Conscious coliving meet up – Personal Reflections
Last week conscious coliving organized a meet up discussing the question of wellbeing in coliving and how can coliving foster wellbeing; The meet up was hosted by the Fizz Berlin. Hazem, our newest team member, joined the meet up and here are his personal thoughts/ reflections.
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The meet up took place during one hot summer day, However people from various coliving spaces and other interested people joined with enthusiasm to share their thoughts, lessons learned, and ideas in an open way during the meet up. It was a small diverse group of people, different age groups and experiences but all interested/ working/ living in shared living spaces in general.
Although the words “coliving” and “community” have different definitions depending on your own perception, but lets just say that sharing a living space with people is defined as coliving or living with a community, so sharing a flat with 3-4 people, or living communally with 30-40 people are included in this broad definition.
Naima and Juan, from Conscious coliving, prepared a very nice structure for us to follow that day; after small conversations, each person introduced the one sitting next to him/her, then a small presentation on what are we going to discuss, another small talk from the host, The Fizz, explaining their projects and concepts, then we dove into the topic of Wellbeing.
We discussed 3 main issues, vitality, positive relationships, and emotional stability, after a general brainstorm on the 3 topics we were divided into 3 groups to discuss them in detail, I went for emotional stability group with Bettina and Nicolas, if I remember the names correctly, the community manager at the Fizz and a psychology students who is living there. I choose the emotional stability topic as I am not an expert on the topic and wanted to learn and hear different approaches.
Personally, I found this structure extremely helpful, as wellbeing is a very complicated subject and clustering the interconnected issues under just 3 categories makes the discussion easier and helps in the end to see a bigger picture.
Although we might seem to come from different “coliving” projects, we might have slightly different definition of what is coliving, who is a community manager or what is a community; but it seems that we are all facing the same challenges and we are all trying to find several recipes for wellbeing.
It was nice to see that we are actively trying to build communities that can live and prosper together, not forgetting the different types of individuals, we discussed how to build a community that is welcoming introverts as well as extroverts, how to find the sweet spot in between private space/ life and communal space, not forgetting the wellbeing of the people building this such as :community managers/ facilitators/ coordinators or relatively central people living in the community.
Living communally is definitely one solution to loneliness, but still it could be very intense and sometimes people need their own private time, wellbeing is also a very complicated and relative subject and each person has his/her own way in reaching mindfulness. Being aware of this is one step, getting to hear from other communities is another, and working together in reaching several recipes in relation to our own communities is the goal.
Personally speaking, I have been always sharing my living space- in other words, never lived alone- either with family or with friends / flat mates, or living temporary in a coliving space with 11 core people and many visitors, I can understand that this can be an intense experience and having a some kind of system/ self organized structure/ community guidelines/ ...etc not only helps in living harmoniously but also shapes the community as it develops and helps in attracting the people who can easily fit in.
Happy Pigeons is a relatively small community, and was interesting to get to know the scene from the lenses of bigger coliving communities, as well as smaller ones, This helps us in creating better communities and also prepare us in foreseeing the challenges of scaling up or growing our community.
My last general impression is that nowadays, coliving as a concept is apparently needed and could be a solution for some of our current challenges due to different reasons and changes that are happening in our societies ( speaking mainly about Europe ) discussing this with people who are building the scene in Berlin- a city where the shared flats is kinda embedded in the culture as well as cooperatives, bau-groups, cohousing and other intentional communities- is very interesting and could help all of us learn how to build better communities.
That's why, in the spirit of learning and searching for other praxis, we are hosting a discussion next week on Sept 12th on different forms of communal living to broaden the dialogue and hear different voices from Berlin, Naima Ritter from conscious coliving is joining the panel along side with our very own Tobias, Natalia from Projekthaus Potsdam and Max from Tiny House community in Weissensee.
To read more about the conscious coliving meetup, here is a nice summary published on their blog.
Berlin Mmm...(Stadt Land) Food - Show social responsibility with right food!
A life full of choices and decisions.
Every day we eat food and drink all kinds of beverages next to water. But do we all really know what we are eating or drinking? Where does it come from? What routes did it take to come into your stomach? What kind of additives does it contain? How much money is left for the people in the first part of the industrial-chain? Only the minority of people in the “first world” really has a clue about what they consume. Most of the times, price matters a lot. Nevertheless, more and more people invest their time to gain knowledge about the life demanding supplies they consume. In this movement many small companies were created with the goal to have a product with a social impact. As a matter of fact, there are many reasons why we should be more aware of what to eat and drink.
