On Monday August 12th I started the COST Training School for Platform Design and the Caring Economy in Aarhus, Denmark. As part of this program, we travelled to a cohousing community outside the city of Aarhus, so we could see the ‘caring economy’ in action. This cohousing community was called Andelssamfunded i Hjortshøj (AIH), where there are approximately 300 residents, including 100 children. The community was first established in the 1990’s with a vision to build and live sustainably, which they do to a remarkable degree. The original houses in this development were constructed using sea shells for a foundation, mud from the dig out as walls, and the structure of the house was made from an oily wood. Rain water is collected by this community and used in washing, in toilets, and for most other tasks that require a source of water. Solar panels can be seen on the multiple common houses across the community. The community of AIH are avid farmers, and quite self-sufficient with food grown on the land lasting them year-round. There is a shelter to store food and plenty of land to grow numerous crops, as well as lots of residents that enjoy taking care of the food. They also have cows, goats, pigs and chickens, but in recent weeks all 200 of the chickens were killed by an unknown animal, despite the electric fences surrounding their land and mobile enclosure. On the day of our visit the pigs had been moved to the shady forest as the sun was high in the sky and the community were concerned about the pigs getting sunburned. We did get the opportunity to meet the community goats though: The community live by the philosophy that you should only do something or be part of something if you want to be, which is evident in all of the activities they undertake together. There are tens of different groups, each undertaking different tasks. Groups range from driving tractors to growing willow for basket making. Most community members are part of multiple groups, but they stress that this is only because they want to be. They make it clear that there is no ‘obligation’ to do anything in the community, even in your own common areas, but most residents enjoy getting involved in as much as they can; they live in this community because they enjoy the sociability of the lifestyle. Each housing block has a different way of doing things, different ownership models, frequency of communal meals and various ‘unwritten rules’. In terms of communal meals, residents decide when they want to eat together, and there is a calendar or book in the common houses used to organise this. In the particular housing group we were touring with, the residents (30-40 people) eat together twice a week. AIH also includes a block for residents of a local ‘institution’ for those with disabilities. The people that live in AIH from the institution are considered to be ‘too abled’ for live-in institutions, and others are ‘too disabled’ for regular public schools (etc.) but they are capable of living in this community with the assistance of neighbours and occasional visits from employees of the institution. There is also a local shop on site which was deemed necessary by the institution as some of the residents from the institution often found tasks such as taking the bus to go shopping to be difficult, so they opened a shop with a bakery on the premises. The shop is run on a voluntary basis and is open for a couple of hours four days a week, stocking a wide range of products. There is also a clothes repair shop and bike repair shop in the community. The community use an online mailing system to coordinate and share information across housing groups and task groups. The responsibilities of each member are self-selected, which goes back to their philosophy that you should only do what you want to do in the community. When they first began this endeavour their vision was that members would work 20 hours per week outside of the community in their regular jobs, and then work another 20 hours work per week within the community, however this was ultimately not feasible. The community is mixed in terms of their employment status; full time, part time, retirees, children and those from the institution. There is no shared salary or financial connection between community members, apart from the annual contribution given at the AGM. There is financial inequality within the community, but we were told that this doesn't affect community life.
Overall it was quite inspiring to visit such a vibrant and successful community. This community embodies the concept of the caring economy, and I think there are many lessons to be learned from AIH. From their efforts to live sustainably, to their community spirit and philosophy of life, they are a unique community that Ireland - and others - could learn so much from.
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I have just returned from C&T 2019 which was held in Vienna, Austria. I really enjoyed my time at this conference, the crowd in attendance were wonderful and the presentations were so varied but all very interesting. It's clear that there are a lot of excellent researchers doing fantastic and interesting work!
I met quite a few people from all over Europe that were either living in a collaborative housing development, researching cohousing or were just interested in the topic overall. It was great to hear different perspectives on the topic, and hopefully there will be some research collaborations in the future! I attended the conference from Tuesday to Friday, and presented on Friday afternoon. If you'd read my previous post about my paper acceptance you'd know that I was quite nervous and worried about presenting, but it turns out there was no need to be! Once I was mic'd up and had practiced it over and over (in my head) it all went quite well. We even got a chance to answer some questions. So, you can now find our publication here: https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3328397 Also, if you want some small tips about a short break to Vienna: - Take the CAT train from the Airport to the City; traffic can be heavy and the train is a smooth and hassle-free way to get into the centre of the city - Get the 24/48/72 hour transport ticket to last your entire stay; the underground system in Vienna will take you almost anywhere you want to go in the city. I used it every day to get to and from the conference and didn't have a single issue - I would recommend going to a concert if there are some on there during your stay. I went to the Vivaldi concert in Karlskirche and it was amazing - For a budget stay, I would highly recommend the Hotel Pension Continental - breakfast was included in and it was in a great shopping area. Also, the beds were the comfiest I've slept in for ages, I got a great few nights sleep - At this time of year it's very warm, so there's no need for jeans... On Saturday 11th May the Cohousing Cafe came to the FabLab in Limerick City. The event was organised by SOA Research, Collaborative Housing Limerick, and the wonderful people at the FabLab. This is the second such cafe that SOA Research have hosted, the first of which took place in Dublin in February 2019. The idea of the cohousing cafe is to bring together all individuals, groups and companies interested in creating cohousing communities in Ireland. At the cafe there were plenty of discussions surrounding cohousing, housing co-operatives and other forms of collaborative housing. The crowd was diverse and came from the various cities and counties of Ireland. It was wonderful to see such similar outlooks on collaborative housing models, and there was a clear desire to create a cohousing community in Ireland.
