José Gimeno of e-Cultura presented e-Cultura’s vision on experiences and showed us some of their many fascinating and inspiring examples of their work in practice. For e-Cultura grey does not exist, everything is black or white, or to be exact: everything is black ánd white. There are social values and economic values that in a grey world would have to compete with eachother, resulting in some sort of compromise, usually with a focus on the economic side. There is long term and short term thinking that in the grey world often results in a focus on the short term with a mission statement to cover the long term. E-Cultura wants to cover both sides of both coins, in every project they deal with. But what was also interesting about their examples was the fact that the concept philosopher John Dewey has named ‘contact with the raw stuff’ was clearly visible. Whatever the subject of the experience: everywhere contact with the raw stuff is made. People get to go backstage, get to experience what the original people that were working with the objects and ideas experienced. Although Dewey wrote about raw stuff in the early twentieth century, his ideas can be recognized everywhere. Open kitchens in restaurants, holidays in which you get to meet the ‘real’ people, experiencing things, ideas, places etc for yourself. In the context of the debate on authenticity, what the raw stuff is and is not, becomes ever more important. How do you decide what the real core, the real meaning of an experience is and how can you get people to have contact with this raw stuff?

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