Germination
The Collective House Assembly began as a series of meetings amongst coopers, activists, and anarchists in Boston in the summer of 2011, asking each other, “What could Boston’s collective houses do if we were united in a network together?” To answer that question we reached out to all the co-op houses we could find through friends, internet searches, and tracking down leads. We asked these other co-opers the same questions– What would you want from a network of co-ops? What would you have to share?
Then we chose a date and invited everyone interested to come out to a giant party. We’d have a potluck, tabling, housing boards, literature, and a facilitated brainstorm session to gather ideas and create something new through a collaborative process.
We named that event the Collective House Bash, booked a space, and hoped folks would show…
Bash Success!
Wow, what a day! Thanks everybody for coming! We had over 80 participants from over 23 co-ops, and that’s clearly only a small subset of the Boston co-op community…
People really seemed to get a lot out of the conversations, which continued for over 6 hours. The next event is sure to be really really big!
We’ll be updating the site with the ideas and next-steps that came out of the discussion, but for now, check out the pictures from the bash!
[invitation and facilitation notes]
Come to the first ever Boston-wide Collective House Bash on Saturday, September 10th 2011
- Time
- September 10, 2011 from 11:00 am to 5:00 pm
- Place
- Encuentro 5, 33 Harrison Ave, floor 5, Boston, MA 02111 (map)
- Who
- Housemates and friends from over 30 collective houses in the Boston metro area
- What
- Potluck from 11:00 am to 1:00 pm with meet & greet, tabling and presentations, musical performance at 1:30 and then structured brainstorming and group discussion from 2:00 pm to 5:00 pm
The Agenda
A grassroots planning effort has been underway for months, but a lot of the bash will rely on the attendees. We specifically are trying to provide a diversity of ways of sharing, networking and expressing.
| The Potluck 11am – 1pm |
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| Break 1pm – 2pm |
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| The World Cafe 2pm – 4pm |
Housemates will be encouraged to find a small table of people they haven’t met before, and then the assembly will be asked three open-ended questions for group brainstorming. Provisional questions:
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| Break-out Sessions 4pm – 5pm |
Once we determine the ideas, projects or issues that share the most momentum, we will allow for groups to organically form around these topics to talk about specific next-steps, plans and actions. |
We realize that unstructured brainstorming can be draining and ineffective. For the Co-op Bash we’re basing the brainstorming on the “World Cafe” model for effective and invigorating brainstorming; essentially here’s how it will work:
- Casual atmosphere
- We have 20+ tables available that can seat up to 6 people (or more if need be). This is the “cafe,” there is scrap paper, pens/pencils/markers and food at each table.
- Talk with new people
- We ask everyone to try and sit with 5 other people they don’t know. Then we give the first question:
- “What have you gained or learned through cooperative living?”
- Grow and harvest ideas
- Each group takes 15 minutes to introduce themselves and talk about the topic. Then the facilitators ask everybody to try to “sum up” their main points/themes to hand in in 5 minutes (that’s 20 minutes total).
…Then, 10 minute break. This 20-minute-talk-10-minute-break format happens two more times.
- “What can happen when Boston’s Co-ops come together?”
- “What are some societal challenges that co-ops can address?” (this one might change depending on the direction the discussion takes on the day of)
Meanwhile, volunteers collect the “summed up notes” and write up (on big paper pads) the major ideas/values that have come up. After all three question-breaks are over, and all three summaries have been put onto big pads and hung up, each person is given 5 post-it notes that they stick on the pads for the topics/ideas/projects they’re most interested in.
What this produces is a comprehensive list of the ideas that people came up with that day. Another millstonian is going to help make a tag cloud to accompany this final “post-it voting” portion, and then we have left the final hour (4-5) for “break-out” sessions.
Breakout session tables will be given three papers:
- Proposal
- What are the challenges or issues you’re addressing, and what are the solutions this project can provide?
- Next Steps
- What are some concrete next step actions to take (i.e. future meetings, resources to investigate)
- Contact List
- Who is interested in joining this “committee” as part of a collective house assembly?
At 5:00, we will go around and collect these papers (project proposals, next-steps and contact lists), and compile a report for the website, and set up one or more email lists and phone-number lists around each topic. We assume that at least one of these projects will contain a “next-step” action that’s a large co-op meeting.
