Dear Courageous Commoners
We’re now three months into our Commons Hub project, three months right in the heart of summer. As we slowly approach autumn, we've taken a moment to reflect on our progress over these initial months and to identify the support we still need to turn this place into the thriving hub in Brussels we envision. In this newsletter, we also look ahead: a program is taking shape, new activity proposals are being debated enthusiastically, and partnerships are being forged.
And, the Open days are coming up! 27 and 28 of September we open our doors to curious visitors. The program is starting to look very promising! 🔥
On Friday, August 30th, we held our first quarterly community update to reflect on our progress and the decisions made to advance our project. In brief, the past few months can be summarized as follows:
Curious? You are very welcome to dive into the slide deck we created to give an overview. 👇🏾
https://pitch.com/embed-link/8eka42
The Commons Hub Brussels is, first and foremost, a location-based, physical, in-person community. Meeting together, starting projects together, and learning through the process are at the heart of what we do. In fact, it’s why we exist. However, we recognize that we live in the 21st century and that we are a community right in the heart of a thriving city center. The question of how to create a community that is accessible in various ways, with multiple entry points (both offline and online), is an ongoing conversation. This is particularly important because we have identified ‘participation’ as one of our five core values. Here's how we’ve defined this value:
👉🏼 Participation: Building a commons is not a spectator sport. We need everyone to make this space work, so we set up and experiment with various online and offline tools to make participating in and contributing to our commons both accessible and enjoyable. We honor the uniqueness of all members, acknowledging different ways of participating and contributing to the whole. We are all crew.
Honoring this value requires ongoing dialogue and engagement with the community about our chosen communication channels. As the description of our value ‘participation’ suggests, the diversity in our community is very tangible, and we strive to respect and include everyone. This diversity presents challenges, especially in the use of technology within our space. We are navigating a broad spectrum here. 🙂
From the very beginning—starting in the very first week—we’ve held weekly heartbeat meetings on Mondays. These meetings are one of the ways we uphold the value of participation within the community. They provide an entry point for the community to join conversations, make decisions together, discuss tensions, and share updates and ideas. We also have members who occasionally join remotely via Zoom, and the weekly notes ensure everyone has access to what’s been discussed.