an enthusiatic hello from porto

we had a great permaculture workshop today and a very nice workshop / exchange about skillsharing / tsolife / our tour, showing photos and telling about the places we visit and experience in general

also i had an inspiring talk with rita, about casa viva, why everything works here and about horaga, the educational project they are doing. also about legal forms and general perspectives and motivations…

casa viva is such an amazing place! people are so full of energy here, lots of workshops, from vegetarian cooking to scribus layouting to permaculture,  everyday there is lots of nice food and the kitchen party never ends (samba drumming on pots and whatever you can find to make noise !!)

the house belongs to a private owner, the people are allowed to use it, but have to be out within 30 days when the house is sold… so they never know when its gonna end - and know what theyr free space is worth!

rita taught me a lot about adaption of permaculture to life in general, about casa viva I can say: people here are very diverse and colourful, the project itself is “on the edge” in between squat and normal living space of young and older people, on the dge of political and apolitical - this is why there is so much energyefficiency here

but this is maybe something that you can only understand when you have been in this workshop, maybe i will write an own article about it.

according to rita there is 4 rules here:

1. no entry fees for events,

2. nobody is living here (but the exception proves the rule, so there is one guy living here who opens the door when you knock ) ,

3. political on a personal level but a-political (no clear politicalposition)

4. if the house is sold everybody has to be out in 30 days

and they seem to work quite well for this place

another reason why the project is quite “serious” and grounded is that the “core team” consists mostly of older people, some of them have kids. asked the question of organisation (how do you do that?!?) rita replies that the people are experienced in management but in general totally disorganised.

no clear name, no clear concept, open space. no logo.

to me it seems really organised though, they have a meeting every week and lots of papers in the kitchen - but what i feel makes it work is motivation, inspiration and love …

rita also told that the project changed a lot in the last years and has been getting more diverse and colourful - since then it works better.

i am really surpirsed and happy to have found such an interesting group of people in our fundraising partners from portugal

Last 5 posts by anja

• Que pasa? - December 15th, 2009
• project update - July 22nd, 2009
• erste Infoveranstaltung in München / first info event in Munich - June 21st, 2009
• back in the land of rain - June 6th, 2009
• game over ... the last day - May 31st, 2009