Eiland van Brienenoord

author: Wessel van den Berge, Lou Muuse, Gabriëlla Meijer, Kai Chung, Dennis Wuisman & Carli Schenkeveld

A public ‘free haven’ for the civic economy?

Underneath one of the biggest bridges over the River Maas a beautiful island houses wild nature, garden alotments and a former youth clubouse: ‘De Arend en de Zeemeeuw'. De Makers van Rotterdam[1] and Sandersgeluk are currently managing this clubhouse. They plan to use this location as a work space, but more importantly as a public ‘free haven’ with a tremendous potential: a place where the powers of social and cultural imagination are brought together. During the Redesigning Business Event of the Willem de Kooning Academy (nove,ber 2014), this idea of a free haven for ‘makers’, 'thinkers', ‘doers’ and 'dreamers' was further explored during a five day long master class at Eiland van Brienenoord itself.

Eiland van Brienenoord originates from the 19th century, when sludge plates where formed in de Nieuwe Maas. These plates grew attached to each other and started to be overgrown with reeds and bushes. Overtime a big variety of plants, trees, flowers and tares grew, which made the island eventually very suitable to function as a home for birds, butterflies and insects. Together the plants & animals sustain a little ecosystem within the island which is until today quite unharmed. So due to this all, the sudden emerge of an island harbouring a lovely piece of untouched nature, makes Eiland van Brienenoord a pretty unique spot in an ever growing city like Rotterdam. In the course of the 20th century a piece of the island is reserved for allotments, to give the Rotterdammers the ability to maintain a garden for a hobby. Which is quite suitable for a city where 68% of the housing consists of apartments.

Maurice Specht, one of the founders of De Makers van Rotterdam, sees Eiland van Brienenoord as the perfect place to withdraw from the harsh, noisey and hasty city life. Isolated from what is going on in downtown Rotterdam, in contrast, the island is really tranquil. A true oasis of peace while enjoying birds whistling and the smell of fresh air. However you can still see the Kop van Zuids skyline & there's a little background noise of traffic passing the van Brienenoord brug, the everyday city life is being left behind on the other side of the islands drawbridge. It seems an ideal place to discuss, reflect and debate modern day society, being in an opposite environment triggers you to see the city from another perspective. Maurice asked the participants of the masterclass to come up with innovative ways to make this island useful in this debate. Without damaging the grounds and changing it radically. To create a haven for creative, social and business entrepreneurs and everyone else with input on the concept. To indicate some guidelines he gave two key-principles: there should be room for doubt & it should 'tot de verbeelding spreken'.

Facilitating the emerging civic economy in Rotterdam

In many cities, we are increasingly witnessing the emergence of new forms of ownership: the consumer society is turning into a civic economy. In recent years in Rotterdam, a number of social initiatives and subsidy-free enterprises have been founded, such as Hotspot Hutspot, Leeszaal Rotterdam West and Sweatshop Deluxe. Neighborhood initiatives like Zorgvrijstaat Rotterdam West, strive for more autonomy from citizens; they want to make people aware, activate and guide people in creating a network to solve their own problems. Their focus is on solving social issues through social, cultural and artistic interventions. Wouldn't it be nice if these initiatives could take some distance from their field of work, live in a different environment with different disciplines in order to reflect, gain new insights and develop their competences every once in a while? Both De Makers van Rotterdam as well as Sanders Geluk aim to facilitate this on Island van Brienenoord. The mission of De Makers van Rotterdam is to identify and strengthen social entrepreneurship in Rotterdam, and to stimulate discussion on the subject. The team consists of a philosopher, a public administrator and a cultural programmer. Makerscollectief Sandersgeluk[2] puts together social projects in the broadest sense of the term, and consists of a theatre producer, a visual artist and the same cultural programmer mentioned above.

The Year of Doubt

The masterclass participants, coming from different educational institutes in Rotterdam, proposed to make doubt the central theme for the development of the island. Within our society there seems to be no room for doubt; You’re expected to make convincing decisions. And if you don’t, you’re considered weak. Think about how we judge politicians, scientists and business people. A lot of contemporary companies and organizations try to solve problems by using old methods. Wouldn't it be nice if they would just admit, that they are facing some problems they can’t solve? If there’s more room for doubt, for “not-knowing” there’s room for creativity, coming from all kinds of disciplines. So that new collaborations can arise in order to search for new methods to tackle these obstacles. A doubt oriented development would consist of different steps. The first steps take place within the first year; the Year of the Doubt. Within this year three steps are distinguished:

Step 1: Urban Myth, a Pull Strategy

We want to reach a broad target group containing business people, creatives, politicians, craftsmen and scientists. Our goal is to get these people together on the island, in order to share their knowledge with each other using doubt as a means. Using the mystery and unfamiliarity of the island, we propose to create a hype; By creating an urban-myth, we want to make people curious and allow them to give their own interpretation of what’s going on. We spread three press releases: The first one’s about new valuable material being found on the island, which metaphorically refers to discovering the value of doubt. The next two are also about activity and discovery, which make the mystery more convincing and therefore make the reader even more curious.

