Building a community center - yay, we raised a crowd!

A day of plenty, and more to come

We even got a few hours of sleep before, and then the first half of the actual market day was us running to set up. I must have walked several kilometers and answered more incoming phone calls than I had time to get nervous about before noon. Just as we had hoped, there were enough people to give us a hand, plus we had hired a few young friends to help out and man our badly thrown together food stand (it didn't burn down at least, we learned how to do it next time).

The second half of the market we had some time to see the miracle unfold. Square full of colorful stands, plenty of smiles, so many happy people. People thanked us for the good organization (?). We weren't well organized and forgot so much stuff, we were making everything up as we went. It just happened that our supporters were incredibly good at finding out where they were most useful, and all stallholders patient and friendly, and everyone contributed to the magic.

We even created a questionnaire to find out what to improve next time and got useful feedback.

The result is, people want to do it again, they really loved it, with only few things to improve. And so we are, for now, accidental market organizers.

Now we have this incredible buzz and enthusiasm we can build on. Registrations for the next edition arrived the evening after the market. We didn't rest the day after, as we had hoped, but made sure to collect everyone's feedback and thank everyone involved and start planning improvements.

And the cooperative? And what about subverting people?

I spent the last night before the market printing out a presentation I had written and designed, with as little text and lots of images, to try and get make people consider their work situation, and how they would like to improve it. I don't think anybody saw it. I had a nice idea about how to present this in a sort of interactive labyrinth with a haunted house style but no time to set it up properly, so there it was, forgotten in an unvisited corner of the market. Communication and creative challenges ahead, and I'm curious how to take them on. Probably the right people will appear to help make this real.

The cultural exchange did happen, and needs time to deepen. Because of the language and culture difference locals and new inhabitants often don't interact much and some people can be very shy around each other. We managed to have a lot of locals with stands and as visitors, mixed in with the foreign crowd, and mixed visitors thanks to our careful promotion in both communities. I consider this point a very effective and very important step towards living together in peace and getting along between the different communities around here. I feel that the people in the local town hall are with us in this, and I'm glad it's that way. A whole lot of town hall folk appeared to have a look and buy trinkets. As for police, I didn't even notice them, but people reported they appeared once in the beginning, once at the end, stayed in the background and far out of the way, and left without bothering anyone during or after, as far as I'm aware.

So no concrete steps taken towards a cooperative as I have envisioned it, although we now consider forming one as a small family team for event organization, seems we've discovered a hidden talent. At same time the market as the most simple and unregulated of economical exchanges is clearly the way to go for now, without need to (immediately or ever) grow it into a factory sized project or a legal entity. I know myself to be a person to get hung up on formats, channels, ways of delivery, while missing the already there and the obvious. It must be an autism thing.

The immediate

So far it has been a great experience. It is funny how the initial project changed shape as needed. The market is hopefully to continue to happen every month, and other projects and ideas start growing out of this event as well. So picking a realistic scale can happen during the process, if you permit the process to remain flexible. In the moment the local community doesn't need or want a community center, but a spot to meet once a month to exchange news and goods in a relaxed festive atmosphere with good food and drink, and that's also the perfect place to mix and mingle among cultures and talk to and learn from each other. Seeds for further cooperation in the future are being planted like this in a fairly easy way.