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On Wednesday 26 May the 5th edition of Barcelona Activa La Comunificadora programme is comming to an end. We will hold La Comunifcadora Punt i Seguit (“new paragraph”) an online event, open to everyone. Participating projects will give a presentation and share their experience in the programme.
This time La Comunificadora has been entirely online – we haven’t had the chance to physically meet among participants. The programme has also been done entirely with free software. We have used canvases produced with Inkscape and LibreOffice edited with CollaboraOnline, online pads, and the services of CommonsCloud: videoconference rooms with Meet, documents stored in the Office, and internal communication space in the Agora. We have strived to make the meetings and workshops as interactive as possible.
We started in February, with a first open iteration for participants to share identified challenges, to facilitate the first collaborations and for projects to begin to get familiar with the Model of the 5 pillars of sustainability of the commons, which guides this programme and other Transition activities by femProcomuns and LabCoop. In this first iteration, the projects that would participate in the second iteration of the programme were also selected.
The circumstances of this stage of the pandemic and the crisis surrounding Covid19 have meant that some participating projects have experienced unstable and volatile situations and progress has been more difficult than in other editions. The team of trainers and tutors has made an extra effort to adapt to the needs, possibilities and situations of each project.
We have done training and capacity building workshops guided with online materials and visual canvases.
- Self-managed collaborative work and group accompaniment through the Agora (online forum)
- Visits from projects such as Som Mobilitat, FETS and DadESS
- Work session with projects such as: Cronòpis, Bicilot, Colectic, l’Arada, Katuma, Sostre Cívic, eXplorins and Restarters.
- Tutoring and individual support
Our aim was to help projects evolve through the model of the 5 Pillars of sustainability of the commons: community, knowledge sharing, co-governance, mobilised resources and co-production and to finish the programme with a defined roadmap, which integrates a prototype and/or testing of the project with the community.
Once again, the programme has had projects from a wide range of fields, from arts and culture, mobility or manufacture, recovery and recycling of objects, and citizens, organisations, activists and intergenerational networks:
Aire Circ Social – Collaboration between Social Circus projects in Catalonia, promoted by the Aire circus school, where the circus is a tool for social transformation for and with groups at risk, in coordination with organisations and in collaboration with other social circus projects.
CUBIC – A bicycle users’ cooperative that aims to promote services that facilitate the use of bicycles by people who wish to change their mode of transport or who already cycle around the city of Barcelona, starting by creating a network of safe parking spaces.
Demolab – A network of local organisations for the creation and manufacture of fair trade products, on demand and in real time, in a hub where hybrid services associated with cooperativism, collaboration, interdisciplinary participation, innovation and entrepreneurship converge.
Desdelamina.net – Citizens’ network from Barcelona’s La Mina neighbourhood, where neighbours can find information and at the same time give information and opinions on events, where organisations can find channels for participation and where people from outside the neighbourhood can have a closer view of the reality and the people from the neighbourhood, avoiding prejudices and stereotypes.
Dunia – Agroecology co-financing community: People who participate in the transformation of the food system to make it more sustainable through the microfinancing of projects of local and ecological producers, who also receive support in developing and facilitating campaigns.
Ecoviure – Intergenerational cooperative real estate and community self-promotion for 24 family units with shared vision and values in a peri-urban context.
Enxarxa’t – Activist and mutual help network for nursing families, supporters and professionals putting life and care at the centre.
Puparang – Intergenerational citizen network for the environment, social integration, and personal development, where to develop skills and abilities using four formats: repair, exchange, loan and workshops to encourage mutual learning.
Techbloom – Consulting services to small and medium-sized enterprises on their journey of adapting to change towards positive social and environmental impact.
The Mermi Project Migrant entrepreneurial community
These projects have been able to explore their sustainability from a collaborative and commons perspective and have the tools and knowledge to become hybrid models of the commons economy and the social market.
As in each edition, the work carried out during the programme is stored in CommonsCloud and documented on La Teixidora, with images shared in >Wikimedia Commons and Archive.org..
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)