i continue to be very impressed with can masdeu's awesome radical and collective culture. here's the normal flow of their week, the requirements for each community member:
Sunday: Big day for the social center. 100-400 people show up each week. they serve up a delicious mid-day meal (usually 4 euros), host several workshops each week, give a big tour of the place, sell beer/wine/cake/empanadas, and provide a comfy hang out space into the evening. Usually about 1/4th of the people that show up are new to can masdeu, the rest of regulars or infrequent visitors.
this past sunday, 3 person polish circus showed up (and performed) and a gypsy-swing guitar player set the mood in the main room. lunch included polenta, artichoke, salad, and pumpkin soup. people hung out in groups inside and out, attended workshops, checked out the propaganda, library, free store, t-shirts and buttons, drank beer and ate cake until about 10pm. the money from this weekly event goes to support the house. each person is responsible for running 2 of these sundays/year.
Monday: chill day
Tuesday: work day in the house. tasks were collated on a sheet posted prominently during the week, and the day is organized by one member. community members are supposed to be were around to participate in this big fixer upper day, and the majority were. lots of stuff got cleaned, fixed, and rearranged. in the evening, everyone gathers for a movie or other communal activity (this week, a slide-show presentation about Twin Oaks!)
Wednesday: Bread day. 2 members run the brick wood-fired oven, and lots of other folks pop in to help out and hang out. they make bread for the house, as well as for other communities and CSAs in town. this system is called "auto-renta", in which community members run small businesses out of the building. they contribute some to the community and keep the rest.
Thursday: Garden day! all members are supposed to participate and most do. its also open to the public, and many friends and satellites of the community come by to work.
Friday: Bread day 2: officially open to other folks as a "workshop" day.
Saturday: chill day
The community´s labor system is called "minimums," a total of about 20 hours per week. the minimum that each member must do is: 2.5 cooking shifts/month (2 solo and one shared, or some such combo), one house-cleaning task/montrh, attend the community meeting every other week, the tuesday work day, thursday gardening day, and take one one large or 2 small areas of responsibility. they pay 25 euros/month towards food.
they own a collective car and of course, the rent is free. unfortunately, they are CLOSED to new members for the forseeable future....
Proust's Parlor Game
14 years ago
2 comments:
Kas and Sky a presentation about Twin Oaks a week back at Can Masdeu which was well received. I hoped in at the end during the question and answer part. They suffer from some of the same problems which plague americcan communities. Gender imbalance is a problem, and they seemed excited by TO's 60/40 rule, which stops placing members of the dominant gender as new members until the population is less than 60/40%.
CMD is currently about 27 people and only 9 women.
And they have consensed recently that they will not take any more men until there are more women. But they also have not taken any new members in the last couple of years.
i am working on an improved CMD entry fro wikipedia which you can see at tinyurl.com/canmasdeu2
andi just wrote a poem about them at
butthedevil.blogspot.com
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