Mission and Vision
Voice4Thought: dialogue and knowledge to #thinkcritically
Voice4Thought is a non-profit Foundation that offers a platform where different voices of the world can participate in building an inclusive debate and critical knowledge on issues concerning our time, such as democracy, activism, radicalisation, to name a few. V4T seeks to promote participation as a response to the tendencies of polarisation that make expression difficult.
We engage with people from diverse geographical and cultural backgrounds who are the actors in on-going and often unseen social and political change within their fields and countries of origin. We provide a platform to let these people tell their stories through academic, artistic and journalistic expressions in order to facilitate and stimulate deeper reflection on socio-political issues.
We seek to bring academia to the streets and the streets to academia: we believe in knowledge as the result of a co-creative process, and work to enable dialogue between academia and civil society in and outside of Europe.
New Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are drivers of change that can facilitate the sharing of information and the empowering of individuals. The ICTs that are at our disposal today are central to our approach: they do not only change the ways we communicate and how we gather information, but the very ways in which we can connect and think in connections! The technology of ICTs have the ability to change the infrastructures of our activities and make us think and relate in new ways.
The power of diverse Voices (V) and ways of Thinking (T) helps us to rethink our world with a critical global perspective. This is why we focus on setting up new and innovative ways of creating knowledge and disseminating food for thought!
Aims
We aim to reach out to an increasing number of people through our digital platform, providing free, independent and open content. To provide a platform for engaged initiatives and individuals to share their experiences and to collaborate with others within and outside of The Netherlands, in order to facilitate an exchange of information and opinions with those engaged in a socio-political change in other corners of the globe. We aim to provide networking space for individuals, by making them more visible towards the wider audience through the V4T website and the annual festival.
By integrating different forms of knowledge production, we aim to bring the academic and artistic objectives and research results of the V4T network to society at large. We use the biographical method and other ethnographic methodologies in an experimental framework, which involves using visuals to promote an interactive fruition of our projects. With this approach, we aim to elaborate new forms of dissemination of knowledge by the collaboration with cultural organisations, universities and publishing houses to start new initiatives inspired by the V4T philosophy.
To create more possibilities of digital communication by implementing new ways of integrating ICTs as tools for our projects. We embrace the possibilities opened by new technologies and the role of the electronic and the digital in turning our “e-” projects into reality.
To develop innovative initiatives that will have an impact on living conditions of people in developing areas and a clear impact in fostering knowledge production and diffusion in areas where it is difficult to reach.