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Symposium Reports
Report Radicalizing the Local symposium January 15 – January 17 2014 Rotterdam, The Netherlands Programme 01
Symposium programme
Introduction 02
Introduction Radicalizing the Local: Inclusive Urban Strategies by Asraf Osman
Deliberation notes 03
Table discussion - I Deliberator Georg Zoche, facilitator Sue Bell Yank, reporter Susanne Bosch
Table discussion - II Deliberators Jaromil and Rachel Benedicto, facilitator Britt Jurgensen, reporter Susanne Bosch
Table discussion - III What is the purpose of new organizational forms? Reporter Jeannette Petrik
Table discussion - IV Moderator Marcel Jongmans, reporter Pablo Calderón Salazar
Table discussion - V Reporter Jaime Iglehart
Table discussion - VI Reporter Susanne Bosch
Table discussion – VII Reporter Sue Bell Yanks
Reflections 10
Vagebond Reviews
Anastasia Kubrak
Participants 12
Participants and organizers
Programme 01 Symposium programme
DAY 1 (Wed. 15 Jan.): New Organizational Forms FORMAT: Short presentations, workshops, and feedback sessions SCHEDULE: 09.30 09.45
Arrival / Coffee Day's Welcome by Host: Matteo Lucchetti (Visible)
Presentations: each 30 min. followed by 15-min. discussion with Critical Referent
1 Presentation: Henk Oosterling (Rotterdam Vakmanstad) Critical Referent: Rasmus Uglit (Aarhus University) nd 2 Presentation: Dorothee Richter (OnCurating) Critical Referent: Eva Visser (kenniscentrum 010)
Short Break
3 Presentation: Georg Zoche (Transnational Republic) Critical Referent: Sue Bell Yank (Social Practice) th 4 Presentation: Tine De Moor (Institutions for Collective Action) Critical Referent: Ethel Baraona (DPR-Barcelona)
Lunch Break
14.00-14.15 14.15 – 14.30
Introduction to the afternoon session (Host) Setting the Agenda (Critical Referents): listing questions generated by presentations to be discussed
14.30 – 15.45 Workshops: 4 sessions, held at the same time at various locations around the neighborhood, each centered on one of the morning presentations. Each session would be facilitated by the Critical Referent from the respective presentation, who'd prepare questions for the feedback session afterwards, assisted by a reporter and a member of the Freehouse group, who'd keep and write up a record of the workshop. Reporters: Ailbhe Murphy & Ciaran Smyth (Vagabond Reviews), Elke Krasny (Academy of Fine Arts Vienna), Susanne Bosch (artist)
15.45 – 16.00
Short Break
16.00 -17.30 General Feedback Session (moderated by Host) 10-min. presentation of each workshop (questions for discussion by Critical Referents) followed by 45-min. general discussion 17.30
Day's Closure (Host) followed by drinks and snacks
DAY 2 (Thu. 16 Jan.): New Economic Forms FORMAT: Short presentations, workshops, and feedback sessions SCHEDULE: 09.30 09.45
Arrival / Coffee Day's Welcome by Host: Michael Birchall (University of Wolverhampton)
Presentations: each 30 min. followed by 15-min. discussion with Critical Referent
1 Presentation: Jaromil (NABA, Milan) Critical Referents: Enric Duran Girait (via Skype) & Raquel Benedicto (in workshop) (Cooperativa Integral Catalana) with Britt Jurgensen (HomeBaked Landtrust) nd 2 Presentation: Pelin Tan (Mardin Artuklu University) Critical Referent: Silvia Simoncelli (Brera Art Academy)
Short Break
3 Presentation: Eli Feghali & Rachel Plattus (New Economics Institute) Critical Referent: Christopher Robbins (Ghana Thinktank) th 4 Presentation: Pedro Medina (Yo Creo en Colombia) Critical Referent: Jan Jongert (Superuse Studio)
Lunch Break
14.00-14.15 14.15 – 14.30
Introduction to the afternoon session (Host) Setting the Agenda (Critical Referents): listing questions generated by presentations to be discussed
14.30 – 15.45 Workshops: 4 sessions, held at the same time at various locations around the neighborhood, each centered on one of the morning presentations. Each session would be facilitated by the Critical Referent from the respective presentation, who'd prepare questions for the feedback session afterwards, assisted by a reporter and a member of the Freehouse group, who'd keep and write up a record of the workshop. Reporters: Ailbhe Murphy & Ciaran Smyth (Vagabond Reviews), Elke Krasny (Academy of Fine Arts Vienna), Susanne Bosch (artist)
15.45 – 16.00
Short Break
16.00 -17.30 General Feedback Session (moderated by Host) 10-min. presentation of each workshop (questions for discussion by Critical Referents), followed by 45-min. general discussion 17.30
Day's Closure (Host) followed by drinks and snacks
DAY 3 (Fri. 17 Jan.): Re/Forming the Future (of Afrikaanderwijk) FORMAT: Deliberations PROCESS: The aim of the last day is to bring a range of different voices and interests to the debate on "the future of self-organization of neighborhoods" through deliberations where people can present their ideas, hear the ideas of others, and, perhaps change their views on the topic. The day is structured as a series of mediated discussions organized around a number of tables (5 or 6 tables, max. 10 at a table) where groups of participants would share views, listen to one another, and challenge the views presented. Each table would discuss the same questions, and after each set of questions, share the ideas that have come up at each table with the others. Each table will be facilitated by a moderator and a reporter, assisted by a member of the Freehouse group, and a record of the conversations will be kept and written up.
PARTICIPANTS: Moderators: Ailbhe Murphy & Ciaran Smyth (Vagabond Reviews), Carolina Rito (curator), Elke Krasny (Academy of Fine Arts Vienna), Susanne Bosch (artist) Reporters: Anastasia Kubrak (designer), Jaime Iglehart (artist), Jeannette Petrik (researcher, writer & designer), Lizzie MacWillie (Graduate School of Design), Tamar Shafrir (designer)
Arrival and Coffee Day's Welcome by Host: Arie Lengkeek (Air Foundation) Introduction to the Afrikaanderwijk Cooperative and the Deliberations
10.00 10.00 – 10.15 10.15 – 11.00 11.00 – 11.15
1 Deliberation: New Organizational Forms Opening Statement: Roel In 't Veld (professor of governance & sustainability) addressing questions coming out of Day 1 Table Discussions: What is the purpose of new organizational forms? Summary Statements from each moderator on 3 key points
Tea / Coffee
11.30 11.30 - 11.45 11.45 - 12.30 12.30 – 12.45
2 Deliberation: New Economic Forms Opening Statement: Rachel Plattus & Eli Feghali (New Economics Institute) addressing questions coming out of Day 2 Table Discussions: What is the purpose of new economic forms? Summary Statements from each moderator on 3 key points
Short Break
13.00 13.00 – 13.15
3 Deliberation: Re/Forming the Future (of Afrikaanderwijk) Opening Statement: Aetzel Griffioen (Rotterdam Vakmanstad) addressing the future of the Afrikaander district Table Discussions: What experience was derived in the Afrikaanderwijk? Summary Statements from each moderator on 3 key points
13.15 – 14.00 14.00 – 14.15
Lunch Break
Closing Statement & Ceremonial Handover to the Afrikaanderwijk coop
Around 15.00 hour other guests will start gathering to take part in the Closing and Handover, leading into an Official Reception/Closing Party of Freehouse. As part of the event—during the breaks and at the end—parts of the interior will be taken apart and distributed throughout the neighborhood. So, the third day would be in an almost empty room, with the last elements leaving the building…
Introduction 02 Inclusive Urban Strategies by Asraf Osman
Deliberation notes 03 Table discussion – I
Wednesday 15th of January, 2014
Table discussion - I Topic: Georg Zoches' talk Facilitator: Sue Bell Yank Reporter: Susanne Bosch Introduction Round - Sue: LA, writer, curator - Abigal: Rotterdam, Urban Gardener - Rulan: Works at Dum foundation, Supporter of Freehouse - Brit: Liverpool, artist, works with Jeanne on Homebaked, lives in community - Andy: Works at Architecture Centre of Rotterdam, is it possible to start this co-op that we are seeing here? - Ladek: Croatian, lives in Amsterdam, architect, operates in cross-over with art, does a study on South East Europe - George: Transnational Republic - Susanne: artist, reporter - Michael: curator, writer, theorist, PhD on long-term socially engaged practice, academic, producer, curator - Jonas: visual artist, new world summit (http://newworldsummit.eu/), includes political groups that are excluded from democracy - Almut: architecture student - Rachel: from Catalan, representing co-op - Christopher: Ghana Think Tank (http://ghanathinktank.org/) - Gordana: Serbia, runs an NGO with young people Discussion Jonas: refers to George's presentation: what can the structures of Transnational Republic over for people without legal papers? Does using the IDs put them danger? George: nothing we can really do for those people. Some people use the IDs in daily situations, it works, but it is not officially acknowledges. It could put them into legally difficult situations. Transnational Republic take real effort to issue real ID cards. Susanne: What can you do to achieve this status of aiming to issue legal papers? George: UN gives passport to stateless people. Our aim would be to get our IDs acknowledged. To arrive there, we need the size of Facebook, many people would need to join to make enough pressure to accept IDs. We work with a bank in Munich, fidor, https://www.fidor.de/, online bank who are interested to develop documents with Transnational Republic. Transnational Republic creates an open source standard, do not plan to issue the ID cards themselves. Amount of users would pressure the acceptance by nation states. High quality standard, good track records are needed. Jonas: You are trying to find a legal body in a world that only understands government from a notion-state perspective. You can only legalize yourself while the nation-states hold the power. What power do you have? George: The tool of power is introducing a new currency. E.g. like PayPal. The way it works: I deposit money on my PayPal account, I send money, the receiver gets an email. If the management of these structures represent their clients, it would be replacing national currencies in world trade, world power structure. Kanes said in the 1940s, the bank who co-ordinates the world currency, there would be no chance for wars, as bank could stop money flow on behalf of other countries. Today we only use embargos. Jonas: The risk is who runs the bank.
