Samenhuizen, the Flemish organisation that promotes cohousing, is organising their annual meetup on 10 December 2022 in Mechelen.
The event is the equivalent of the Salon de l’Habitat Groupé in Brussels: it’s a networking event where you can find several cohousing groups and professionals (coaches etc) and where you can attend some workshops (in Dutch).
If there would be 2-3 volunteers who would be willing to join I would like to set up a stand for The Reef there, not so much in view of recruiting anybody but more to make ourselves known. I’ll put it in the to do list for Team External Relations.
On Facebook Samenhuizen has launched a call to send in suggestions for workshops and lectures that we would find useful. I would like to respond on behalf of The Reef, so if anybody has some ideas, feel free to post them in the thread below.
These are my ideas so far:
Inclusion: what can we learn from other groups? (both with regard to the human aspect as to the financial and legal one)
A hybrid model mixing a coopropriété and a cooperative: which advantages and disadvantages?
The legal aspects of cohousings: intro for dummies (lecture by a notary)
Building a cohousing: from building a group to building the building - overview of the main steps for dummies
Your suggestions make sense. They are demand-driven, in the sense that they are the lectures I would personally like to hear… which does not mean I (or we) would be able to give them. But perhaps Samenhuizen can find the speakers.
Yes, that’s exactly the idea (even though I’m playing with the idea of offering to give a workshop myself, maybe on documenting and committing to open source?)
On another topic, reading through the preferences for the Teams I think I’d like to add an introduction to deep democracy to the list. Even if not all people in Team Facilitation speak Dutch, we can brief back about what we learned.
Loving the look of that!
Would really like to go, but already have quite a comitment on that day
I might sign up for the visit, but I’ll have to check if that works. Also it would depend if some other people would also like to go and share a car, it might be a bit complicated otherwise… So wait and see what other responses there are!
This event is only going to be in Dutch, so it may be a bit difficult if your Dutch is rudimentary. But it’s not an essential thing, so no need to worry.
I don’t really feel well placed or equipped to represent The Reef yet (had to miss the get to know each other workshop and only attended one plenary at this point), so I think I’ll skip on taking a shift at the table. Or at least, not a solo shift without a more experienced Reefling by my side.
But! Going and talking to some people there does seem like a nice way to get inspired. So I’ll be joining you! I can only be there from about 11h-11h15, though. I was thinking of following these:
11.30u-12.30u, panel: ervaringsdeskundigen aan het woord
12.30u-13.30u, workshop: kies je buren → depending on what exactly that workshop entails. There no actual info on it
14u-15u, panel: cohousing & architectuur
15u-16u, lezing: circulair bouwen
Also, I’m a native Dutch speaker, so I could also take non-native speakers’ questions with me.
Ok, great that you’re going. For our table though I think I’m going to cancel: we are not enough (I would rather not go myself, need to preserve my energy a bit) and we are not taking on new members anyway.
Just a heads-up if anyone is counting on me going: atm I’m have a baaaad cold. If by the weekend I’m still sneezing & coughing all over the place, I’ll be skipping the Samenhuizen day after all.
@Dave_behave, I cancelled The Reef’s table at the info fair, but the event is still on of course.
If you have the time I can only recommend it. Especially the visit to Cohousing Gumm in the morning may be very interesting. This is a group that renovated a church, and so they have a super large multi-purpose room that they intend to use together with the neighourhood.
I’m still quite under the weather, so I won’t be able to make it or be your buddy sadly. Last I checked the visit to Gumm was already fully booked too btw!
