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.
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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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