Andy: in this neighborhood we have a timebank, the Zuiderling. What do you think about it? George: I love the complementary currency because it can solve specific issues. Example of Japan, time-based currency to take care of elderly people. Good system where parents and children live apart. Kanes had in mind: Each nation had an account at the bank (International Banking Union). Nations get credits or loose credit for exchanges… positive credits allow to purchase from other nations. With infinite money/credit supply. Bank needs only to survey the (ab)use of money. You would not be able to pay for wars, they could not be paid out of selling produces. Wars would need to be subsidized with an extra saving account. Michael: We talked this morning about new organisatorial forms and structures. I am wondering if co-ops, bottom up movements, artist run orgas are kind of the ultimate aim of neo-liberal government. Isn't it what a neo-liberal society wants us to do, as we are self-initiative, as we do not need their involvement and their money. In the UK I can see that frequently: I see public projects closing and artists replacing that. Also in the US, the artists provide nice services where the state fails. In Europe it is slightly different, but the patterns are reoccurring more and more. Do we have case studies, do you disagree with me? Christopher: This is one of the mayor issues of tomorrow, the system gives us greater network, allows us to survive and then you realize the system is squeezing us more and more a lot of projects get really good and big. We have to find out how can we be disruptive rather than being squeezed more and more. Michael: I see a lot of complacency. It has been all along like that. Why are artist happily taking over to work under these conditions with precarious labor and happily take over where the state fails. It is great that we have alternative systems, but we have to ask ourselves how long can this really work? Brit: We have to ask ourselves this questions over and over again. We all have to survive and we all have longings and once things are gone we try to possibly reestablish it ourselves. And maybe we should not. I know what you mean, it is a constant question. I sometimes I think should I not? I work constantly too much. Why do I do that and what for? Should I not question work? I was thinking a lot today about the "skill and will and work" factors in the first talk. Is this not a particular idea of productivity? Can you be flexible constantly? The question we particularly have in Liverpool is ownership. If you have collective ownership as a group you might wander out of that "big society scheme". We have not tried it yet though. Michael: "Homebaked" in Liverpool, can you introduce that? Brit: There is a neighborhood in Liverpool with failed forced regeneration which lots of empty houses. We are looking at co-owing as a community landtrust a certain amount of your neighborhood. We are now at buildings which have not been demolished. We are following a whole generation of co-op's which provided social housing that became landlords that are now supporting the same regeneration schemes. So we have to face the questions if we might become the same type of business. It is systems that we have to look at? Michael: where is the division of labor, looking back at Marx. How do these projects run on the ground level? You founded the project, so what is your role as initiators, are you the managers? Unknown: And why is it a bakery, not a library. Tina de Moore said if something falls out of supply, then co-ops step in. People find ways to organize what they miss. In the sense you can say you have a temporary prosthesis hoping the government would step back in later. Which is what Freehouse is exactly doing here. Now hoping that more people from the community will carry the co-op, being a member and seeing the benefit of it. The connection point between the cultural production and the artists which have the perception, the skills to connect, the skills to produce, to bring something which is
concrete and real and then to the ones who are consumers and producers of the next phase. Michael: Prosumers. It is the ultimate embodiment of cognitive pro-capitalism. We are all producing and consuming at the same time. When you use any kind of social media, you are presuming all the time. It is mostly immaterial labor. Sue: I think this is what it all comes down to, forms and division of labor. It is not necessarily about organizational form, the collective, it is how we think of labor, particularly in the art world. Young artists are kind of conditioned to work for free, to work for social capital. When you have an artist who insists to be paid, that is outside the norm. it is very systemic, it is something that we as cultural producers need to fight for, structures that pay artists for their work and project. Georg: There is another strange side of it. The super successful artists create a currency. It is investment. 99, 9% of artists exploit themselves and 0,01% artists produce, store way but it is an investment vehicle. For me coming form a monetary point, I am disappointed that this is not more of a topic. If the freedom of art gets miss-used that way and the successful ones are corrupted, then something is wrong. Christopher: But we talk of different systems, not all artists are into socially engaged practice. These are definitely different monetary worlds and codes. Georg: this is not what I meant. I am amazed by the artwork being divided into the art factory world Michael: like Olafur Eliason. It is like any kind of a car factory. But the 99% of artists are particularly interesting. Because I think the artists are experts at producing income or working with other artists. They have incredible networks, they know how to survive, they know how to generate income, if they need or want to. If you ask most artists they are pretty content because they live of their creative juices. At least this is what sociologists say and I am not convinced that this is the case. How do 99% exist along the 1%? Jonas: Can we go back to your initial questions at what level these new organisatorial forms of artistic practice actually take over. It is not necessarily a positive thing, as the state does not necessarily change with that change. Meaning that e.g. the Dutch Liberal Party Leader goes into participation democracy where he makes the surprising move to embrace every initiative and alternative co-ops mentioned in the last PowerPoint as the ultimate prove that civil society functions and society thrives when the government stays out of it. The saved money of course they can use in colonial missions in Mali, etc Millions are invested in military missions with no interest in Dutch population. I see that there is this risk. One should still do and take over, but as an act of critique and political action in a sense that we do not discuss that a co-op can take over, but MUST take over. It means that confront with the issue of power and force. If we as citizens take over, it means the state should retreat and hand over its power. It cannot be two things at the same time and hold up its power and at the same time facilitate all these different interest. I think this aspect of force is a bit of a taboo that comes with it. When we take over, we force the state to retreat. Rachel: What we do in Catalunia, Cooperativa Integrativa Catalana (http://cooperativa.cat/en/) hosts different co-ops. We create habitat. We have an economic co-op, we generate money outside the co-op as well. We decide collectively. We do not want to participate in the system, we want to create a structure of our own. We use the law to allow us to create that space. We use the legal system to create autonomy! We are creating small structures to supply our own needs like health, education, work, housing,  for all of this we need money. We are creating the tools to create the structures, there is main co-ops and associated co-ops. We use the big co-op as structure to built up the rest, as it can invoices. We do not pay taxes, we balance the expenses with the income of the associates. It is legal. We have around 2000 members. Health right now is more about prevention. Unknown: What needs are covered with the associates?
Rachel: We own land so we have no legal issues. We have consuming and producing associates. We are now creating an educational structure for the children. Sue: We have 10 min left. Is there any pressing questions regarding Georgs presentation? Christopher: I think your work throws up a lot of exiting possibilities that come up. I guess my concern is that the actual application feels like something close to what we already have. Georg: You mean it pretends to be different but is exactly what we have? Christopher: It has the danger to just work symbolically. I want to see tools that we can apply on different levels and not falling back on already established ones. Jonas: It is true. I share the excitement, but the logo looks like the UN one, the ID card and money seem to replicate a language that is not corresponding with alternative structures. Michael: But artists often to that: they sample structures because it works. It works in recognizable structures. Jonas: True. Did you do that consciously? Georg: When we started we wanted to create something that is possible to realize. We wanted to create a movement that has no opponents; we did not want to create something AGAINST something, rejecting things, but to say we are FOR something. And of course, the looks is a provocation. Look the same but be different. You could call it an artistic choice. Christopher: It feels there is a gap between the exciting ideas and the tools you are providing. Georg: But there is a different theory behind it. It might look the same. We like the idea of providing a small plug-in that looks almost similar to the real thing. E.g. we believe the UN is a good structure, but so far focusing on nation only interests.
Deliberation notes 04 Table discussion – II
Thursday 16th of January, 2014
Table discussion II Presenters: Jaromil and Rachel from Cooperativa Integrativa Catalana Facilitator: Britt Jurgensen Reporter: Susanne Bosch Introduction round BITCOIN, https://bitcoin.org Who mines? It is an elite, it is not everyone. It is an elite based on knowledge and access to certain technologies. It is a community who arrived there first. In this case it is an interesting and diverse enough group. Young hacker types, gamers, people with fast video cards and knew how to put them to work. It is a large amount of people if you consider the large community of gamers worldwide. The composition is transversal. To put on "homebrew" programmes, you need to hack into the system. The people are not necessarily rich, they are brave to cross the lines. They care about things like anonymity and privacy. People like online poker-players need regular online space to play. They had space from a company, but founded their own space due to the need of anonymity and privacy. BITCOIN was created. BITCOIN was a market for selling drugs as well. Symbol for transaction is a coin with an alpaca on it (alpaca socks were the first product by an artisan sold via BITCOIN). BITCOIN as platform has no intermediaris: They do pay taxes by declaring the games. BITCOIN works as a chain of contacts, if 8 people sing an agreement it goes not the blogchain. "Twister" is a decentralized TWITTER on BITCOIN. BITCOIN is becoming a financial tool. BITCOIN makes the happening of something in time. A "flash crash" almost ruined BITCOIN (the system goes wild due to a too high chain of demands/Interaction/ speed. No one can be made accountable for this, a lot of money gets burned). There is a danger of mistrust when things like this happen. The fear of power exists: If 51% of the miners get together, they can overtake the system and the decisions. Cooperativa Integrativa Catalana (http://cooperativa.cat/en/) Enric Duran Giralt / the Robin Hood of the Banks is a Catalan anticapitalist activist. On September 17, 2008, he publicly announced that he had 'robbed' dozens of Spanish banks of nearly half a million euros as part of a political action to denounce what he termed the predatory capitalist system. From 2006 to 2008, Duran took out 68 commercial and personal loans from a total of 39 banks with no guarantees or property as collateral. He had no intention of repaying the debts, and used the money to finance various anti-capitalist movements. In April 2010, Duran began promoting the Catalan Integrated Cooperative as a practical example of the ideals detailed in We can! Live Without Capitalism. In 2011 the cooperative accepted responsibility for a former industrial complex, with a view to turning it into a centre for environmental activities. Discussion on the presenters What's CIC? It is a network of people and a series of tools in Catalunia. Autonomous small co-operatives are connected to an overall structure with a consensus decision-making process in assemblies. Aim: A structure away from capitalism. Basic needs of life are identified. All starts with trust. Art of sharing: Multi-recipical and personal exchange 15 different local, social currencies are planned for a specific area in the next 3 years.
