paperwork, but she accepted the position gladly), and continued by hiring one person in 2011 (Carlos Moreno) to establish the Foundation legally and, in the end, help me believe that this thing will actually work. That process took around one year and a half.\u00a0 The past two years have consisted of generating some staff momentum and getting money\u2026. Anyone interested?
\nMore info about Despacio in www.despacio.org (mostly in Spanish, for now\u2026).<\/p>\nAnd some references that may be useful:<\/p>\n
Andrews, C. (2006). Slow is beautiful : new visions of community, leisure and joie de vivre. Gabriola, B.C., New Society Publishers.
\nBrand, S. (1998). The clock of the long now : time and responsibility. New York, N.Y., Basic Books.
\nElgin, D. (1993). Voluntary simplicity : toward a way of life that is outwardly simple, inwardly rich. New York, Quill.
\nEriksen, T. H. (2001). Tyranny of the moment : fast and slow time in the information age. London, Pluto.
\nGleick, J. (2000). Faster: The acceleration of just about everything. New York, Vintage.
\nHonor\u00e9, C. (2004). Elogio de la lentitud: un movimiento mundial desaf\u00eda el culto a la velocidad. Buenos Aires, Nuevo extremo.
\nKundera, M. (2000). La Lentitud. Barcelona, Anagrama.
\nMetz, D. (2008). The Limits to travel : how far will you go? London, Earthscan.
\nPardo, C. F. and J. Burbano-Valente (2007). “Las trampas de la velocidad: an\u00e1lisis de la lectura cultural de dos organizaciones.” Universitas Psychologica 6(1): 131-142.
\nParkins, W. and G. Craig (2006). Slow living. Oxford, UK, Berg.
\nPortinari, F. and Slow Food. (1989). “The Slow Food Manifesto.”
\nTomlinson, J. (2007). The culture of speed : the coming of immediacy. London ; Thousand Oaks, CA, SAGE Publications.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by Carlosfelipe Pardo (with inputs from Jonas Hagen) This question was asked once by Kerwin Datu, the editor of Global Urbanist. After thinking about it, I agreed that, now that I have created an entire organization revolving around the idea of doing things slowly (or rather, at an appropriate speed), I would have to be…<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sin-categoria"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/despacio.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/despacio.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/despacio.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/despacio.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/despacio.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1200"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/despacio.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1200\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/despacio.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/despacio.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/despacio.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}