This Autumn, as part of our Public Goods Programme, Proboscis is inviting contributions for a new series of eBooks to be published in the Diffusion Library – Material Conditions. It will offer diverse insights by professional creative practitioners on how they see the future trajectories of culture, creativity and practice emerging. We are experiencing a turbulent period of change at fundamental levels of our society; social, political, economic and cultural changes are taking place all around us, and we face adapting our practices, routines, rituals and methods to continue to be creative and effective.

Material Conditions aims to explore what it means and takes to be a professional creative practitioner – from the personal to the social and political. How and why do people persist in pursuing such careers? How do they organise their everyday lives to support their practice? What kind of social, political, economic and cultural conditions are necessary to keep being creative? What are the bedrocks of inspiration that enable people to continue piloting their meandering courses through contemporary society and culture? We are inviting contributors to share some aspects of their own practices as well as to reflect on the wider social and cultural conditions necessary for maintaining a creative practice.

• What now are the material conditions for being creative?
• How do we continue to be creative and productive everyday?
• What methods and practices do we use to shape our creativity?
• What motivations govern our continued drive and desire to make things?
• What are our own personal libraries of inspiration?

This series aims to create a library of responses to these urgent questions: which can inspire others in the process of developing their own everyday practices of creativity, that can guide those seeking meaning for their choices, that can set out positions for action around which people can rally.

Through the Public Goods programme we are seeking to map and share different kinds of ‘intangible assets’ that are precious aspects of what binds us to others, to our communities and environments; to map and share new values and ways of valuing those things which are often considered ‘small beer’. This library of inspirations aims to become a beacon for others in shaping and directing their own creative endeavours, built on top of a free-to-use platform for self-publishing (bookleteer) that in itself is a model and tool for ‘public authoring’.

Commissioning Editors : Giles Lane & Haz Tagiuri

Short Run Printed Edition
In addition to publishing free downloadable PDFs and bookreader versions in the Diffusion Library, we plan to print a case-bound set of each series, which will be available to pre-order online once the line up of contributors has been confirmed.

Submissions & Publication Dates
We aim to publish the first series in early December 2011. If you would like to submit a proposal, please contact submissions editor Haz Tagiuri (haz at proboscis dot org dot uk) with an outline. We’re looking for contributions that explore these questions from different perspectives and through different forms such as : diaries, manifestoes, visual essays, poetic speculations, selections from sketch books, comic strips/cartoons, photograph albums, recipes or instruction manuals.