Reporting from Molenbeek

If you’re looking for speculations on why Molenbeek is such a hotbed for terrorism, read no further, this post is not for you. This is the complementary information to the news that you’ve been reading: the daily life, the vibe, the ways that Edgeryders can get involved in this municipilaty being portrayed (not entirely unfairly) as being rich in poverty and crime.

I’m a local from Brussels, my grandparents are from Molenbeek, I’ve lived close to it most of my life and wrote my thesis on the intentional gentrification that is currently taking place. Yesterday @ireinga and I had a meeting in LaVallée, a 5000 m² co-working space for artist, to discuss whether LOTE5 could happen in their premises.

This is us on our way there,


This is LaVallée’s entrance (it’s a collection of buildings, hard to show an overview on picture without disposing of our helicopter),


And this are Lieza and Pierre, managers of the place and employees of Smartbe, an organisation that gives juridical, financial and administrative support to artists and creative professionals:


The reason we are interested in LaVallée for LOTE5 is because 1) we like the vibe and 2) as we stupidly only realized during the meeting, Smartbe can be a strategic partner for LOTE, as one of the topics will be unfailing failures in creative industries.

First, let’s show you the vibe. The place has loads of artists workspaces which we obviously can’t freely access, but it also has expo rooms that also serve as event halls. These are quite versatile, as currently they look like this:



But during a FuckUp Night that @ireinga and I organized there in September it looked like this:


We talked to Pierre and Lieza about our needs for LOTE and had to conclude that LaVallée is actually not very suited. It doesn’t have a real kitchen and due to its thick concreet walls internet connection is minimal. The good news, however, is that they love the LOTE5 concept and they have other buildings available in Saint-Gilles (15-20 minutes away by metro). They proposed that perhaps we can have LOTE partly in Saint-Gilles, Partly in Molenbeek, but that they would have to check with the Smartbe bosses to see whether it would be possible and at which price.

Irene went with Lieza to see the rooms and Saint-Gilles and came to the conclusion that it could work - it’s not our dream luxury resort, but it has bigger rooms, smaller rooms, two kitchens, we could be there late during the evenings and it comes with a guaranteed stable internet connection.

Here are some images:








And here’s the news: we just heard back from Pierre that Smartbe is enthusiast and up for being a strategic partner - meaning that they want to learn with us how we can fail and unfail creative industries, and for that they don’t mind supporting us with their premises.

Nothing is set in stone and we are not obliged to take the deal, but to us it doesn’t seem like the worst proposition.

What do you guys think?

Looking forward to your reactions!

Kira

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Way to go!

These seem excellent news. Well done, AntiHeroes!

The more I think of it, the more I love the idea of having some kind of presence in Molenbeek. The Edgeryders experience in a nutshell is this: where there is a crisis, you can bet that something interesting, something worth believing in and being close to. A party, maybe?

How can we hook up with the newly arrived Syrians?

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Tricky one

The newly arrived Syrians are mostly camping out in the WTC buildings (or being spread out over the country)

Molenbeek =  where non-Syrians leave from to go fight in Syria

Come on

I know about Molenbeek. smiley What I mean is: your parents where able to reach out to Syrians in town. So was Joannes. This means that a channel is there, and relatively accessible.

My parents and Joannes too I think

Just went up to the Maximiliaanpark when they were still there in tents.

Nowadays it won’t be that much harder to go to WTC building and find people to talk to (I ment to say that this is not in Molenbeek)

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Note for the communication team

@KiraVde @ireinga @Noemi @Nadia

As you know, some of us are currently streaming the Edgeryders social media feed into their Twitter/Facebook/Linkedin accounts via Twitterfeed.

This post is an example of NOT explicative title. “Reporting from Molenbeek” is context-intensive: it assumes a context, whereby people know that someone was going to Molenbeek, and what for. But if you see it on a Twitter stream…


I have included some advice for the social media coordinators in my instructions wiki: https://edgeryders.eu/en/edgeryders-dev/using-twitterfeed-for-distributed-social-media-presen-0

I don’t understand

Whether it’s a good thing that it’s context-intensive or not…?

