Thanks to Commons Lab I had the opportunity, at the invitation of Commons Network, to join the European Municipalist Network (EMN) kick-off meeting in Berlin from 13th to 14th October 2022.

The EMN is an informal network and collective strategy which was formed in 2019 to strengthen Europe's emerging municipalist ecosystem and its capacity for social and political advocacy. Municipalism is a political system of self-government at the local level, such as of a city or township. The EMN organized the meeting together with Commons Network, who became a coordinating partner of the EMN in 2021. Commons Network is a collaboratory for the social and ecological transition that brings people and ideas togethers and provides tools, strategies and insights for social movements, governments and community groups.

To prepare for the meeting, I was given several books about municipalism, commons and ecofeminism. Two of the given books were written by Walter Lotens of which one - Rebelse Plekken or Rebellious Places - was about a search for new initiatives at odds with dominant neoliberal thinking and the basis of municipalism. The books gave a clear basis to build my knowledge on.

Having fully immersed myself in these new concepts, I could not wait to travel by train to Berlin to meet the other participants. Besides me representing Commons Lab, twenty other people participating in social movements and political platforms across Europe were also invited, namely people from Nantes en Commun (France), Zagreb Je Nas (Croatia), Verdedig Noord (The Netherlands), Solidarity Against Neoliberal Extremism (Scotland), Commons Network (The Netherlands), Research for Action and Open democracy (UK),  L’Asilo (Italy),  Berlin Munis (Germany)  and Commonspolis (Spain). It promised to be an exciting meeting to share experiences and thoughts on care practices and municipalism.

During the event, several workshops, panels and informal dinners were organized to share political experiences and analysis. Starting with an informal meeting on Thursday evening in Ada Bar where everyone introduced themselves. I highly recommend this bar as it has a great atmosphere, an amazing interior and a friendly staff that serves the best cocktails. Afterwards, an informal dinner was planned to get to know each other even better.

After breaking the ice on Thursday evening, a first kickoff meeting, organized by Commons Network, was planned on Friday morning in Moos space, a beautiful space located in the former bathtub factory Moosdorf & Hochhäusler. The purpose of the meeting was to share valuable skills with each other, because skill sharing is a practical and useful way to bring people together, and build networks while moving the community towards self-reliance and resilience.

During the session several issues and topics were defined by sharing experiences, tools, challenges and opportunities in a peer to peer approach. The session was divided into five parts, with the aim of ending with a list of requests and offers on which Commons Network will document and organize, together with participants that want to contribute, a series of online skill sharing sessions in January. Some requests that were selected are how to deliver political education, how to connect to people, how to transform short term goals to long term goals, how to mobilize youth, and how to feminize the organization. Some of the offers of the participants were how to build coops, media presence and storytelling and how to use the law creatively. The session facilitated peer to peer exchange and produced outputs to further disseminate skills, collective imaginaries and discourse. In that way, toolkits or guides can be built to share the skills, methodologies and experiences which were identified during the session with a wider community. At the end of the session, people were already thinking about how to share information with the outside world. In doing so, a multimedia approach via Podcasts, Instagram, YouTube, Telegram channel etc. was cited as an ideal approach to share information with the broader public. Participants also stressed the importance of having money left over for translation, the strength of visualization and the need of having different levels of information sharing so that both beginners and experts can learn.

In the afternoon, an internal dialogue on political strategies and the challenges of different cities was held. This was led by organizers of the EMN. First there was an introduction about the EMN and which projects the organization has. In doing so, the different partners of the EMN were explained. On the one hand, Commons Network, who invests in skill sharing and helps to broaden the network. And on the other hand, Commonspolis, who created an impressive map as a tool to identify agreements and to generate partnerships between organizations that identify with municipalism at the European level. Thereafter a dialogue was held about the local challenges of the different cities/territories that were participating in the event. Thereby different strategies that the participants are implementing as a political actor or social movement were discussed. Several topics that came up were compiled in the lack of political participants, authoritarian politics and fascism and cost of living. With these raised topics a framework was created that will allow the EMN to introduce and enrich its political strategy.

The event was brought to an end on Friday evening with a public panel on “Take Back the City! City politics & activism: perspectives from across Europe”. It was an open engaging dialogue between several participants of the meeting. It gave the opportunity to exchange different strategies and conceptions of municipalism across Europe with local actors in Berlin. The public panel was again held at Ada Bar, which afterwards further devolved into a pleasant evening at the bar.

By joining this event Commons Lab had the chance to broaden its vision on municipalism and to reinforce dialogue and networking capacities. The meeting gave the opportunity to reinforce local movements in Northern Europe interested in the municipalist approach, to launch a skill sharing process to strengthen peer to peer learning among municipalist actors and to learn more about the EMN and storytelling. It was a very engaging experience making clear that there are many opportunities and levels to take action. In doing so, I learned that starting up a bar has the opportunity to bring people together and lower the threshold and thereby can contribute immensely to the growth of the organization and spreading the word. For Commons Lab, I would suggest as a possible improvement, putting together an even more diverse team by involving multiple cultures and also broadening the project programme by involving, for example, the queer community. To reach people, the organization could focus even more on using their media by, for example, sharing short content messages in a simple way like the platform nws.nws.nws does.

To finish, I would like to thank Commons Lab for this opportunity, the EMN and Commons Network for organizing this event and the “Care-takers” for keeping everything on track during the meeting in Berlin.

References used:

EMN: https://municipalisteurope.org

Commons Network: https://www.commonsnetwork.org

Rebelse Plekken. Over municipalisme en commons (Walter Lotens) https://commonslab.be/publicaties/2019/8/28/rebelse-plekken-over-municipalisme-en-commons-walter-lotens-

 Commons Network partners with EMN: https://www.commonsnetwork.org/2022/09/20/commons-network-becomes-part-of-the-core-team-of-the-european-municipalist-network/

Commonspolis map: https://commonspolis.org/en/community/cartografia-colaborativa-del-ecosistema-municipalista-europeo/

Locations visit in Berlin:

Ada Bar: Sonnenallee 100, 12045 Berlin

https://goo.gl/maps/3RJMHaxBGPEhRNd46

 Moos space: Moosdorfstraße 7-9, 12435 Berlin

https://goo.gl/maps/1Pq7PVcba3r2XhzT8