Project: Open living room 2.0
A communal living room with breakout spaces for peer learning. A prototype which anyone may freely apply in their own way.
For whom is it?
For the jobseeker who wakes up in the morning and would like to be where there are others. For the retiree, who has started feel bored. For the one on parental leave, who likes to explore a new milieu …
Everyone is welcome – silent or conversing – and if you one day start to feel boredom from “just being”, the breakout spaces are available …
Is the living room like … what?
Set up in an industrial building … When you open the front door, you enter a staircase with a sign on the wall …
As you’ve reached the upper floor, you enter a spacious room with couches, armchairs and side tables … On your right, you see an exercise mat area (tatami), which also has blankets and pillows. A relatively young man is stretching on the mats, and a couple of meters away from him sits an older lady reading a book …
On a wall behind you, you notice some sort of bulletin board …….
“Those rooms are for everyone,” the lady reading a book says. “If you want to offer something, you tape a notice onto an open slot.” … A moment later, she adds: “It can be a discussion, an activity or whatever you like” …
“On Tuesdays, there’s been a peer support group for people who are starting their own business,” says the guy stretching. “And the room behind that door is good for working out” …
“Starting next month members can enter in the evenings and on weekends using their own electronic key—provided they’ve set up a user agreement,” the lady says. “Then you can host your own event in a breakout space, if it’s open to others and non-commercial—and you can spend time in the couch and coffee room.”
A 39 000 euro challenge
In Porvoo’s Tarmola we have found a space so ready that it is difficult to know what to say …
To make a bid for the lease we need 39 000 euro, which allows us to pay the agreed 12 minimum months. Even with a decent rent—6,90 €/m²/kk + vat, it’s a big amount. At this point (Oct 24) we have accumulated donations and membership fees of:
[ 145 euro ]
The amount is updated daily … For every inch forward, yeeehaa!
Is this completely ridiculous?
Deeper:
Cost breakdown
We aim for a pilot period hosted by a full-time “gardener” for two years. To fully implement the project, approximately 220,000 euro is required.
What is the logic for covering costs now and in the future?
In the long run through membership fees, in the beginning through membership fees, donations, and grants …
As the end of the pilot period (2 years) approaches and the living room is functioning, it is sustained by membership fees, like an association-based gym. At that point, activities have extended to weekends and evenings, and for local community activity, the living room has become one of the interfaces …
Our current ideal vision towards the final stages of the project is an active membership having established an association to continue the operations.
The living room will be reality to the extent that normal persons have decided to breathe life into it in their own way. The first milestone, 39 000 euro, will show whether there is a root and what kind – is it 3 000 supporting members, one single patron or something in between … or will it remain an idea waiting for its time …?
We have applied for a grant to cover salary costs, which is expected to be decided in December. If we do not receive the grant but have the rent covered, the space will be open to the extent that volunteer power has made it happen. Once the living room has fostered a core community, it will be possible to organize conferences for fundraising purposes. They can be conferences for our community locally and – conferences based on “our” potluck logic for a wider range of participants.
Thoughts from the association’s Chairperson: Why do I do this?
It’s the place I wanted when I was a newly registered unemployed jobseeker. I know being in a space with others can be medicine. I also know that there are mornings when you simultaneously want to stay in bed and be out among people. Here you can (almost) do that.
I know also in a good place, a sense of boredom can set in after some time – “would be nice to do something” – preferably with someone else and something meaningful. The feeling of having been useful to someone, even if only in a conversation …
An essential dimension is embodiment as a gateway to wellbeing. There exercise mats with rugs and pillows let me know I can lay me down, and the adjacent “embodiment room” features a larger tatami area and tools that allow what my body is asking for. I can put on music, roll around on the mats, and exert my muscles as much as feels right …
And then society …. when I wish to see the whole local community ascend, I want to start at “ground level,” where I meet the one outside of work life, including retirees. When I am part of something, I have something to care for and contribute to. And when I wish to support acting responsibly, I want participating to be available, flexible and rewarding. In our living room, “everything” is at my disposal, and at the same time everything is brought by regular guests like an eternal potluck. If I crave a specific “dish,” the question is: Do I care about it enough to prepare it, or to ask if someone will join me in it ……. ?
What am I most excited about? To see it fly and see the amendments we made along the way. I have experience from all “building blocks” of the prototype, but not all of them together. If I think about my own “dream moment”, it would be a moment when the space is leased and available, the association has its own electric van, and one early morning I set out towards recycling stores for the first hunt for furniture …..
Music Video
Finally, a video we made for the whole world to support the endeavour. It might convey a sense of the feeling we have towards it. Thank you for your time!