This morning we: @mariabyck , @antonioelettrico, @RitaO, @Lois, @Lucia, @Bembo Davies, @nathanairplane, me plus @Marc (who needed to leave early in a process) have met to review applications from our last call for residencies. We decided not to make any decisions on our own but to prepare clear proposal for all of us to review and hopefully agree on it together.
We focused on applications for June & July since currently we can only make commitments for that period of time. We also focused, according to the original intention of that call, on applications submitted by people who haven’t yet walk the path of an unMonasterian. Which means Juliana, Alessandra, Harry, Adil and Alex
We attempted to create a matrix of how submitted answers relate to 6 points of interest mentioned in the call. In that process we realized that we might have left space for certain ambiguity in the way we formulated those interests and the way information we requested suggests putting emphasis on them. We also realized that we may lack clarity on how many people we can accommodate in next two months, and the process of extending residencies for current unMonasterians.
Also during our meeting we discovered need to estimate feasibility of proposed projects and incorporate lessons from our experience of having more projects happening then people in the house. To make realistic estimate of willingness and capacity of Supporting, developing and collaborating on existing unMonastery projects we may need to enhance our application process to include clear (bulletpoints) requests of support from all the existing projects as well as invite people applying to add additional precise offers of support they can think of and feel excited to put out! When it comes to Supporting and contributing to development of the Cultural Program for Matera’s bid for Capital of Culture 2019 our friends at MT2019 committee seem to stay in best position to estimate this aspect of applications. Also in the spirit of in-kind support from the community we want to take more open perspective on fundraising to include, and possibly even emphasize, creative experiments with securing real world assets (products & services) through various other means, while still keeping monetary funds as pragmatic fallback.
Having all above in mind and still wanting to take care of the needs which originally motivated this call for applications we propose:
1. For now inviting only Juliana and Alessandra for residencies in June and July - They both:
- speak italian language
- lived in Matera for long or very long time and stay well connected with local community
- work on local social innovation projects preceding unMonastery:Matera - Casa Netural and Agri Netural
- stayed present in unMonastery in past months and participated in some of our developments in that time
2. Clarifying ASAP our capacity of accommodating people in next 2 months, by starting a focused workstream for it right away.
3. Based on experience from this process as well as the original applications of Matera pilot, propose clear, open and robust process for allocating all the rest of available residences among current unMonasterians interested in extending their stay as well as all the other people who replied to our current call.
We also see urgency to agree at least about inviting Alessandra and Juliana and notifying them by Tuesday (May 20th) morning. Keeping in mind that this way we leave them only 10 days to make all the arrangements they may need to make so that they can move in with the beginning of June!