Welcome to the Village’s social experiment ‘DORP’ will focus on solutions to current societal problems
By Thomas Ansell
Though Welcome to the Village festival has had to be cancelled again this year, the festival isn’t all about partying to the latest music: it also has a strong social element. There’s no better example of this than the ‘DORP’ (Village) in which several teams of innovators are spending a week trying to come up with new solutions to current-day societal problems.
DORP is essentially a seven-day ethical hackathon; it started on Monday, 12 July and goes on until this weekend (July 18). The teams of innovators all have a specific project to look at and come up with workable solutions for. The overarching theme this year is sustainability, or indeed ‘circularity’.
Projects include looking at ways to create emissions-free public transport in places without a large hydrogen or electricity infrastructure already in place, changing people’s mindsets to accept renewable energy’s downsides (for example ‘that windmill is ugly’), helping the Province of Friesland solar-power itself to net zero by 2025; helping greenify ‘off-grid’ events (like festivals), and finding ways to build sustainable housing quickly and cheaply.
For more information, and to see the projects in action, head to the Welcome to the Village website.
