And we have… progress! Or at least… the promise of progress!
Over 30 of us joined a BBQ in the dazzling early September sunshine to form working groups, divide roles and set up tasks. We met on the actual plot of land where we intend to build our postcapitalist urban commune: Archimedesplantsoen!
After a sleepy summer (welcome back everyone), we were thrilled to see so many people turn up, and to start making progress towards our application for the cooperative.
The working groups, as decided at the previous info night in July, are:
- DESIGN: architecture & sustainability
- PROCESS: facilitation & communication
- COMMUNITY: outreach & networking
- LEGAL/FINANCING: budgeting & fundraising
The DESIGN group, made up of the architects Andrea, Roel and Mira are joined by Kieran, Pieter and Bas to further sustainable/circular processes. Soon they will propose a co-designing protocol that we can try and refine until the application.
The COMMUNITY group, made up of Stephen, Teresa, Niels, Karola, Lucien, Jorge and Eef decided to meet at Karola’s place on 18th Sept to set up a process for defining core principles as well as starting to research and report on various partner organisations we would like to reach out to.
The FINANCIAL group (we were thrilled to find that we had quite a nice showing of people with capabilities in this area!) will start with looking at other cooperatives and list examples of how they financed themselves, in the hope that it will give us inspiration and guidance in raising one-million-fucking-euros!
And the PROCESS group, made up of Selj, Daniela, Harriet, Han, Sophie and Adriana, will be facilitating the progress of all the other groups. Harriet and Han are master taskmasters, so they’ll be cracking the whip, while Daniela and Sophie will be around to document and publish reports and outreach on the process. They have their next meeting on 19th Sept at 18:30 at NieuwLand.
If you’re receiving this and you still haven’t joined a working group (and you want to!), join the Slack here. You should just have to fill in your email address and make yourself a password, and then you’re in!
All in all, we’re a step closer to our dream of not shitting in drinking water and chillaxing in a solar-heated jacuzzi on our rooftop bar! (this dream is, of course, subject to change; please add any other dreams that you might have).
If you want to find out more about the project, check out the Tumblr here, which includes slide shows we showed at our previous info nights. Or you can find those here and here.
Have fun at your meetings everyone — and join in if you haven’t yet!
Sophie, on behalf of the Nieuw[er]land crew
🔨🔧🔩