This thread is for the candidate statement of 2021 GOSH Community Council Election candidate Laura Olalde (@laola). Laura, you can reply to this post with your candidate statement. I have included the candidate statement template below for your reference:
2021 GOSH Community Council Election Candidate Statement Template
Candidate Name:
Please provide a short biography, and describe some of your participation and contributions in the GOSH community (3-5 sentences):
Please provide a position statement (5-7 sentences), indicating why you are running for Community Council, your priorities for the community, and what you hope to achieve:
Candidate statements do not have to be in English. For more information on the Candidate Statement’s category, please read the about post pinned to this category.
My name is Laura Olalde, my pronouns she/her and I am an artist, educator and researcher working across disciplines.
In my hybrid sci- art practices I conducted research on iridiscent, luminiscent and coloured micro organisms and biomaterials and I faced repeatedly the challenge of building my own hardware devices to develop the required processes during my experiences in an autonomous and independent way.
That was the milestone that pushed me to the Open Hardware Community, attending my first GOSH gathering in Santiago de Chile, where I helped with the photography documentation and later on in 2018 in Shenzhen, as the documentation team coordinator.
During 2018 and 2019 I alternated my stays between Argentina and The Netherlands, being currently part of the Argentinian Scientists Network in The Netherlands.
At the first months of Covid-19 pandemic, I’ve been collaborating with makers and industrial designers for making personal protective equipment for the Health System workers and in the next days I will join a presentation and workshop for making Co2 sensors to learn and empower members of the education community to replicate and improve them to being used in classrooms.
POSITION STATEMENT
As a member of the GOSH movement, I could experience by first hand my own transformation from my initial individual interests of achieving some technical skills to run my projects, onto a communitarian sense of collective transformations to change statu quo parameters of access to knowledge.
Through getting involved at different levels and stages with this great GOSH Community, I could experience that the access to open technologies is a tool for social transformation based on values as equity, humility and justice. Nowadays, showed the actual Global Crisis revealed by the pandemic where vulnerated human groups -and also some non human agents- are paying the highest cost, those values should guide our practices as an ethical choice.
As a member of a country of the Global South under a severe economical crisis that deeps dramatically the gap between social classes, is my wish to contribute to help diverse voices to be heard, specially those of the unrepresented and vulnerated groups. This is my priority and goal if I have the chance of assuming the position at the Community Council. Thanks for your support!