Auto-occupation: Invoicing to avoid VAT and allows to communicate in- and outside the system. Creates income Civil disobedience is a tool (e.g. not paying taxes). Economical disobedience: Declaring of bankruptcy means the state takes all your money. This is impossible if the money goes through the co-op. it is a form of members property protection. Co-op owns houses and is buying land for the land trust. Productivity of the individual with co-op: Some work in • Burocracy /admin • Food production • Culture/craft Not yet self-sustainable 2015 goal is to have basic income for everyone and to replace the state. Spanish people are stuck at home without work and money. Economic activities with the outer world. Energy hacked from the network. Vision to be self-sufficient. Co-op sells: Construction work and food What is the scope of your capacity: -Health center focuses on prevention -No capacity yet for doctors -Free education projects An Integral Cooperative is a tool to create a grassroots counterpower departing from selfmanagement, self-organization and direct democracy, and one that would help overcome the actual state of dependency on the structures of the system, towards a scenario of liberty full awareness, free of authority, and in which everyone could flourish under equal conditions and opportunities. It is a constructive proposal for disobedience and widespread self-management to rebuild our society in a bottom-up manner (in every field and in an integral way) and recover the affective human relationships of proximity based on trust. • Cooperative, as a project practicing the economical and political selfmanagement with the equal participation of all its members. Also, because it takes the same legal form • Integral, to bring together all the basic elements of an economy such as production, consumption, funding and a local currency. And at the same time, because it wants to integrate all the activity sectors necessary to survive: food, housing, health, education, energy, transport… • Catalan because it is organized and works mainly in the territorial scope of Catalonia. Wider discussion What is useful about BITCOIN: Even long-distance contact direct with other communities Exchange of good off the grid CIC wants to implement BITCOIN More flow of finances with care Independence from state The internal tax of these co-ops is time. Risk: • Skill and trust • People are not ready to do what you do in Catalunia. We would loose them. How do we pick people up where they are? Are we ready to break the law? • Jaromil: My experience with the Elves in Tuscani (community in the mountains) was problematic as it was a closed and isolated society. Paradiso in Amsterdam is addressing Isolation next week: "International Symposium against Isolation in Amsterdam" (http://political-prisoners.net/item/2807international-symposium-against-isolation-in-amsterdam.html). There is different ways of getting there! An interface to society is needed explaining needs and values.
Deliberation notes 05 Table discussion – III
Friday 17th of January, 2014
Table discussion III Moderator: Marcel Jongmans Reporter: Pablo Calderón Salazar 1sT Deliberation How to maintain common ground? How to actively enhance skills of cooperation? How to connect the lived world of the coop with systems world beyond (institutional diversity)? How to actively enhance skills of cooperation? How to connect the lived world of the coop with systems world beyond (institutional diversity)? To start the conversation, it was cleared that the focus should be on 'maintaining' the cooperation, were existent. For achieving this, there is the challenge of becoming selfsustained (at different levels, not only financial). In this sense, the cooperative should not only strive to make money, but allow people to grow on different levels as human beings. On this process, it is necessary to understand what is at stake for different constituents and, specially, what do they gain from participating on a given project. Inquiring on different strategies to help cooperation to happen, it was pointed out of the importance of building 'small cells', closely interconnected between them, instead of building a big clumsy structure, this was referred to as translocal connections. For this, it is important to understand what role do the different constituents play, and the different skills set that these people bring; entrepreneurship was said to be the most important skill for this process of transition. It was also stressed the importance of focusing on the talents present in the neighborhood, instead of the negative aspects. This helps people believe in themselves. A person working in theatre pointed out the importance of "creating spaces, so that everyone can interact at the same level", which she described as a common strategy for cooperation in theatre. For achieving this, she said the main tactic was vulnerability, in the sense that, by sharing something personal, people are more keen on trusting you and, therefore, cooperating with you. "If you want to have a 'truly democratic system', it is quite difficult to have more than 10 people" 2nd Deliberation How to connect different value systems? How to expand into new domains (housing, insurance, etc)? How to entice surplus value to be reinvested locally? The conversation focused on trying to imagine how to bridge old and new economic (value) systems. In this sense, it was stressed the importance of not stopping anything that is being done in the context of the actual system (monetary), but continue it and find alternatives in the new one (barter, alternative currencies, time banks, etc). In the old value system, it is about the political distribution of euros, what is the new value system about? That question remained unanswered. To imagine a new value system, ideas have to have a higher value than they do right now, and that might help bridge. Some specific strategies that came up during this session were, on one side, to do something you don't really know how to do, as a mean to exit your comfort zone. On the other side, maintaining places for meeting in the neighborhood, and programming activities so that different groups of people can come together. Someone concluded that the way of bridging and expanding towards new domains was by means of diversification. A question arose, on how to maintain these type of place (for meeting in neighborhoods), and one of the answers was to not only get monetary funds flowing in, but condition the presence of the constituents to an active participation; for example, if a space is given to a group of people to work, they should also participate in the cooperative, and that is also a
'way of paying'. It is also important to see who are the actors benefiting from the area, and convince them to compromise and commit to contribute in their possible way (for example, by providing some of the products that they sell, to the coop). It was also spoken that people are quite aware of codes, of habits, so making this type of transition is a matter of making a practice a habit. "Housing corporations now have very little connection (if any) with the people who live in their houses" 3rd Deliberation What did you sense in the Afrikaanderwijk? What benefit can the Afrikaanderwijk have from your experience and insights? How can the future practice of Afrikaanderwijk be connected to your future? On this session, the question to trigger the conversation of the table was quite simple and concrete: what would you do now? Someone offered a rather specific answer: organize a carnival with the people. Somebody else, residing and working in the area, said that what he considers most important in this moment is to allow people to live their own process, and artists and cultural practitioners should strive to allow that to happen, sometimes even just getting out of the way. It was stressed the importance of each person acknowledging its own position, and being honest in approaching a place like the one they were right now. Than, the essential thing is to continue the conversations in different spaces and moments, but constantly inquiring about the best way to build a better future for the Afrikaanderwijk. Someone said the only way of doing this is going door-to-door speaking to people. Following Aetzel's ideas, exposed as introduction to the session, we discussed about the importance of strengthening the networks of the neighborhood and the cooperative, for they become the best support for the individual. In that sense, we questioned the presence of an institution like Freehouse, but concluded that its presence is vital, even though with a less protagonic role (taking a step back, but not out). Avoiding building a network from scratch, we agreed on the importance of taping into the connections already existing. In this sense, we imagined the neighborhood as a village, which works more or less as a big family. "We need leadership without leaders"
Deliberation notes 06 Table discussion – IV
Table discussion - IV Reporter: Jeannette Petrik Introduction round - Sara de Greve: from Gent/ member of social artistic collective reforming the city utopian dream into a story met Jeanne in public faculty experiment in Gent. - Jeannette Petrik: graduate from master in design/ relevance of work and making for the creating of social structures/ how design influences the political constitution of the realities we live in/ interest in organisational structures of dialogue. - Sarah Daher: 1st year contextual design master design organisational forms/ economic forms/ conditioning in urban space/ re-organising in a social sustainable way. - Eva Visser: research centre Creating 010 in Rotterdam/ community building as a supplement for governmental organisations, need to explore an alternative in time of crisis in democracy, interest in Freehouse as a test centre/ interest in the potential of doubt and failure. - Roel In t'Veld: Professor governance & sustainability. - Martien Kromwijk: Zuiderling Rotterdam network, transition towards social sustainability/ big institutions government can contribute/ implication for citizens, new social enterprises/ is part of institutions/ time banking organisation around the Zuiderling. - Ellen Holleman: urban planning, design, transformation/ knows Jeanne an her work interested try and make better places, make places work in a better way through understanding behaviours and possible and necessary improvement/ is getting tired of 'success stories' shown in conferences/ learning directly from the experiences of Freehouse. - Lot Mertens: works for local government/ civil servant in the western part of the city/ should we contribute to the new coorporation or not, how should the local government contribute? Improvements necessary but not sure yet how to do it. - Susanne Bosch: trained artist/ taught in Belfast/ art in public space/ issues around democracy, understanding a context and finding ways of transforming/ observing how things work, looking collectively for new forms - Maarten: new democratic forms of participation from an academic point of view/ also involved in Public Faculty 1sT Deliberation How to maintain common ground? How to actively enhance skills of cooperation? How to connect the lived world of the coop with systems world beyond (institutional diversity)? Susanne: Question to Roel: How did you get to come here? Roel: invitation by Jeanne after meeting her in person understanding the discussion as an opportunity to try a get to a proposal/ sharing ideas potential of expertises/ mix of people/ backgrounds as the table, let's take advantage of this in the conversation new organisational forms as a topic - common ground between us participants/ actively enhance skills of cooperation/ how to acts towards systems beyond the co-op (transition, meeting of different worlds with different values) Roel: Is there common ground between us? We seem to assume it. Ellen: I suppose, this event attracted certain people, whoever is here seems to have at least something in common, not sure what it is though Sarah: A common ground is forming - we are all here now to generate common ground Jeannette: Roel mentioned in lecture: Can oppositions exist simultaneously? Maybe that's relevant to consider when speaking about how to live together Martien: We need to talk to each other in order to find out which values we share; not just in between one group but between people who are different, who don't seem to have a common ground yet. At the moment we're living apart together/ failure of Europe dominates the area of Rotterdam/ a way to contest the failure of the European economic system could be talking about other values, time, happiness, work/ need to talk about awareness in what we share Eva: potential of skill sharing, system
Susanne: Tina de Winter/ history of collaboratory organisational forms - appearing where organisations failed, eg. guilds - support systems, smallest unit of a common ground common interest, craft; need to realize a gap = failure of a bigger system Sarah: analysis needed Eva: small community, nation state (scales); what's the need resulting of failure Sarah: structures obstructing interaction Eva: design against collectivity Sarah: placement of furniture/ conditioning of behaviour Eva: Afrikaanderwijk - laws against assembly/ danger Sarah: responsibilities taken away from people, organisation by state Martien: communication between communities - urbanisation reason to be able to form subgroups who use existing resources Ellen: living in a city/ decision to be in a place already connects people Sarah: economic reason / needs necessities Susanne to Lot: local government Roel: regain legitimacy by allying with local initiatives; showing willingness change functionalities in order to enable variety; bigger pattern of decentralization; forming local state organisations; abandon position of domination; people considering themselves as part of a network Martien: I am because you are; government should accept local patterns emerging/ not because you are because i am Susanne: practical question of how? Including citizens in participatory decision making/ public space with open furnitye - 1st step: creating a space? Formal needs the informal Martien: society where small initiatives make the governmental agenda/ government of co-operations/ not enough. A lot of initiatives here start doing something in the public sphere but partnerships are hard to explore - she tried to make connections - lack of ideas Fear: don't know how to act/ losing power/ prestige Roel: professionalization is standardisation - change the order from the inside; orientation towards evaluation Lot: organising one on one meetings/ inviting individuals to meet - colleagues to meet locals Eva: How many colleagues are open to participate in meetings? Time needed to come closer Roel: pattern of potential alliances on a structural level are complicated - neighborhood level, local Ellen: infiltrate sub-layers Lot: sublayers are related Martien: some layers are connected, some want to be isolated, Freehouse is trying to create a network of connections Susanne: art project can act as a mediator, outside of an art project labels/ shame is easy to be confronted with - complexity of alliances - who mediates/ where are intermediate spaces? Process that shift/ constant transformation with losses and gains Eva: role of art projects to create new contexts for everybody involved - everybody to be outside of their regular context - relevance of creating contexts - example Freehouse, is it an attempt to put people out of their regular contexts? Summary Susanne: connection between formal and informal due to expertise at the table/ how do formal and informal become partners need for experimentation and need for a space to get together on a personal level/ fears dominate distance from local initiatives and government representatives/ fear of shift in prestige, fear of unknown space/ reliance on trust and courage to change we learned that there's always a discussion inside and outside (of oneself and of the structures within which one works) constructing a physical space within the realm of art brings opportunities to imagine a different reality intermediate space of groups that would usually not get together - art projects create opportunities to step into a space without/ with less preconceptions question of re-defining what a physical public space is.
