Global Village Construction Set

Bringing back manufacturing to Bristol and developing open source models by developing the Global Village Construction Set (50 machines that you need to start a small, sustainable civilisation with modern day comforts) as the flagship project for the new Community 1st programme and a way to showcase Bristol's resilience with it's new award as one of the 100 Rockefeller Foundation's Resilient Cities.

The machines range from compressed earth brick press to tractor, 3D printer to cement mixer, bulldozer to wind trubine and even a car! That's right an open source design to build your own car.

If all 50 machines were able to be built by 2015 it would top off Bristol's year as green capital by starting an era of green manufacturing in the city and take current ideas of what's possible to a whole new level.

The idea of becoming a sustainable city would no longer seem such a pipe dream and it would be a way for the city's vast engineering expertise to come together to create something really great and useful.

Business in Bristol is based on outdated models of outsourcing to remote countries, designed obsolence (so things break fast and can't be easily fixed), closed business models so ideas can't be replicated. It's no longer fit for purpose.

With the advent of the internet the idea of many people working on problems to create greater change is now common place. Open sourcing is widely used and very successful just think Wikipedia and now it's time to take that business model and use it to develop the next generation of hardware.  (see Marcin Jakubowski's TED talk, founder of GVCS) 

Supply chains need to shorten and people need to be in control of the means of production rather than becoming endless consumers. 

Small is beautiful as EF Schumacher said and as the saying goes "act local, think global".

In terms of impact and making serious change happen you can't get much better than the global village construction set. It demolishes so many outdated ideas and creates a whole new way of doing things that is empowering, sustainable and you can actually get involved in making them.