A School of Emergent Priorities paper reports a kit that dates and sweeps the cards on corner-shop noticeboards, and the University adopts its fourteen-day clearance for every noticeboard it keeps.
A School of Emergent Priorities paper fits a date stamp, a renewal log and a Monday sweep to the noticeboards of 45 corner shops, and the cards left behind draw the calls
A date stamped on a card turns out to be read as a date stamped on the matter. “CORK: Card-Ageing and Renewal Kit for Corner-Shop Noticeboards”, a paper released today by the School of Emergent Priorities, puts a date-wheel stamp, a renewal log and a Monday sweep on the noticeboards of 45 corner shops and follows the cards pinned there through fourteen weeks.
A noticeboard is a place where a great many small promises are left to keep themselves. We were glad to be allowed to hold a stamp pad near them.
— Associate Professor Kwame Lindqvist, Director, Master of Priority Studies
The paper, by Associate Professor Lindqvist with Dr Iben Chikere, Lecturer, and Tove Ilesanmi, Doctoral Candidate, gives each card a visible age and each owner a reason to come back, and lets the shopkeeper’s sweep bring the board to its stated shape. It then turns to the cards that remain, and to what passers-by make of a date when they find one. Dr Chikere said the shopkeepers “took to the stamp with a good deal of ceremony”.
The University has taken the kit up for its own boards. From the next teaching period every noticeboard it keeps will be stamped and swept, and any card more than fourteen days past its last stamp will be cleared, lost property and safety notices included. A cleared card is treated as lapsed, not as removed in error.
The University is pleased to count the noticeboard among the places where it can keep time.
The full paper is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.b3zzaf.