The event received wonderful reviews, and another Cohousing Cafe is definitely on the cards. Watch this space. Although I am over a year into my PhD, until now I had not submitted anything for a conference. So, I decided that the research I have been doing to date should finally be put out there for discussion and review, and I thought that the Communities and Technologies conference would be a great place to do this. The conference is due to take place in Vienna, Austria, this June. I submitted a short paper (with my supervisor as co-author) for the conference in mid-late March, and I have just received confirmation that it was accepted! Exiting stuff! Kind of..
As luck would have it my literature review was due to be submitted on the same date as the reviewed and updated conference paper. I could already feel myself becoming overwhelmed. My experience so far with my PhD has led me to find that there are two polar opposite 'states of work' I find myself in. The first is relaxed, easy enough days at work when there are no deadlines breathing down my back and I have the opportunity to explore and ponder various things like my field work and literature. Then there are days when it feels like the world has fallen on top of my shoulders and everything is happening at the same time, leaving me feeling stressed, overwhelmed and confused. Needless to say the updated conference paper deadline combined with my literature review deadline had me in the second state of work. I often find myself confused about priorities, with my head feeling split in two, three, four.. each part focusing on a different task and yet combining into one stream of thought. This is not helpful. But it's the way my mind works these days. This isn't always the way it worked, but neurological conditions can do that to you. When I have time I will make another blog post about it (and link it here), but I'll continue with my conference acceptance story for now! So, I've received acceptance and I'll be going to Vienna. Great! I've a) never been to a conference outside of Ireland and b) never been to Vienna, so I was (and am) delighted. Finally I've got something to show for the work I've been doing. But first we (my supervisor/co-author and I) would have to rewrite it and integrate the feedback of the reviewers. The paper was reviewed and the comments were generally ok; the negatives they pointed to were both understandable and easily fixable. We had about two weeks to do it, so I was not overly concerned. I set aside time in the next couple of days to re-read the reviewers feedback and find areas in our paper where their concerns can be addressed. Then, we started to rewrite. All was going fine, until I find out that the paper is actually going to have to be reformatted/translated to LaTeX - essentially code that makes a fancy PDF with embedded metadata. I had never heard of LaTeX until then, but (unwisely) I assumed it wouldn't be that complicated, surely a PDF is a PDF and it's easy enough to do? Nope. I was wrong. Very, very wrong. Let this blog post be a warning to anybody else submitting papers to conferences - start working on the LaTeX version as soon as possible. It'll take at least a day if not more to turn your basic document into a LaTeX submission, so don't leave it until the last day(s). Between getting to grips with the software that creates LaTeX submission and referencing your various sources and turning those into BibTeX references, it's not an easy day at the office. But, we did it! My office-mate says I work best when I'm 'cornered like a rat', and honestly, I think he's right. Nothing makes me work harder than a deadline. With everything submitted all I have to do now is prepare my 10 minute presentation. That's the other thing that caused me to qualify my excitement at the beginning of this post; I get a tad (a lot) nervous presenting so while I am delighted that my paper was accepted, I'm already dreading the actual presentation. Yes, I'm sure I'll have it rehearsed 1,000 times before I actually take to the (stage? podium? I've clearly never done this...) but I'll be fighting every natural urge to run in order to do it. I'm sure there's a huge part of that nervousness that's a lack of self-confidence, but I where better to start building up my confidence as a competent researcher than in front of a crowd of academics. The C&T conference is due to take place in Vienna on June 4th - 7th, so I'll be sure to write an update when I'm back. On February 21st Collaborative Housing Limerick hosted a workshop entitled “Developing Our Collaborative Housing Vision” at the Urban Co-Op, Limerick. Following the successful public meeting we held in January, we felt the need to maintain momentum and to assess our overall vision for collaborative housing in Limerick. We decided a workshop would be the best method for collating the ideas of the group, allowing individuals and groups to discuss their wants and needs, and ultimately sharing their thoughts with us in the hope that we could find some consensus. The overall aim of this workshop was to help us produce a ‘Vision Document’ (which is still in the works!) that we can give to a range of individuals and organisations in the near future, potentially seeking assistance and support with this endeavour. Materials and Activities Instead of gathering together for a couple of hours to discuss these individual aspirations, we thought that producing materials to spark discussions on specific topics would lead to a more fruitful, focussed discussion. The materials we created included a