2nd Deliberation How to connect different value systems? How to expand into new domains (housing, insurance, etc)? How to entice surplus value to be reinvested locally? Susanne: don't use the questions/ feeling as if we were in school - dialogue is more important, let's take the freedom to create Ellen: problem with starting point from the needs/ negative starting point/ let's look at what we have assets. Maarten: Economic logic of what others need - instead of selling a product Ellen: exchanging assets/ assessing what are existing values Jeannette: Zeno (friend) proposal to help in the kitchen, to substantially support the event instead of only receiving, purely consuming as a 'participant' Sarah: Proposed to help as she was not subscribed as a speaker or other active participant while still joining the organised free dinner one night, which was planned to be only for active participants, but Pablo told her that there was no need to help - Freehouse feels closed/ can we actually help/ we are not expected to help/ can we contribute economically/ how to / outsiders interact Sara: If there's no need for it, people won't accept help. Sarah: Why does there have to be pre-defined a need? Sara: There has to be a need for the other to accept help. Maybe Sarah was not proposing a skill that could have contributed to fill the need of a situation because it was fulfilled already. Susanne: Experience of receiving a gift - gift economy of reciprocity / trust in the principle that one will give back at some point, maybe not immediately but by participating you carry something with you that you'll eventually share Ellen: we're conditioned to think 'you do something for me and you trust that i will somehow give it back' Martien: book 'The Bank of Reverse Services' - trust that someone will give something back Sara: neighborhood system of return Martien: bank of reverse services sophisticated philosophy facilitated through exchange of unused talents meeting unfilled needs Ellen: Old economy based on reciprocity, new economy not necessarily based on needs. Susanne: example of Sarah/ non-used talents/ no dishwashing was needed but a need for documentation Ethan Bowe (Lebanese, architect): helping people to build furniture in exchange for stories - 'Karma economy' book out of 500 people offering 1 hour of time/ Eva: It feels uncomfortable to just take/ you want to give Ellen: maybe the other doesn't know what is needed but the offer Martien: personal development/ happiness, creating exchanges of happiness by applying needs/ new patterns of exchanges, exploring another pattern than exploration/ made a business plan proposed with the value of 'happiness = +75'/ Afrikaanderwijk Maarten: importance of happiness as a value/ danger of driving out how to engage people from the outside, who are used to prevailing systems, how to challenge routines, many people are 'perfectly happy' within the system Martien: additional system instead of alternative system. Susanne: has read an article about stress/ what we all have in common is that we're part of a system that needs constant growth but we're facing a stagnation of growth/ loss of connectedness to anything that creates happiness/ 'resonance oasis' - making the connection to something that recharges you/ doubt that people are 'perfectly happy' due to stress, pressure inherent in the system/ desire to connect is key to survive? Sarah: How do you connect unused talent? Jeannette: empathy. Martien: social connections ask around - market place (online system) Sarah: Airbnb, Gumtree/ original idea of Google+/ how to find a platform Sara: app to find sexual partners around you Sarah: problem of finding a platform as there are so many other platforms already
Susanne: everything exists in parallel/ break of routine/ bravery to act/ probably Freehouse created a lot of moments Eva: intervention, giving the neighborhood Jeannette: personal connections Martien: platform as an option for some people Ellen: poverty related to happiness/ unhappiness as it creates stress in social Sarah: Happiness Growth index Ellen: interventions to cover basic needs Jeannette: General Basic Income Susanne: Basis co-ops agree to pay each other the same salary/ how to apply these thoughts to Freehouse? Jeannette: Issue of working on a volunteer basis Susanne: Volunteering might have happiness as a value more than economic value. Summary Susanne: Zuiderling Decision to look at affluence instead of needs/ focus on needs Example of Sarah: what can you give in return when money is not an accepted value. Zuiderling focus on skills, talents - happiness, personal development interlinked with economic wealth is proven not be linked with happiness Collectivity, communality. Freehouse creates opportunities to explore choices through its network Barter systems/ work exchanged for housing, set up through personal networks, or organisational structures on the net. 3rd Deliberation What did you sense in the Afrikaanderwijk? What benefit can the Afrikaanderwijk have from your experience and insights? How can the future practice of Afrikaanderwijk be connected to your future? Ellen: book: '10 steps to save the city' local currency, barter, training, education/ complex strategy to strengthen a neighborhood/ circulation of money/ barter systems are not enough/ coaching people who want to start an enterprise, have a talent but don't know how to approach this/ filling leaks without being too negate Eva: is this about self-sufficiency? Ellen: No, it's about municipalities avoiding big changes eg. McDonalds as company intruding into a community to create jobs/ money is created but it's immediately spent outside of the neighborhood. Maarten: Example of Lidl / communication between global financial capital and local assets/ problem: large profit margins going to international companies/ solidarity with more affluent consumers, citizens/ consumer engagement needed/ difficulty f Eva: People want different things economically than they want socially Sarah: Power of consumers, relativity of price / Eva: Buying is like voting/ you make a decision Sarah: made the decision to contribute. Maarten: Is this about health?/ as an economist I doubt that making a boundary around making an area will increase your wealth/ creation of a cooperative labour organisation (finding jobs/ making jobs)/ increase of welfare within a community if labour is organised in collaboration with local communities Susanne: examples: food, sewing, labour/ what other areas can the co-op act upon Ellen: training to be independent, skill training/ Susanne: producing own energy, collecting garbage? Ellen: not just like that Sara: energy co-op Eva: People don't have the surplus of money to invest in such a thing Ellen: This would have to happen in conjunction with the municipality.
