EXCHANGING EXPERIENCES&DREAMS ABOUT COLLECTIVES&AGRO-ECOLOGICAL PROJECTS IN MY ENVIROMNENT

CONTEXT

I'm one of 4 people who want to discovering if and how we can ground/join an ecological farm collective. I will refer to this community as the VH (Vierkanthofgroup).

 I, and 2 other of the VH live also together with another person in an apartment, where we form one household with ecological concerns, although those are more important for the VH-group inside of it.  I will refer to this community as the WG (Wohngemeinschaft).

The VH started this summer some activities to explore the broad world of collectives and bio-farms, in order to:

- get a clearer view on the existing praxis of collectives with an agro-ecological dimension

- dreaming together as a group and creating a common vision

- sharpen our own dream, our own collective-project

In July 2014 the VH made a trip with bike and train to visit 3 projects (schloss-blumenthal.de; http://www.yamagishi.ch; http://www.hofallnewind.ch) that we selected in a guide on eco-villages ( http://www.eurotopia.de/). 2 of us participated at Los geht's in Österreich (http://losgehts2014.wordpress.com/ ). Together, we visited also the 2 fields of the parents of one of us, on which they start an agro-ecological project with the VH. And I'm participating here now at this GROWL-course, which included visits at one rural project (http://www.vevyweron.be/) and 2 urban ones (http://www.fermenospilifs.be/, http://www.haricots.org/).

As VH we should share our different experiences and reflect on them. This could maybe also inspire the whole WG to make further steps towards a "degrowth-household". So, we will, at the apartment have an exchange session with the VH and the WG together.

GOALS

-          exchange of different experiences in the VH on projects with an collective/and or agro-ecological dimension

-          introduce the degrowth framework

-          identify strongs, weaknesses, opportunities and challenges of projects in the perspective of degrowth

-          formulate desires are things to avoid (actions, properties…) for WG and VH

-          having fun and good feeling about WG and VH

METHODS&STEPS

-          Homework: each VH-member will get the task to make one or two mindmaps or clusters on a big paper (posters) about a concrete project or an aspects of collectives (based on the concrete exchange in Los Geht's). I will make also a poster about the concept of DEGROWTH.

-          Cooking&First Feelings: there has to be some cooking done and people will arrive at different times. During the cooking process, people put up their poster and the others could comment the posters by writing signs (?, emoticons ) on them. The posters should be made in one writing material f.e. markers; and the comments in another one, f.e. each participant gets a different crayon.   

-          Eating together

-          Checking in: everyone tells shortly how he/she feels, and what he/she expects from the evening.

-          Telling Stories: everyone alternately tells about his project/aspect, at the hand of the mindmap and asks about the comments or people react. The last one will be the degrowth poster.

-          SWOT-analysis: defining existing practices and conditions strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and challenges. Or we divide our little group up in 2, and discuss at the end the results of both groups, or we discuss with five. We putting the results on a big poster, divided up in the typical SWOT-square.

-          Desire/Avoid-analysis. Everyone gets a red and a blue or green pen. On the SWOT-square everyone writes down or marks what he see as the desire or as an "to avoid" for the WG or the VH. Starting with "WG:" or "VH:". Max. 3 desires and 3 avoids per person. We discuss the result, and note them.

-          Checking out: everyone tells shortly how he/she feels, and if the expectations where fulfilled.

-          Having a glass and even some crazy dancing