survey, presentations, posters and question cards. We also brought along post-it notes and Lego. The Lego was distributed across the four tables for the workshop and the participants could use it if they wished to build a model of their ideal cohousing community. Bundles of post it notes were also left on the tables to be utilised for one of the activities outlined below. The first activity of the workshop was inspired by the ‘One Shared House 2030’ survey. We created our own survey which covered aspects such as desired location, demographics of the community and shared resources, and each participant was asked to fill one in. We thought this would give the participants the opportunity to understand the topics we hoped to touch on over the course of the evening. Each participant was asked to fill out a survey, which would remain anonymous. We collected the surveys at the end of this activity and are currently sifting through them! For our second activity, a ‘post-it note brainstorming’ session, we had blank posters on the wall, each with a different title, for example ‘Transport’, ‘Shared Spaces’, ‘Private Spaces’, etc. We then invited the participants to take a bundle of post-it notes and write their visions, desires, wants, likes or dislikes, and stick these to the appropriate poster. Participants could write as much or as little as they wanted, but it appeared that most participants included at least 2-3 post-it notes on each poster. Opinions on each topic varied, and some participants revisited posters multiple times to see what opinions others had. The ideas of others often sparked thoughts and discussions around the posters. We asked the participants to sit back down whenever they felt they had exhausted their ideas on each topic, so we spent approximately half an hour on this activity. We had prepared some presentations, so these were given following the post-it note brainstorming session. The presentations covered successful cohousing communities across the world, the work of the Collaborative Housing Limerick group, and information on the costs relating to developing housing. We hoped that these presentations would show what we could do and what our community could achieve if we were successful in our collaborative housing endeavour, while also grounding the group in the work done to date, and potential financial and developmental hurdles to overcome if we were to be successful. The final activity of the workshop asked participants a set of questions in relation to their ‘needs’ and ‘haves’, so what they need or would like in a cohousing community, and what they have that could contribute to their community. A set of ten cards were handed out to each participant, five yellow to represent their wants/needs and five blue to represent their haves. The participants were invited to fill out these yellow and blue question cards anonymously, lay them face down in the middle of their tables, and when everybody was finished the group would shuffle their collective cards and read out the variety of answers. These questions and answers were used to spark discussion between groups, and some came to a consensus on topics like shared meals. Response The participants’ response to the workshop was largely positive. All four tables appeared to have flowing discussions on the suggested topics as well as a variety of related topics like housing affordability in Limerick. One issue raised by a participant was that we did not get a chance as a large group to discuss the post-it note brainstorm session outcome, i.e., what was written on the posters. Each participant got to see others’ responses as they were writing, but we did not have an opportunity to discuss them once the task was over, due to time constraints. Ideally we would have discussed the outcomes of this session with the group, but we do hope to discuss the outcomes at our upcoming group meeting(s) which are open to the public. Meetings are announced on the Collaborative Housing Limerick website, the Facebook Group, and on the Collaborative Housing Limerick section of this website. Outcomes As previously mentioned, the overall aim of this workshop was to contribute to producing a ‘Vision Document’. As of writing, I am currently working my way through the material produced by the workshop participants, so we hope to start creating our Vision Document collaboratively over the course of the next month or two. Preliminary findings will be discussed with the group in the March meet-up, which will be taking place at the Absolute Hotel on March 23rd at 11am. We also hope that the information collated and analysed will give an overview of the wants, needs, likes and dislikes of the group so we can be more strategic and focused in our meetings going forward. Thank you! A huge thank you to the team at the Urban Co-Op for providing us with a space to use and wonderful hospitality. Thank you to all who attended the workshop for your insights and opinions. On January 24th the Collaborative Housing Limerick group held a public meeting in the Urban Co-Op entitled "Exploring Alternative Housing Solutions: Collaborative Housing". The purpose of this meeting was; to publicise the work of the Collaborative Housing Limerick group, to gauge public interest in collaborative housing models, to provide a forum for the public to ask speakers about their work, and to understand the wants and needs of both the individuals in attendance and the speakers (which included architects and developers) when creating a collaborative housing model. The meeting was structured into three