Sara: Transparency of the money exchange/ awareness of power of consumption/ then people can be in control of their economic impact Susanne: trust demonstrated, power in consumer/ joint internet Maarten: This is possible but not from one day to the other Sara: Transparency will help to make steps towards this Ellen: function of Freehouse to initiate, to organise this process Maarten: publishing profit margins is an unpopular idea/ economic justice; limiting profit margins Ellen: wealth is based on debt, this is the first problem to address/ basic injustice inherent in the system. Summary Pragmatic discussion: Afrikaanderwijk co-op, cooperative labour, finding jobs; formalised skill training; need to keep flow of money local - awareness of the power of the individual consumer Profit margins, making money flow transparent, how popular would that be, difficult proposal/ process of trust needed
Deliberation notes 07 Table discussion – V
Table discussion - V Moderator: Carolina Rito Reporter: Jaime Iglehart Values: Who has the right to create values? Defining Freehouse: looking for qualities and talents in neighborhood, make them more visible, make them a part of the understanding of the area. Doing acts of civil disobedience, testing rules and regulations to make visible the qualities of our neighbors. Find all the talent, all the potentials in the neighborhood, to share, to share knowledge and build stronger alliances, build new forms of connection. Trial and error. Freehouse realized it needed to change from a place of culture to an organization - the Co-op - or, the real Freehouse. An organization which is able to strengthen the alliances we created. This boat is our boat. We decide how it sails and where it lands Researched into different forms of cooperatives, built a cooperative network. Today is the start of a series of tests, testing how to sustain these new models, create new government systems. What is the significance of this location for Freehouse? This location was the house of value and goods. Which goods do we want to take with us? What is missing? We are not leaving the area, we are spreading, into the neighborhood. Introduction round - Carolina: Curation interested in socially engaged processes -Sandee: From Ghent, working in an urban collective, using artistic methods to engage the neighborhood in thinking in a Utopian way. Professionally doing a Phd on loval democracy - Jesper: university of humanistic studies, organizational science, participating in a research group at the cross-sections of art/ research local participatory initiatives - Christina: German, living in Rotterdam, visual artist, got 20 houses from living cooperative, dealing with chickens, neighbors, garden, trying to work together with living cooperation, government, now busy with Phd proposal, balancing practical, theoretical. Very familiar with good and bad parts locally. Not really involved with Freehouse. How to close the gap between what is here and what is local - Alexander: local shop owner, menswear clothing, books, zines music. Focus on young, upcoming brands from around the world. Try to use the space as a small gallery. Art/film events, sometimes work together with film festival. Sometimes work with Freehouse. Did a magazine launch with Freehouse. Books from the store presented here, good way to promote with other neighbors who might not visit. - Jaime: based in berlin, visits "free spaces� as much as possible: squats, hausprojekts, hacker spaces, forest occupations, etc. Is creating a school for postcapitalist studies in fall 2014 - Wieteke: teach social experience, teach young designers how to connect with others and the outside world. Likes to work with reality. Works in Utrecht making art in public space in the form of web radio. Not introducing new things, but relating where you are. Programs not as much in a artistic sense, but more in a social sense. Art is the tool, invite people who show ability to connect. www.destemvamwest.nl - Manuel: from Chile lives in Rotterdam, industrial designer, specialized in public space design, wanting to connect bridge between Chile and Netherlands. Organizes film festival in Chile. Always trying to connect people and disciplines rather than try to create something new. 1sT Deliberation How to maintain common ground? Inclusion vs. Exclusion
The commons – how do we define public? How does an organization deal with the notion of the common and the notion of ownership. Who owns what and how do we deal with being a part of something collective? Sandee: in our project we tried to dismantle this idea of common. Working on the idea of difference between people, culture etc. we are looking to demystify the common. The common for us is the public space where we do it. We are trying to let people realize that their imagination of their neighbor is different than their vision of how the neighborhood should be. We try to highlight difference because we are looking for a diffusion of opinions in order to come back to the common. So everyone can see the diversity of opinions. We are not looking for common ground. To foster innovation our idea is let livery opinion be on the same level. Confront people with it, and let them talk about it. Christina: you have to be specific. If you are starting a project, you will see that here there are a lot of projects happening. In order to get all the people around the table, initiate a common goal, such as "we all want better life quality." everyone can give their own opinion of what they want, but the common goal gives a starting point. Sandee: there is a common ground in the idea of what is the common ground. The local-that's really territorial, but that is a really crucial start. There are lots of virtual connections, but it comes down to the local. Manuel: but that is linked to identity. If you don't identify with the neighborhood it gets difficult. Very difficult to get people to play the game. Jaime: common space is about identifying boundaries and autonomy. Hausprojekt in berlin had really contentious relationship with neighbors until the hausprojekt/squat bought the house. The squat was bound to rules of the housing association. Once the squat bought the house the conservative neighbors all got together and signed a form freeing the squat from the rules of the housing association. Allowing us to share the garden happily but differently. Carolina: bouncing around at an attempt at consensus. This idea that is unsettling is this possibility of us agreeing. These problematics are very much rooted in the problems of democracy. Important to give voice and understanding to the fact that we all have different ideas about how to live in space. Wieteke: radio essay called "new progression" highly recommend. Some Holland neighborhoods constructed with a really optimistic future vision. Architects built the housing with these ideas. WE are in a radically new era where we don't believe all these possibilities, but the architecture is still there. Narrator of the show went around asking people for their life stories, they said no, then he started smaller, asked people for a cup of coffee, and they shared their life stories. What he learned is that the new ambition is to cope, to live small and try to make some good. All these small ambitions is like a protest against negative thinking, but it's on a small scale. We no longer believe we're going to make it all right for everybody at the same time. Sandee: the romanticized view of community. In Ghent people start to dream of the village...People want to live in the city to be anonymous, but want to be public in small moments. 2nd Deliberation How to actively enhance skills of cooperation? Skill is Will Building new economic models is a form of resistance 3 questions: - How to connect value systems? - How to expand into new domains (housing, insurance, etc)? - How to entice surplus value to be reinvested locally?
Spende/Donation Economy- could it be sustainable? Spende economies rely upon disrupting the larger economy in which it is nested. Can you pay the rent with donations? $ from donation economy is funnelled in from the greater economy, redistributed to those in need with donation communities. Squatters create common ground which make available certain possibilities. Shopkeeper: what are your needs? It is impossible to keep up with fashion trends, keeping up with novelty is no longer viable. When you have things left over from last season how can you sell short pants in winter. Especially as a startup brand, have to build trust. Business surviving by not thinking traditionally, not in terms of seasons. Buy things that can stay for all seasons. Also online-based, not dependent on the store only. Sales are necessary every now and then, don't have to price it down so much because there is the online shop. Moving away from the mentality if new, new, new. Not necessary to constantly buy new items. Wieteke: What was your thought to open a shop in an area which is not necessarily a shopping area? Alexander: Not necessarily thinking locally. The clientele is mostly from outside the neighborhood, young professionals. Carolina: this notion of the common is really relevant here. What is local/common here? Wieteke: the shop relates to the fashion community Alexander: retail is suffering very much right now. In order to maintain your business-banks are not lending $ to small business, so you have the think about the risks you are taking, how to create a new form in this huge industry. Jesper: how did you handle credit? Alexander- brands support you, they are in need of shops, having more lenient terms in terms of payment. Working with national or local brands helpful for negotiating terms. Wieteke: a lot of young designer shops opening up on expensive streets in Utrecht. How do you do that? Think about collaborating with other small designer shop? Alexander: how would we collaborate? Wieteke- perhaps swapping merchandise when it feels old in your shop Alexander: one of the brands we carry does women's wear, they exchanged contacts suggesting I partner with the other shop in case my merchandise doesn't sell. But it takes a lot of time and effort. Christina: to work together means to be open about things Carolina: it would be nice to know how each of us here survives. How is it possible for us to all be here, with flexible schedules. Sandee: on a grant, flexible schedule, has to present research at the end of 4 years. Luxury job, but not a luxury. If I am here today it means tomorrow I will have to work harder. Jaime: If your research doesn't come together do you have to give the $ back? Sandee: No. Second modernity means we have two identities at the same time. I'm part of a collective, but doing independent research. There are different identities, exist within the same person. Global connection, local connection, it's important to exist in these hybrids. Jaime's project, is looking for these hybrids creating something that is in line with the current system, but branching off of it. We tend to thing appositionally between the regime
and the niche. You cannot occupy free zones if there is no state maintaining the status quo. You use the system to start up the mission. Jesper: Important to demystify the commons. We need to be very aware of the context, relations, value systems. We really need to ask ourselves, "what are the consequences?" What are we improving? Start from a local context, ask yourself what is necessary. Carolina: Radicalizing the local-- if the dominant area is poor, they are already radical--
3rd Deliberation How to connect the lived world of the coop with the "systems world" beyond? Henk Oosterling: Creating resilience, creating spaces where people can take on as little or as much responsibility as they can handle Intercultural, child friendly, eco-social Preventing financial flows from leaving the neighborhood We must create institutions which are able to capture $ and keep it flowing in the community trust Anybody can collect garbage. You don't need big companies to do that We need more coops possible to create a company that creates profits and gives profit tax-free to the foundation We need to find ways to make it difficult for $ to be funnelled to the top barter-systems are good, but they are only really good if you can pay your rent with it $ is not dirty, but we have to get away from gigantic profit margins Group Discussion - what do you sense in the Afrikaanderwijk? - What benefit can Afrikaanderwijk have from your experience and insights? Christina: all of the money that is coming into Freehouse is leaving? Does everyone make the same wage? If people are coming in the situation of not being able to earn their $, then they are just coming here and playing cards-- not working, the living cooperations give color-codes to spaces in the area, this space is colour coded yellow as a place for having fun. Wieteke: how can you actually profit from being together and creating a social atmosphere. It seems this area is different than 20 years ago. Christina: no, it is not different...there are a bunch of research projects. I have been living here 8 years Alexander: has lived here 3 years Wieteke: a lady I know opened a shop this weekend, she does it herself. She told me 10 years ago she came here was very unhappy, another lady invited her to come volunteer and make coffee, now she is the queen of the neighborhood, she knows everyone, they actually gave her a building which she runs as a community centre. We're talking about who gets the $, who is the owner? Christina: why do you think it's so important who owns it?
Wieteke: because no one can kick you out Manuel: ownership is crucial because it roots you in the place Christina: some years ago the city sold some buildings with the hope people will be rooted, improve them, didn't work Manuel: yeah, but what else did the city do to improve the neighborhood besides sell them the house? Did they improve the streets etc? Chrisina: but the people were very disappointed. They people are not coming to their job, they are not fulfilling their needs, there is already a kind of anarchy Carolina: what do you think should be done to make the cooperative better? What would you implement? Christina: the framed conditions of this house is that the monthly rent is quite high. For alternative projects, it's not really practical. I would love to come to a nice restaurant here, but to do it for alternative projects... Wieteke: but the lady I mentioned, she rents out her space every weekend for weddings, etc, and there's a need for that Christina: for an alternative space, that doesn't work Manuel: but the space can be multi-use. In the morning we can have a wedding, at night we can have an opening... Christina: but we are also living in a city where there are lots of other options- why should they come here? Jaime: so are you proposing that they close? Christina: well, I would live to have a coffee Wieteke: that's a great idea Alexander: create an initiative for the owner to bring down the rent long enough to build a clientele, a strong customer base. It's difficult building, but Manuel: it's shared risk, if they keep the rent solid at $5000 the building stays empty Jesper: how commited are the people from the neighborhood to this place? Christina: not really Jesper: exactly, If you look at the style, it's meant for white dutch people Jaime: well to make that kind of statement you have to break it down, what might make the place feel unwelcoming or undesirable?
