Categorie: Commons

An Evening of the Future at City in the Making

Tuesday 24th October City in the Making celebrated the future. A gathering of about 40 inner circle City in the Making inhabitants and fellow-workers plus friends attended three presentations of projects that were made as a contribution to the yearlong festival Pioniersmeent De Stokerij (which loosely translates as: Pioneer Commons The Stokerij or Boilerhouse).

Architect/cartographer/draughtswoman Carlijn Kingma, and futurologist Edwin Gardner and Christiaan Fruneaux (both from Monnik, Studio for Futures & Fictions) were asked to reflect upon the near and distant future, both of society in general as well as of City in the Making as a network and Rotterdam Noord as our place of action. Our secret hope was that they would sketch us a clearly defined roadmap to our future. As usual with such questions we got more than we asked for, but also in a way we got less.
Lees verder “An Evening of the Future at City in the Making”

‘Practicing the Commons’ at City in the Making

On Thursday 13 July, City in the Making is hosting participants of ‘Practicing the commons: IASC 2017 Biennial Conference‘ organised by Institute for Collective Action, Utrecht.

The conference focuses on self-governance, cooperation, and institutional change through examples from all over the world, but also pays much attention on the significant current-day developments on common-pool resources and cooperatives within the Netherlands (such as knowledge commons, energy cooperatives, care cooperatives, urban commons, and other citizens’ initiatives), not only by inviting representatives of those Dutch initiatives to join as conference participants, but also by offering them an opportunity to draw attention to their initiatives, by organizing public events and field-trips.

The excursion we will witness recent developments in urban commons taking place in the city of Rotterdam – dealing with housing, food, and education. City in the Making is hosting it together with Food Garden (De Voedseltuin), a charitable organization that distributes food to low-income individuals to avoid hunger and Rotterdam Skillcity (Vakmanstad), a knowledge common, where primary school children are taught gardening, cooking, aikido or judo, technology and programming, and philosophy on a weekly basis.

More about ‘Practicing the Commons’: https://www.iasc2017.org.

 

Wasbuur: Van samen wassen naar duurzaam zeep maken

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In 1899 werden aan de Pieter de Raadtstraat nummers 35 en 37 twee identieke panden gebouwd. Op de begane grond vestigde zich in 1902 een bedrijf in ‘zeep en zout’. Al snel daarna komt er een waterstokerij bij. Ooit had zowat elke straat zo’n voorziening waar je voor een paar centen een emmer warm water kon ophalen. De historie van de plek leeft onder meer voort in de naam Stokerij, maar ook in de activiteiten die er plaats vinden. Een aantal van die activiteiten heeft direct met de geschiedenis van ‘wassen en schoonmaken’ te maken. Lees verder “Wasbuur: Van samen wassen naar duurzaam zeep maken”