Experience: Food
If you go into your supermarket next door, many everyday products are either distributed by no name companies, in that case you might ask yourself what they have done to their product to be that cheap; or big names, where you just think their product must be good according to the price. In other words, many of us (I hope I’m right if I use “us” if not, sorry for that) have no idea about everyday products, their quality, and if the price is justified. In addition, many people lack the luxury to buy expensive products due to their living status. Is it possible to combine quality and price to make the experience of good food possible for everyone? The “Stadt Land Food” festival, which took part around the Markthalle Neun in Berlin, Kreuzberg from the 1st -3rd of October, was a place where questions like these were asked and answered. Furthermore, it was a great chance to gain more knowledge about essential food supplies and become inspired by the passion and tasty foods from the vendors.
The Festival
From Saturday till Monday, about 150 different local producers, distributors, or organizations gathered around the market hall. Being hosted by the Markthalle for the second time after 2014, the food festival attracted many people onto the streets nearby the Görlitzer Park. Next to the vendors that you find at the weekly farmers market from Tuesday till Saturday (for more information scroll a bit down), different vendors displayed and sold their goods and showed that food is not just food for them. It’s a big part of their life, locally produced and distributed, out of eco-sensitive goods. Furthermore, many experts also offered workshops in different “food-labs” in order for the customer to improve their knowledge of the product and the process of making it. Next to workshops for drinks like spirits, wine, beer and coffee, the food-labs for cheese, different kinds of vegetables, sausages, fish, and bread were very interesting. For example, we never knew how easy and cheap it was to make your own “sauerkraut”. Another thing we learned was how the production of honey works and that there are two different types of methods: pressed and hurled honey. → FLo filz Oh honey soundcloud link
Another spot at the market hall where inspiration hit us, was the stand of Slow Food Berlin. “Slow Food” is a movement with a growing community out of Italy which tries to “prevent the disappearance of local food cultures and traditions, counteract the rise of fast life and combat people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat” (www.slowfood.com). Furthermore, they offer skill-sharing events or information evenings where you can enlarge your own knowledge about food and everything around it. All in all, the Stadt Land Food festival was an experience that was very inspirational. It demonstrated that with a bit of practice you can make everyday products by yourselves and therefore control what you eat. Nevertheless, there are other goods which you can’t make by yourself but to whom companies were founded in the last years to ensure you fair traded, high quality products.
Companies with Social Impact
The Berlin-based company Coffee Circle portrays one of these companies which create a quality product with a social impact. Coffee is an example where you can only create the end-product but to grow a coffee-plant in Germany is not possible. Often times farmers of coffee plantations have to work under inhuman conditions or even kids have to work so that the coffee-beans can be offered for a low price in the supermarket. There are many companies with a fair-trade seal on it, but fair trade does not directly mean that it has a positive, long-lasting effect on the farmers and their lives. What it definitely means is that the companies pay for a third party that the farmers earn the minimum amount of money they deserve. Coffee Circle ensures a fair traded coffee without a seal, as they only roast high-quality coffee which they buy directly from plantations they visited. Their goal is to have a greater impact and directly help the people with important problems like their lack of education or clean water.
Coffee circle only portrays one of many companies which were created in the last couple of years. Others which need to be mentioned are lemonaid, soli-mate, or viva con aqua. The last one is a subsidiary of the non-profit organization that tries to improve water quality in developing countries. The goal of the growing company is to socialize water, which is mostly under control of huge companies like Nestlé, as they want to donate 60 percent of their profit to drinking water projects.
It is nice to see that more and more cafés become aware of what products they buy and sell in their store. A growing amount has local roasted coffee (damn we have nice Coffee roasters in Berlin; check the bottom list) and other social food and beverages like the ones mentioned above. As a consequence, people get to know these companies and maybe also think about what they consume.
Maybe you can also have an impact on the world with only a small effort. In the end, we in Europe have the great luck to decide what to drink or eat. In other parts of the world this is not the case.
Food and Coffee Starter Kit:
Markthalle Neun
Ancient market hall (first opened in 1891) in the Eisenbahnstrasse 42/43
Weekly farmers market opened Tuesday-Friday 12-18 pm , Saturday 10 am -18 pm
Streetfood Thursday with, like the names says, tasty street foodà Thursday 17-22 pm
For workshops and other dates visit the website à www.markthalleneun.de
Berlin Roasters (https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?mid=1ryJ07RkbND-EASyLaI_0nrM4f3c&hl=en_US) Map with all the Third Wave Coffee Roaster in world
Berlin Coffee Roasters
It started very small, but now we are here. It is hard to count all the roasters in Berlin. Every year there are new openings and a serious coffee culture with focus on high quality and perfection has developed. Here are a bunch of classic suggestions of very established ones:
For a full list, just have a look at this Google Map created by guys of Third Wave Wichteln! Or can also just buy some beans online at Coffee Circle - they are also roasting in Berlin-Wedding.
So it's up to you to decide, what kind of food do you want eat and what do you want to change in the world. Every single meal, cup or drink counts!