Deliberation notes 08 Table discussion – VI
Table discussion – VI Reporter: Susanne Bosch Introduction round - Sarah: from Gent, member of social, artistic collective turning utopian dreams into a story. Collective met in project "Public Faculty" - Jannette: studies textual design in Eindhoven, lives in Rotterdam, works as researcher and writer, interested in social structure and political relevance of design (how we live together rand work together) Contextual design student, interested in - Sarah: contextual design, action organisation - Eva: research centre in Rotterdam, applied scientist, Freehouse - Martin: Network of Southbank of Rotterdam, Government role, big organisation role, new currency initiator - Ellen: artist, urban planning, urban transformation, honest exchange, make the world a better place - Lot: civil servant at local government, how can local government contribute to the new structure? How do we stop old systems? - Roel: professor of governance & sustainability 1sT Deliberation New organizational forms 1. How to maintain common ground? 2. How to actively enhance skills of cooperation? 3. How to connect the lived world of the coop with "systems-world" beyond (Institutional Diversity) Why do we assume we have common ground, what motivation do we have to be here? On what topics do we have common ground? • Time • Happiness • Culture • Need for decentralized power structures • Need to meet to exchange, which is so far too regulated and policed • Learn to organize, as the current urban public space makes it difficult to meet • Alignment of the state with non-state initiatives by changing functionalities • Formal and informal need to get together • The state should become a partner. UBUNTU: I am because we are • Experimentation of government with the informal: Government of cooperations • Partnership to be established between local government and local initiatives • Civil servants lack ideas or language • Keeping local servants at a distance from the interaction, it that fear? • Within local government, there are inside and outside discussions • Inside: fear of loosing power, prestige and peers • Against fear: Contact and connection on a personal level, space for meetings • Different alliances between citizens and politicians: hierarchy of government, citizens need to communicate to all instances. Politician, state government <------- Citizen Regional government <------- Citizen Local civil servant <------- Citizen co-op <------- Actions, etc….. • Does are have a mediation role to get everyone moving out of their comfort zone and context (meaning circumstance)? 2nd Deliberation New Economic Forms
1. How to connect value-systems 2. How to expand into new domains (housing, insurance, etc.) 3. How to entice surplus value to be reinvested locally New economies are discussed in arts, sociology, anthropology, but not in economic department: co-ops, land trust, alternative currencies, participatory budgeting, start-ups Qualities: • Participatory • Decentralized • Restorative to people, plants, planet • Accountable to every level of decision-making Can be accomplished: • Fighting injustice • Replacing the systems that are not working • Strengthen our community to meet the needs in times of crisis What are our needs? Problem: Why do we look at our needs, how about asking: what do we have and what do we have to offer? • Freehouse operates on a very practical level, giving on all sorts of levels (HAVE and OFFER) • De Zuiderling, local currency • Idea of affluency not scarcity, looking at reciprocity of gift exchange (e.g. social bonding instead of money, skills exchange, learning, cultural and symbolic exchange) • Look at Karma Economy, Le Vanbo, Berlin • The economic and personal development is more than a need, it makes use of individual talents, to creates happiness. • Freehouse lifts the talents of the neighborhood and therefore creates happiness. • How to engage people from "outside"? Break routines • Happiness and connectedness is a need to survive • Connectedness happens through action exchange • Mapping desires in the geographical near distance or on the internet: "I am an individual looking for……" • Possibility to barter and exchange in your network to cover your basic needs • Need of having choices • General basic income to decrease stress and increase happiness • Co-ops tries to achieve a principal income • Happiness per capita, not income should rise
3rd Deliberation Re/Forming the Future 1. What did you sense in the Afrikaander district? 2. What benefit can the Afrikaanderwijk have from your experience and insights? 3. How can the future practice of Afrikaanderwijk be connected to your future practice elsewhere in Rotterdam/ the World? The Afrikaanderwijk has a lot of money going in and out of the district. Resilience means: when you fall, there is a network to hold you Institution of the commons: • Community Trust: health, garbage, cleaning, cooking • Neighborhood Co-ops: owning elements like energy, food and gardening • Global Common Trust/Companies can give surplus tax-free to charities. • Barter systems • Eco-social community space: meetings, skilling, educational plug-in • Realistic principles of growth towards a financial democracy Read the 10 steps to save cities by the NEF in London:
http://www.neweconomics.org/publications/entry/ten-steps-to-save-the-cities 1. Rebuild local economies by plugging the leaks that are draining local money away. How money circulates in an area is just as important as the amount of money flowing into it. Traditional economics suggests that cities must specialise. That may be true for the largest businesses, but it is irrelevant for local business. For them, the best way forward is not just by specialising, but also by building diversity and looking for ways of replacing imports. 2. Develop local diversity and distinctiveness. Too many of our cities have devoted their imagination and resources to making themselves look the same as each other. But because economic diversity keeps money circulating locally, it is critical that any new developments design well-being, distinctiveness and sustainability indicators into Master Planning processes and that any new retail effort must make high streets more, not less, diverse. 3. Bust local monopolies to let enterprise flourish. One major reason why so many of our local economies have been hollowed out is that so many cities have been using net wealth destroyers as anchor stores. 4. Organise enterprise coaching, support and advice in every neighborhood. Coaches, backed up by a panel of local business people, bank managers and other local volunteers, can help to break down the barriers preventing enterprise from starting, replicating the kind of social networks that successful places have. 5. Use local resources to build an effective new local lending infrastructure. Our businesses are now in a far weaker position than American or German competitors, and potential competitors, because we have no equivalent lending infrastructure. The real problem is not lack of capital to lend, it's a serious lack of institutions capable of lending it. 6. Invest in local energy. At present only 0.01 per cent of electricity in England is generated by local authority-owned renewables, despite the scope that exists to install projects on their land and buildings. In Germany the equivalent figure is 100 times higher. 7. Use waste products as raw material for new enterprises. Traditional economics confines its interest to the point where money becomes involved and to the point when a product is thrown away. Cities are often blind to the potential value of what is wasted and thrown away – because all these have potential for enterprise. 8. Use public sector spending to maximise local money flows. Making sure that public sector contracts build the local economy, and provide permanent economic assets for depressed areas. 9. Launch a range of new kinds of money. Successful models are now running all over the world, keeping local resources circulating locally and providing independence for impoverished communities. They can provide low-cost or free credit, and – in some countries – they underpin whole sectors of the economy. 10. Experimenting with new kinds of credit creation for local public benefit. There will be occasions when regional economies require the creation of new public money, free of interest, where necessary to cope with unprecedented financial emergencies, and as the basis for loans to rebuild the infrastructure of productive local economies. Diverse approach: Training, resources, local currency keeps afluency, self-sufficiency, capital and community/global and local conversation Consumer engagement is important, as it has power through consumption. Raising awareness, making visible links to and for the community. 1. Co-operative labor-orgas could support the new CO-Op: finding jobs and prizing the labor 2. Skill training
3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
Investing in wind energy Transparency of money fluctuation Awareness of consumer impact Slow process Make profit margins accessible, possibly limit them
Deliberation notes 09 Table discussion – VII
Table discussion – VII Reporter: Sue Bell Yank Introduction round -
Simon: social design student Martina: social design student Isabel: architect Marcel: architect involved in Freehouse since the beginning Sue: writer - reporter for this session Britt: Homebaked member - moderator for this session Hugo: works with housing in the Afrikaanderwijk Steve: Mariska: Freehouse team Aetzel: Rotterdam Vakmanstat
1sT Deliberation How to Maintain Common Ground How to bridge cultural and language gaps? There are many different backgrounds that clash, and this plays out twice a week with the Market. Marcel: The Freehouse community kitchen is an interesting place where these issues have played out, like the issues of serving meat or alcohol in the kitchen. They try not to avoid those issues, but to face them with generosity. Britt: People get tired of constant talking, but that is necessary for understanding. Marcel: The kitchen is key, because that is already a purpose and a common goal that is based in action. There are problems to be solved. Britt: What brings you together in a co-op is not common values, but rather a common goal. Isabel: Each time there is a new step or element, each person may have a different way of looking at things, and that must be discussed and return to the goal. Britt: Sometimes in a co-op you learn to be flexible and even though you are not happy, you go with it. Martina: You must constantly reflect to yourself what the needs are, and these must be accessible and understandable to the rest of the neighborhood. The co-op should be transparent. It's not just what happens within the co-op that is important, but also the connection with the surrounding area and the everyday needs of the neighborhood. Be open, hospitable, transparent, and everyone understands what the co-op does. The co-op must be integrated into society, otherwise it becomes an enclave and secedes from society, it has no effect on society. Britt: There are different needs for each co-op in terms of their radicality and desire for change, but accessibility remains important. Hugo: We see people with less education and less income in the neighborhood, but when the coop begins to be open to people directly, you have the chance to get really local in the solutions. It's nice to see some of the people living here.
