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Building a regional live-coding scene that bridges into the global network

L3Craft 5h P · Community, scenes & practice 11 atoms

Learning objectives

learner can describe how live coding is a community construction — performance implies an audience, and the practice grows through communal venues and networks rather than isolated invention
learner can model a horizontal, adhocratic collective (no owners/directors/teachers) and trace how a regional, often Spanish-speaking scene sustains itself by bridging into TOPLAP's global infrastructure
learner can account for structural barriers to participation — gender diversity and the under-crediting of visual vs audio work — and the advocacy needed to counter them

Capstone — one whole task that evidences the objectives

Draft a founding plan for a new regional live-coding collective: define its horizontal governance, name the local venues/networks it will grow through, specify how it bridges into TOPLAP globally, and include an explicit diversity/credit policy — using CLiC, the Latin American scene, and the Mexican scene's genesis as reference cases.

Prerequisite modules

Orienting in the live-coding world: TOPLAP, algorave, and the map of the scene

Sooner or later, most live coders stop asking “how do I play a set?” and start asking “why is there nowhere to play one?” This module is for that moment: you are in a city — perhaps one where English-language forums feel distant — with a handful of curious musicians and VJs, and no algorave within a thousand kilometres. The whole task is to draft the founding plan for a regional collective that could actually survive: governance, venues, a bridge into the global network, and a policy that keeps the door genuinely open.

The arc starts with orientation, not paperwork. First internalise that live coding is a community construction — the practice crystallised through pubs, festivals, and TOPLAP nodes, so a scene is not optional infrastructure but the medium itself. From there, study the reference cases as guided exercises: model CLiC’s horizontal, adhocratic structure (no owners, directors, or teachers), trace how a Spanish-language collective sustains itself by bridging its Telegram and forum life into TOPLAP’s shared infrastructure, and map the Mexican scene’s trajectory from an institutional hub to a dispersed network. Each case answers one design question your plan must resolve.

These atoms gate the capstone directly: without the governance model you cannot define your collective’s structure; without the bridging fact and the Latin American scene’s history you cannot situate it globally; without the atoms on gender barriers and the under-crediting of visual work you cannot write a diversity/credit policy that goes beyond slogans. The supporting material — algorave’s decentralised local groups, its global simultaneity, TOPLAP’s role, and live coding’s art-school origins — widens your repertoire of precedents and sharpens the plan, but the founding document stands on the required set.