Ws | Workshops

As a practice-oriented, collaborative project that seeks to contribute to the larger scenes of municipalist activism, CMMM was designed to build on workshops and gatherings with peers and colleagues. In the various intra- and inter-city meetings, we shared our concepts and proposals, collected feedback and critiques, and brainstormed potentially better pathways and collaborations for the following phases. These meetings varied in terms of their size, format, and nature. Some served to exchange, seek advice, and stimulate, while others focused on practical tasks related to designing and operationalizing the project’s three interactive maps.

Based on the belief that the deliberated inputs and approaches that shaped the evolution of the maps could be relevant for understanding the resulting work and informing other teams pursuing similar endeavors, most of the workshops were documented. The reports include agendas, key discussion points, conclusions, and next steps, as well as the names of the participants, to whom we remain indebted for their support. In some instances, we found it sufficient to have a picture narrative of the activity. The sections of this chapter describe these twelve stepping stones, which are illustrated in Figure 1.8 – CMMM Process in the "About" chapter.

This chapter starts with a section on the international scoping workshop “CMMM: Setting the Grounds” (see below), which took place in March 2020 (just before the COVID-19 pandemic and related lockdowns swept through Europe). This was when we first came together with the three city teams and a few select peers to define the concrete goals of the research and mapping that were to follow. Based on those deliberations, the city teams organized conceptualization workshops (what kinds of maps are needed?) in fall 2020, in which the concrete goals were refined; these were “Housing burdens of social housing tenants and publicly owned land for the purpose of non-profit housing” in Belgrade, “Who buys Berlin?” in Berlin, and “Mapping property structures” in Barcelona (the reports of these workshops are below).

Half a year later, in spring 2021 and while still subject to COVID-19 social distancing rules, design workshops were organized by the three city teams to define the specific features and characteristics of each of the interactive maps; these were “Mapping the unaffordability of housing” in Belgrade, “Commoning Berlin – but how?” in Berlin, and “Who evicts Barcelona?” in Barcelona (the reports of these workshops are below). Before and after these activities, we held two internal workshops with the CMMM Advisory Committee.

After the COVID-19 pandemic loosened its grip, we were able to come together again as a team in Belgrade in spring 2022, where we held a scaled international gathering to schedule the course of the final year. That summer some of us participated in and co-organized sessions at the Takhayali (imagine, fem.) Ramallah international workshop, which focused on the topic of wasted urban space and where experiences in forming municipalist movements in precarious contexts were discussed.

In 2023, for closing the circle of the project, we presented our work through a podium discusion titled “MAP: Mobilizing Alternatives by and for People through Mapping and Maps“ at the 4th International Social Housing Festival (ISHF), 7-9 June, in Barcelona. Then, in August 2023, Belgrade closed with the workshop “TBC,” which will take place within the “Terrestrial Forum / Horizons of Change” summer school, 22 to 27 August 2023. Finally, in October 2023, the podium discussion “TBC” will be held in Berlin. (more information will be uploaded here when available).

REMARK:

Until September 2023 the materials below can be seen in the linked PDF viewer, but can neither be downloaded nor printed due to ongoing fine-tuning.

section 9

Scoping workshop