Britt: This is a question of participation - what is participation and how does it manifest for different people? Martina: Participation is cultural, economically, and politically determined. Sue: An open question is still how to determine how decisions get made in key decision points - what kinds of participation is more important than other kinds of participation? How do hierarchies still form within co-ops, and still maintain many layers of participation and skill levels within the co-op? Steve: We need a different form of organization. All sorts of structures exclude people, so if there is a more organic way of organizing than perhaps you are able to include more people. How can you give many more open opportunities for collaboration and participation, despite different skill levels and levels of access? Britt: Is there a model and can you pass it on to someone else? Perhaps there are some forms of organization, but it is incredibly dependent on your context. Isabel: It is all experimental and there is no model. Marcel: You must customize it for every experience. There are no blueprints. Simon: People who are open to participating in an active way are not usually responsible for clashes. So what are the ways people can participate in a passive way? Perhaps this would lead to more change? How to include the people who are unwilling to participate actively? Steve: There has to be safety for them too. Sue: If the goal is to be a part of the neighborhood and effect change more deeply, it is incumbent on the co-op to understand who is not participating and why. Martina: The areas where boundaries need to be set up or where there are territorial clashes or challenges, these are areas of connection, and where understanding can be laid. People must also understand that the co-op will continue to exist. Britt: Sometimes there is altruistic aspect to being a part of a co-op; but you must be part of it for your own personal benefit. And that must be concrete. Mutual benefit is important. You are part of the community, not trying to "help" the community. Hugo: You are there to both give and to get. Is it necessary for the co-op to connect to the "systems-world"? And if it is necessary, the easiest thing is to invite people. If there are organizational benefits on both sides, you can come to a common goal. Britt: Sometimes we feel that there are opponents so far from ourselves, but when you invite them in and sit around the table, it can actually be possible to connect. 2nd Deliberation New economic forms - How to connect value-systems - How to expand into new domains (housing, insurance, etc) - How to entice surplus value to be reinvested locally Participatory - who has the most stake has the most decision-making power Local - decisions are made on the lowest level of governance as possible (individual, family, local, state)
Restorative - we are working at a deficit - must be restorative to people, places, and the planet Accountability - higher levels of governance that are accountable to lower levels of governance Steve: access to information and the possibility of self-expression are also basic needs. Food is important, but also the possibility to relate to each other. This has changed in the last 10 years. Many people are not able to express themselves the way they really want to. Food, shelter, community, with self-expression at the top. Martina: What are systems and what is value? Value is personal, but systems is abstract. Is it rules, taxes, economies of a place? Is it public or private? Steve: Perhaps we should look specifically at economic systems. Hugo: What is the value when people get to know their own identities and talents - this is linked to self-expression. They then understand what kind of value they carry with them, and they may then grow in their own economic empowerment. The women (from the neighborhood) were talking about this, but the young boys perhaps do not have that same connection. Britt: Your own value, the value you have to the community. Martina: And perhaps understanding your own value, and then using and applying those values to the community. You have an economic power. If there is a space that has a value (like the kitchen) it can implement the system itself. So not just human values, but spatial values. You cannot understand your value in a vaccuum, by yourself - you need to relate to others and also do this in a specific place in order to understand what you have to give. Marcel: The question also speaks to how you can connect with other, established valuesystems, like government systems. Steve: Perhaps everyone has different value-systems within themselves, different layers and we have to analyze how we can connect those. Isabel: Brought up at yesterday's workshop, and discussing our needs and what we have in abundance. It is again about self-expression - you have to show what you need and what you can give. Perhaps this is how we connect our value-systems. This can turn into an economic form, like a marketplace. We need the space to have this discussion and this expression. You need to spend time to do this. Britt: Your barter might not be one-to-one, but rather a multi-layered exchange among a cooperative. Hugo: But you can only participate in this kind of expression of values if you have your basic needs met (housing, enough food). The community as an economic form could be intellectual, but could also fulfil the needs of everyday basic life. How to expand into new domains? Isabel: I am thinking about value not as money, but other things that you can exchange. Steve: Perhaps new domains are beyond the basic needs of housing and insurance. In the future, what really is going to matter? Britt: Water and accessibility to fresh water is a question for economic forms in the future. Coown and co-manage housing in Liverpool. How is this co-op different from a management business? How connected do I have to remain to the house, to the place itself? Hugo's business is a little further along, but what is the difference?
Hugo: The people are poor, less educated -- but the one big economic value is the Markt. We try to rent the housing but prices are rising. They try to re-invest in community and support local shopkeepers, sports teams, give people opportunity to explore their talents. Britt: You need to make enough money to pay people working there, for survival, in any co-op (unless you have a massive barter system). You cannot be completely selfsupporting. So how do you sustain this kind of effort, which is absolutely a BUSINESS. Steve: Maybe it is about changing your mindset, a mental shift together, if you look differently at ownership and sharing, perhaps there are other opportunities. Marcel: Freehouse is built out of a very fragile system, and yet it is flexible. You are afraid that it will become paralyzed and fixed, without the possibility of adaptation. But further down the road, when you try to scale up and try to create resistance in real economic change, you risk a fixity of institutions. Steve: If you have resources and can share them, why not? I.E. Air B&B or Uber Marcel: But you have to be aware that people are just touching and don't have a stake in the exchange. Martina: But that is not accessible to everyone, if you don't have resources to begin with. Steve: Perhaps you have to continue to think differently about the possibilities and what you can offer or get in return.
3rd Deliberation Re/forming the future (of Afrikaanderwijk) - What did you sense in the Afrikaanderwijk? - What benefit can the Afrikaanderwijk have from your experience and insights? - How can the future practice of Afrikaanderwijk be connected to your future practice elsewhere in Rotterdam/The World. What can we offer? Johan is a shopkeeper in the Afrikaanderwijk that helped to form a new shopkeeper's cooperative. Freehouse will be an umbrella cooperative that will connect lots of other worker and neighborhood cooperatives. Freehouse can address the larger interests in the neighborhood. You have to decide how the neighborhood can profit from the structure, so the possibilities are endless. How to pay people, how to leverage work. Hugo's organization financed some initiatives, but also asked Freehouse to be selfsupporting, and is now taking steps back to see what kind of self-supporting structure is being organized. This is a very difficult discussion. When is a group of people self-supporting? When will that succeed? Johan: It is about contribution, members are all contributing to their own cooperations to make them self-supporting. Britt: Is it a percentage of your profit? Johan: No, there is a certain amount that it will cost for the goals for a certain year, and that is split among the members. Martina: Who comes up with the goals for the group? Johan: We have ideas, Freehouse has ideas, we exchange and come up with these goals
together, depending on who can give to what? Britt: What are the activities you decide on? Marcel: The kitchen, gift exchanges, learning the skills and benefits of everyone. Britt: Do you meet up all together? Mariska: We all meet individually, and it is like a chain that reacts on each other. That is how people get informed and how discussion can happen. As a shop owner, you cannot do everything on your own because you don't have time. But if everyone takes a little piece, you can change things together, like the clientele who comes here, what people buy. Martina: What is giving back to the neighborhood? Johan: I.e. organizing a Christmas gift for all children in the neighborhood, getting the children and families getting to know all of the shops. Sue: That creates a network of resilience within the neighborhood. Mariska: Johan has 2-3 kids as interns at all times, feels that it is his responsibility to teach the values of the neighborhood, of the society we live in. Johan: I am thinking not just for now, but for the future, creating relationships. These kids are the customers of the future, and it is making relations for the future. Martina: How can people who do not have a shop take responsibility in the neighborhood? Aetzel: This is not the only network that is being created within the Freehouse Co-op. It needs to happen on all different kinds of layers to make those kinds of connections (otherwise it just becomes a network of shopkeepers). How to do this everywhere so people are not so atomized and isolated? It could be about housing or about childcare or about elder care or about food, etc, etc.
Reflections 10 Vagebond Reviews
Radicalizing the Local, 15 – 17 January 2014
Reflections Reflection: Vagebond Reviews South The city is divided between north and south, between the glamorous zone and the ungovernable zone. In the course of an informal conversation with a local city official she communicated a sense of appreciation and gratitude for the work at Freehouse. It was as though she saw, in the mediating figure of the artist, a bridge into the ungovernable zone. The glamorous zone is knowable with respect to the State apparatus. It's a domain of formal consumption and a domain of the governable: it is not just that they understand the rules, they also understand their deep, embodied social history and therefore what is at stake historically. South is the domain of informal modes of economic, social and cultural exchange, a zone of unregulated invisibility regarding the proper coding of the modes of exchange. The city official, glancing uneasily south, had an intuition that art and cultural practices, with their feet in both camps, could function as a mediating channel between the modes of governance and the ungovernable. These ungovernable subjectivities are not revolutionary. They are an accumulation of difference operating outside of the embodied flows of (un)Stated assumptions for the coordination of selfsameness (the Dutch). Localising the Radical She should not have been so reassured. The Freehouse symposium was a counter move to the notion of assimilation northwards. Instead, it was an invitation to interrogate and disrupt the very mechanisms of globalization that operate and formulate the urban glamorous zone of securitised consumption. It comes as no surprise then that Freehouse: Radicalizing the Local gathered together the informalities, the instabilities, the rogue practices, the resistant gestures operating at the edges and against the dominant modes of global capital distribution. It brought Bitcoin, global citizenship and the bank raid into its own discursive flow. It tried to establish a strategic relationship between local forms of economic, social and cultural exchange and these globaliseed modes of resistance that operate both within and against the logic of post-industrial, financialised capital. Over the course of the three-day sequence at Freehouse we encountered migrant experience primarily through acts of hospitality. We came to understand the values of the Freehouse project through our material encounter with the Freehouse space as an ecology of enterprise that drew us in via its design aesthetic and the distribution of food. It was a peculiar relation, one of 'being served' but also being 'observed'. As guests, we were there to work, to solve a problem, to illuminate the circumstances, to analyse the tactical coordinates of a move, of a transition: the enactment of a legal, symbolic and material transition. Stage We did not all feel the urgency of the situation equally. A girl from New York city brought the detached gaze of the capricious art world to bear on the proceedings. Operating as a structurally decoupled nomad, she moves from one experimental, art– scene community to the next – a jaded critic for the precarious efforts of the postcapital alternative life-style collective. She is intrinsically bored and mobile: couldn't you have given us leaflets? Why did the workshop come up with such stupid suggestions? We mention this gaze because it is not incidental. Freehouse is performing on stage without a script, enacting economic and cultural insertions into the flow of the city beneath the critical armature of the academic and art world audience. Mutterings of instrumentalisation from the hurlers on the ditch are
never far from earshot.1 Art Labour What is the economy of engagement for the artist? Firstly, it is an economy of extreme labour. On the way from Freehouse to the café workshop on the second day we fell into conversation with a local artist, herself a seasoned warrior of cultural production. She had shared time with Jeanne Van Heeswijk in New York: stories of extreme labour to the limits of self-production. These observations are not to be read as protestations. On the contrary it is absolutely vital that such extreme modes of selfproduction remain unannounced, unmeasured and invisible with in the economy of engagement. This is the awkward self-lodgement of socially engaged art practice. The body lodged in a fissure between two plains of restriction (how are you fixed?). The first fissure operates at the level of biology: the imperative to perform yourself at the outer limits of selfproduction. Second, to survive as a speaking subject at the edges of the critical erasures of the discourse of subtraction that extends itself towards art activism: not art, not economy, not sustainable, not equitable in its distribution of symbolic capital and so on. Zones of Symbolic Collapse No surprise then that certain zones of symbolic collapse go with the territory. It is a form of practice that functions within the arc of three critical zones of symbolic collapse. The first zone is perhaps the most embodied and proximal. It is the zone of the potential symbolic collapse of the inner circle of beloved encounters with the subjects of constructive mobilisation. This is a zone of social encounter that operates outside of the descriptive repertoire of so called socially engaged practice and yet it's small victories, betrayals and realignments define the very possibility of movement. The second zone operates at the level of the immediate micro-political economy of institutional paranoia, a technical and juridical zone of constraint. It calls for mobilization in the face of the always already said and already done. It is the domain of procedures: barriers, critiques and resistance within the self-protective institutional armature. How does the city protect itself against the breaking of codes?2
Columbia Pedro was an invited speaker from Columbia with an ambitious project. In the face of the global negative imaginary concerning his country (epicentre of the drug trade, drug warlords, political instability and so on) he has sought to construct an alternative lexicon of identifiers for Columbia: a country with the most diverse species of butterflies, a country with a unique frog population and many others. If Columbia was a tent, it was as though Pedro emerged from that tent and discovered that the outside world has already written its prejudicial slights all over its exterior surface. Pedro's question: can you change the graffiti? This project, to assert the positive in the overwhelming perceptual frame of the negative from the view outside, is structurally homologous in relation to the North-South field of perception in Rotterdam. On our final day at Freehouse this labour of constructing alternative, positive counter narratives was framed as the Columbia problem. 1
Footnote: The phrase hurler on the ditch is an idiom derived from the Irish sport of hurling. It refers to the unsolicited advice issued forth from the spectator on the sidelines. It is invariably invoked by those on the pitch, by those, as the sociologists Pierre Bourdieu would say with stakes in the game. In short, it is invoked to challenge the privileged position of the off-pitch critic.