Bad

Context-intensive is economic (thus good) within-team, where people share a context. So it makes sense to offload to the context some of the communication. But for outreach I do not think it’s good. Imagine somebody who does not know you seeing your tweet because someone who she does know retweeted it. She is going to be “huh?” and move on. Nothing latches on to her interests, unless maybe she happens to be in Molenbeek.

We need to think of post titles as tweets, like “We are hiring! Drupal developer wanted to improve our community website” and “Edgeryders and unMonastery: what changes and what remains the same” (neither was streamed on the social media feed). See also this comment from Noemi.

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St Gilles

Kira, Irene, Brussels is of course your terrain and the decision should follow your judgement… but from the looks of it the space in St Gilles seems quite flexible. And two kitchens is THE asset. How many does it holds? Even if we end up using both this and LaVallée, the first needs to hold us all during the day sessions at least.

And then of course, what would be the deal, how much for how many, under what terms?Thanks for reporting back, great work you two.

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Everything is discussable

But from what I understood, if smartbe becomes a strategic partner we don’t have to pay for their premises. This implies that we have to indluce creative industries into the program, so that there is something for them to learn.

The location in Saint-Gilles can host up 170 people if I’m not mistaken.

@ireinga can you confirm/correct?

Plenaries might be tight

The biggest space in Saint Gilles hosts 130 people sitting, but I need to admit it is not as charming then the biggest space in Molenbeek (which can host 150/200 easily). The internet connection is of course an issue, they have very thick walls that don’t quite allow wifi to be widespread (the place used to be an industrial laundry and the room itself a MiddleEastern fabrics market), but I was wondering whether we wouldn’t be able to put together our best LAN experts to find a solution or bring many routers from home (?).

Also, we’re meeting again in order to fix “which places and when” soon enough so a first draft of the programme needs to appear before 2016. It was already planned but for us to remember.

More positive Molenbeekien news today:

  • we would love to get on board a super nice Syrian caterer, Dum Tek Veg (you can get English subtitles), I just met in Le Space (border hype Dansaert and Molenbeek where someone already put a replica of Checkpoint Charlie), in case we want to stay 2 days in Molenbeek and 2 days in Saint Gilles he could help out with the kitchen facilities and cook with us delicious food. All to be confirmed but let’s prepare for glorious hummous!

  • you can read about Molenbeek with a facet more: Rock the Canal!

Since the end of the 1970s, the canal area in Brussels has been an innovative setting for avant-gardist artistic creation in the area of non-traditional music, contemporary dance, theatre research and multidisciplinary and digital performances. 

Molenbeek has been a hub for rock, punk, jazz, rap, electronica, funk, world and folk and much more. Bands like Joy Division played during William Burroughs visit to Brussels in '79. Just an image you wouldn’t associate to what you’re hearing from the news during these days.

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Hey hey

I was just in a bus from utrecht to brussels and guess what. I met a guy who is in charge of cultural work in the municipality in Forest. He is young, he spent many years volunteering and working abroad (with refugees in Poland for example) and well, it seems that there is a chance to cheaply use their venue - huge, well equipped, with a kitchen. If you haven’t decided for anything yet, he is checking now availability and prices and he will get to me back soon. He would be also interested in joining the event - and maybe, if we take the space, creating a cooperative part of the event that would involve the local community. It sounded very promissing and quite doable - and it might even overlap with a event when they prepare carnival costumes in Forest.Another thing I got to know is that there is the biggest Japanese community in that area - possible interesting group to reach out to. With Sandre’s help that sound doable.

Let me know what you think @ireinga @KiraVde

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Would be very cool

The house and office is in Forest and it would be really great to do something in the neighborhood. Plus the additional community engagement would be great. Had no idea about the Japanese community, must be in a different part of the municipality. I could visit it in person and check connectivity etc. Let me know?

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