Step 2: The Game, a Kick-off

Time’s ticking away slowly. When the clock reaches “00:00:00”, the bridge will fall down and the participants can enter the island. Once they’ve all entered, the bridge rises again, so the entire island becomes isolated. The game begins!

At the beginning each participant can obtain a controller. The controller will ask you several questions about the island; Once you have given an answer to all these questions the controller will lead you to a place on the island by using vibrations. When the controller lights up, you’ve reached your goal. Here you will meet other participants. For this kick-off different structures will built on the island as a metaphor for different kinds of doubts. Physical dynamic structures that changes form to accommodate different kinds of doubt.

Step 3: Programming essential themes

Within this year of doubt, we will look at doubts that we think are or should be important;

Economy

Bankers not doubting themselves and bankers not doubting each other partly caused our society to shake on it's foundations. One big example why implementing doubt within economics isn't such a bad idea. Guided by economic experts we question modern day economics. In order to do so, there will be various activities like games (LARP), that will make us empathize with different social/economic roles, make us gain insights in economic systems and make us think of new possibilities within economics, that we as citizens can realize. Themes could be: value, sharing, scarcity and income inequality.

Ecology

The van Brienenoord-eiland’s nature might be beautiful, but it’s also very much disturbed by the city’s industry; the ground looks grayish, the ponds have minimal current, the flora isn’t very vital and you can see it’s soil is polluted because of the many blackberry-bushes trying to heal it. There’s no doubt our society has environmental issues; Are there things we can learn from the island's nature that can help us gain insight on our urban ecology and help us improve it? Guided by van Brienenoord-eiland's very own forester and various ecologists and landscape architects we will question our urban ecology. Within an excursion through the nature of the island there wil be demonstrations and lectures on how our consumerist behaviour relates to the deterioration of our planet's ecology, followed by an open debate about on how we as citizens can change this.

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Relations

When you think about doubt in relation to relationships, you ought to think there’s something wrong. But because of it’s reflective function, doubt can be very powerful within this context. In order for relationships to grow and strengthen, you will very much need it. Expressing your doubts within any kind of relation can be hard, it can result in very emotional situations. Can accepting doubt make expressing and receiving doubts more bearable? Guided by psychologists and anthropologists we wil rethink relations. By having various contests between various teams, putting these teams through heavy emotional and physical episodes, we test and gain insights on what it takes to have a sustainable relation.

Science

There’s been a lot of scientific research by different scientists on similar subjects, with different outcomes. This makes us non-scientists who expect science to be the truth doubt if it is. Is this expectation always realistic? There’s no doubt scientists strive for certainty and answers, but the road towards it must be full of doubt. We think scientists and non-scientist should get together and doubt about what science is and what to expect from it. In order to do so, we switch roles by performing each others activities in relation to science, that will make scientists and non-scientists emphathize with each other, followed by a discussion on each others experiences.

Business Model

In order to develop towards an autonomous think-, make- and workplace for and about the future of the city we need a business plan. As guidelines for this future plan, the masterclas came up with the following ideas:

• Extreme cost-reduction: no alarm, no insurance, no electricity, etc.
• For the exploitation budget, not to be dependent on external funders. We can make profit from renting the location to external parties
• The office can be ran by a limited amount of people
• “Artist/writer/thinker in residence”-program: in exchange for rent these people can work/live on the island
• For the cultural an substantive program we will request cultural subsidies and/or fundings
• Develop our own products, that create a modest amount of money
• To function as a breeding place for new civic entrepreneurs; start-ups have a lasting investment in the island
• Summer-weekends with catering

Doubters inc. is gevormd tijdens de masterclass The Civic Economy en kwam samen op het eiland van Brienenoord. Doubters inc. consist of the following participants:

* Carli Schenkeveld (lifestyle) * Otske Pennin (spatial design) * Gabriëlla Meijer (fine art) * Kai Chung Ip * Lou Muuse (lifestyle) * Jessica Hammalund Bergmann * Maurice Specht (developer & clubhouse owner) * Wessel van den Berge(graphic design) * Dennis Wuisman (graphic design) * Maarten van Blokland (TU) * Isaac Monté * Liza Koch (lifestyle) * Natascha Goed (product design) * Tabo Goudswaard * Sabrina Lindemann * Miek Walda (entrepreneur) * Hanako Lodder (esoteric feng shui expert)

The masterclass was hosted and guided by Isaac Monté (Sweatshop Deluxe) and Maurice Specht (De Makers van Rotterdam) and organised and guided by Jessica Bergmann (Pink Pony Express).