On this question of code breaking, on the third day of Freehouse we found ourselves sharing a story. A group of juvenile delinquents were brought before the courts on charges of anti-social behaviour. The enlightened judge, rather than handing down a custodial sentence, dispensed them to community service. Accordingly they were supervised on a landscape project for a motorway, The raised beds on either side of the motor way were planted extensively. In the spring the flowers bloomed in dazzling yellow, spelling out 'Fuck you!' to the passing traffic. How can the city tolerate success? What happens when a zone of exclusion becomes a zone of enterprise? A building that has had its historical semiotic substance drained but then restored? And if that restoration multiplies into in increase in market value? The third, to which we have already alluded, manifests as a critical assault on the legitimacy of the mobilization as such from the discursive ecology of resentment within the field of cultural production itself.
More precisely, this can be formulated as a key strategic challenge for Freehouse: with respect to the field of perception that organises the gaze from north to south, is it possible to crate a resistant field of perception that operates as an alternative to processes of gentrification? This challenge is of vital strategic importance. Is it not precisely those processes of gentrification that bring the heterotopies of south into the desiring machines of the glamorous zone (edgy loft apartments with racial difference close enough to create the mood of cultural authenticity, but no closer)? These are all too familiar processes whereby the zone outside the space of the glamorous becomes included in its desiring machine. And here we meet directly with the forces of displacement. We meet with our uneasiness with the logic of the transition from the site of Freehouse into the formal structure of the co-operative. Even though we encountered the space of Freehouse for the first time at its very moment of dis-assembly, we nonetheless reacted with nostalgia. Eventually that nostalgia gave way to a more tactical understanding of Radicalizing the Local. We came to understand this transformation of those modes of social, economic and cultural exchange established at Freehouse into the institutional structure of the co-operative as a certain kind of refusal. Specifically, the refusal to be co-opted by those processes of gentrification that might harness the psychological and geopolitical displacement of migrant experience to perform the labour of semiotic repurposing of place in the zone of the non-desired. Vagabond Reviews June 2015
Reflections 11 Anastasia Kubrak
Participants 12 Participants and organizers
Participants and organizers Visitors Almud Krejza Ana Catarino Barbara van den Broek Bas Kortmann Bik Van der Pol (Jos & Liesbeth) Caroline Claus Cindy van den Bremen Debra Solomon Deiene Garcia Dorine de Vos Ellen Holleman Erik Jutten Esther Didden Fokka Deelen Francien van Westrenen Gabriella Fiorentini Gerrit Jan van Otterloo Gertrude Flentge Giulia Soldati Giulia Tomasello Hans Venhuizen HenriĂŤtte Waal Hugo Bongers Ida Bessels Irene van Renselaar Irma Bijl Isabel Mendes Caldeira Jan Brouwer Jasper Ligthart Jasper Snoek Jayne Slot Joanna van der Zanden Joeri Viergever Jonas Staal JosĂŠ Nuno Pereira Joseph Grima Julia Hevemeyer Karen Hammink Karin Christof Karina van Bezooijen Katinka de Jonge Kim Bouvy Kim Kiszelnik Lada Hrsak Liane van der Linden Lodovica Guarnieri Luisa Moura Manuel Toledo Marcel van der Meijs Marianne van den Heuvel Marieke Hillen Marjolein Dekker Mark Heijne Martien Kromwijk Martina Muzi Martine Zoeteman Matthijs de Bruijne Maurice Specht
Student Student Stadsontwikkeling Gemeente Rotterdam Powerboat Artists Yota! Designer Artist Student Designer Islant Artist Artist, philosopher Powerboat Stroom Architect Stichting Freehouse Architect Student Artist Bureau Venhuizen Artist Hogeschool Rotterdam Real estate manager Museum Rotterdam Gebiedsmanager Gemeente Rotterdam Architect ABF Cultuur Researcher Stichting DOEN In Concreto Curator Gemeente Rotterdam Artist Student Curator Architect Singeldingen Architect, curator Stichting KOP, artist Student Design Academy Stichting DOEN Bureau Lada Hogeschool Rotterdam, St. Freehouse Cargo Collective Architect Industrial designer Architect, Stichting Freehouse Spel op Maat, inhabitant Singeldingen Stroop Rotterdam, artist Cultural entrepreneur De Zuiderling Cargo Collective Sandberg Institute Artist Specht in de stad
Merel Oord Mieke Zagt Miguel Melgarejo Minjou Lemette Mira de Graaf Mirjam Fokkema Monica Alisse Moniek Driesse Nicole Rietveld Patric Muris Peter Zuiderwijk Piet Vollaard Rebecca Richardson Roel Schoenmakers Sabrina Lindemann Shopkeepers Silvia Naber Simon Beckmann Simon O'Rafferty Steve Elbers Sylke Muller Tim Devos Titia Bouwmeester Veronica De Salvo Willemijn Lofvers Wineke van Muiswinkel Yasser Ballemans Yu-Lan van Alphen
Stichting DOEN Midden Oosten expert Designer Hogeschool Rotterdam Designer Laurens locatie Simeon & Anna Graphic designer Artist, designer Stichting DOEN Designer Graphic designer Architect Dock Rotterdam Cascoland Artist 19 local shopkeepers Trend researcher Artist, designer Ark Lab Stichting DOEN Student Katholieke Universiteit Leuven 5e Kwartier Student Architect De Stem van West Artist Stichting DOEN
Presenters & reporters Aetzel Griffioen Ailbeh Murphy Ana Dzokic Anastasia Kubrak Arie Lengkeek Britt Jurgensen Carolina Rito Chritopher Robbins Ciaran Smyth Dorothee Richter Eli Feghali Elke Krasny Enric Duran Girait Ethel Baraona Pohl Eva Visser Georg Zoche Henk Oosterling Jaime Iglehart Jan Jongert Jaromil/Denis Roio Jeannette Petrik Marc Neelen Marcel Jongmans Matteo Lucchetti Michael Birchall Pedro Medina Pelin Tan Rachel Plattus Raquel Benedicto Rasmus Ugilt Roel In 't Veld
Rotterdam Vakmanstad Vagebond Reviews STEALTH Designer Air Foundation Homebaked community landtrust Curator Ghana Thinktank Vagebond Reviews Zurich University of the Arts New Economy Coalition Academy of Fine Arts Vienna Cooperativa Integral Catalana DPR-Barcelona Creating 010, Hogeschool Rotterdam Transnational Republic Rotterdam Vakmanstad Artist Superuse Studios Activist Researcher, designer STEALTH Enthousiasmeur, Gemeente Rotterdam Curator, Visible University of Wolverhampton Yo Creo en Colombia Mardin Artuklu University New Economy Coalition Cooperativa Integral Catalana Aarhus University Professor Governance & sustainablilty
Sikko Cleveringa Silvia Simoncelli Sue Bell Yank Susanne Bosch Tamar Shafrir Tine De Moor
CAL XL Bera Art Academy Social Practice Artist Designer Institution for Collective Action
Organizational team Ali Osman Safak Annet van Otterloo Ashraf Osman Janneke Absil Jeanne van Heeswijk Mariska Vogel Minke Themans Pablo Calderon Peter Zuiderwijk Ramon Mosterd
Concept developer Historian Artinect Graphic designer Artist Artist Graphic designer Social Designer Graphic designer Art & media manager
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