rounds, with time for discussion in between each round. The event was recorded, and so each of the speakers (including myself) can present their work to you now: Presentation 1 Davie Philip, Cloughjordan Cohousing, Cultivate Living and Learning Housing Ourselves: Community-led approaches cultivate.ie www.thevillage.ie Bio: Davie Philip has spent the last 22 years actively promoting the ideas of sustainable communities in Ireland. He is a founding member of Sustainable Projects Ireland, the company behind the ecovillage project in Cloughjordan, Co. Tipperary where he is now based. Davie hosts events and facilitates groups working on collaborative approaches to help their localities flourish through the Resilience Lab at Cultivate Living and Learning, a co-operative that he co-founded with Ben Whelan in 2000. Presentation 2 Kim O’Shea, Interaction Design Centre, UL The Lived Experience: A Field Trip to Aarhus www.idc.ul.ie Bio: Kim O'Shea is a second year PhD student in the University of Limerick. She is studying the cohousing movement and aims to create a resource to allow collaborative housing action groups in Ireland to collaborate, and share knowledge and experiences. Presentation 3 Hugh Brennan, Ó Cualann Co-housing Alliance Affordable Housing – (It’s NOT) a complex issue ocualann.ie Bio: Hugh Brennan co-founded Ó Cualann Co-housing Alliance with William Black in 2014. Hugh had studied Civil/Structural Engineering in DIT Bolton St., has 30 experience years in construction including 10 years on housing and sanitation in South Africa & in Haiti. Ó Cualann “Building communities – not just houses” has developed a model for integrated, cooperative, affordable homes, privately funded, that can be replicated and scaled around the country. Presentation 4 Sonja Graf, Cotati Cohousing It Takes a Village: Growing up in Community www.cotaticohousing.org Bio: Sonja Graf has lived in intentional community since she was a young child. Growing up in Northern California, her family participated in the development of a successful cohousing community which was established in 2003. She has since then spent two years in Lebensgarten Ecovilllage in Germany, where her parents still live, and at the age of 16 she moved to Auroville, an intentional community in southern India. She is now completing her A in Ethnochoreology at UL. Presentation 5 Sarah Newell, Limerick City and County Council Snapshot of Housing in Limerick *the Affordability Challenge* Bio: Sarah Newell has in excess of 13 years experience in urban and regional planning. With qualifications in Planning, Architecture and Public Management, her work experience to date has encompassed three strands of mutually supportive work - private consultancy, semi-state and public sector service. She currently is on assignment from the Housing Agency, Dublin, to Limerick City and County Council to manage and implement the Rebuilding Ireland and Limerick Regeneration programmes. Presentation 6 Rosie Webb, Limerick City and County Council Renewal in the Historic Georgian Neighborhood cityxchange.eu, adaptivegovernancelab.wordpress.com Bio: Rosie Webb is the Senior Architect in Economic Development at Limerick City and County Council. She leads programmes of work to stimulate and consolidate the historic city centres of Limerick City, its towns and villages. She provides strategic vision and plan implementation using projects, programmes and initiatives dedicated to place-making and physical development. She is also a lecturer at the School of Architecture at University of Limerick and founder of the Adaptive Governance Lab at SAUL. Her research at the AGL focuses on testing new ways to build strong community networks for greater citizen involvement to influence the design and operation of shared public spaces. Presentation 7 Padraig Flynn, SOA Research Learning from Berlin: Ground-Up and Top-Down approaches to CoHousing in Ireland. www.soa.ie Bio: Padraig Flynn is an architect and co-founder of SOA Research. SOA is a non-profit action research collaborative formed to develop possibilities for self-organised housing in Ireland. SOA are planning a number of events in 2019 to explore and promote the oppotunities for CoHousing and Community Land Trust initiatives here. Presentation 8 Lindsay Mitchell and Áine Nic Charthaigh, Collaborative Housing Limerick Collaborative Housing and Limerick: Some Explorations www.collaborativehousinglimerick.ie www.facebook.com/cohousinglimerick Bios: Lindsay Mitchell has been interested in cohousing for a long time and has welcomed the opportunity to be part of Collaborative Housing Limerick. She came to the Limerick area from Scotland over 40 years ago and her hope is that the time is now right for the creation of one or more collaborative housing projects in Limerick. She works as a psychotherapist in Limerick City and is currently involved with a community planning group in North Clare and creative textile groups. Áine Nic Charthaigh lives in Limerick with her dad and teenage daughter. She lived as part of the Cloughjordan eco neighbourhood for a year and is very interested in seeing collaborative housing models created in or near urban areas. She works in the field of education and is involved in climate change and sustainability projects in her daughter's school. |
AuthorI graduated with a Masters in Research from the University of Limerick. My topic of research is cohousing. This blog documents my research and any news articles related to collaborative housing. Archives
August 2019
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