Location: Clubhouse “De Arend en de Zeemeeuw”, Eiland Van Brienenoord 5 (Van Brienenoord Island), Rotterdam.

Personal Doubt Appendix

I doubt about....

"At the moment i’m doubting about my graduation internship. My interest goes out to acoustics, but they also go out to architecture and sustainability. A combination of these would be awesome, but i haven’t found an internship that contains these three interests. And if i won’t, then in which one will i be able to excel the most? With what interest fits what partner and supervisor? Will this result in a new experience? Or will it be the same path i’ve already went down for a thousand times? I just don’t know yet."

I doubt about....

"The doubt of wether you make intuitive or rational decisions. Society teaches us to make rational ones, some of these are even expected of us. Because of this we get more disconnected from our feelings, which is bad because for me most of our best choices come from the hearth. I doubt about wether i should listen to my hearth, my first thought, my feeling or my intuition. Or should i make rational choices with the knowledge i have. For me this is a choice between certainty or happiness."

I doubt about....

"In the past I was doubting about everything, which made me very vulnerable, insecure and frustrated; This made me indecisive, which i was very aware of as a child. This made me sad. Within my teenage years things were a little less hard, because I new a little more about what I wanted in life. I couldn’t explain it though, but at least I was making decisions following my intuition. Since I got to know myself better, a lot of my daily life doubts slowly disappeared.

The only thing is that the doubts that remain are a lot deeper. I question why we're so harsh to one another in this society and I doubt that it is humane. doubts about the status-quo, mass corporations, economy, politics, the food industry, the fast-fashion industry, the medical industry, banks, housing associations, and so fort.

These organizations are too big for me to understand, they're not being transparent and therefore I don’t trust them. I doubt that they are sustainable, I doubt that they are social. I doubt if they can continue this big or that we should continue on a more humane scale. That there should arise new collectives built on trust, love and sharing; So we can continue with less doubt about things that are too big to understand."

I doubt about....

"When i’m done studying, i’ll be traveling the world. There are so many places i wish to see and so many adventures i want to have. Should i go alone? Or do i have to find a traveling mate? I don’t know if I'm that good at being alone.

I would love to do some voluntarily-work in order to help people in need, but after reading the news i doubt if these people will benefit from it."

I doubt about....

"Doubt is a lack of trust! Trust is something you can build, therefore lack of trust can be overwon. Trust in yourself! Trust in someone else! Trust in love! What i would love to have is 100% trust in everything. That i never had to doubt again. But therefore i trust to doubt."

I doubt about....

"The biggest doubt I have at the moment is a very important one for my future. It’s a doubt between choices... What to do after school? Do you want to choose for your passion, the unknown, where you enter the intangible? Or do you want to choose for more security, the more concrete future, but at the same time fewer opportunities. It’s a doubt between choices where you think to know the future and where you certainly don’t know the future. You have the easy money, but not that fun, or you have to work harder, take more risks and wait longer for the same result (in this case money). The thing is that nothing is wrong, there are more answers and there surely will always be more questions to doubt about."

I doubt about....

"For me, my designership through the years has been and will always be full of doubt. It’s all about making decisions and if you would know everything, then there would be nothing new to learn. So when i’m working on a project and i have doubt, it simply means there’s things i don’t know yet. A moment wich is very exciting to me; I’m going to learn something new. This can be knowledge, skill or often i need new visual input that is inspiring. Most of the time i solve this myself by doing research, but sometimes it helps speaking to someone that you trust and who i thing is capable of making my doubt disappear; In the past teachers, fellow student/designers and supervisors have been the ones for me.

I never felt that there wasn’t any room for my doubts. The academy and my internship have always very supportive in that aspect. Therefore i do not associate doubt with a negative feeling and that’s why for me it’s not an issue. Maybe there’s no room for doubt in the place i’m living in the future, a place beyond the academy. A time where i might need the island of doubt."