Minutes of the meeting
05/19

1. Community Gardens Unconference (June 1-3)
Thanks Antonio, Suzanna and Gina for taking care of the organization of this event. We paste the tentative program below.

Community Gardens – Unconference
START IN SOUTH WILLIAMSBURG (specific address to be announced by Antonio)
1pm – Commons & Gardens intro Discussion / Commons Coalition
S. Williamsburg Garden + ( would like to invite Occupy Williamsburg, if we have more Commons Coalition people to volunteer we can start earlier like at noon, for now it is just a small intro from a few of us members)
2pm – “Take on the (Vacant) Lot in Your Life” 596 Acres (TBC) (Walking tour)
Across the L Train to EAST VILLAGE GARDENS
4pm – Childrens Gardening workshop – Suzanne Goldenberg (confirmed) w/Begonia (pls confirm) Garden (TBA)
6pm – Squating Vacant lots/ East Vilage perspective (TBC) (walking tour?) (TBC)
8pm -10 pm – Art in the Garden, projectionsfood//fun!!
E.Village Garden TBA
2. Howl Festival.
Gina proposed that we could also join the Howl Festival
It is a free event that will take place on June 1 and 2.
http://www.howlfestival.com/festival/calendar/

3. Internet as commons
Jim talked about the privatization of the TLDs and we discussed the possibility of devoting a meeting on this topic after Jim returns from Berlin.

4. Skype connection with Berlin.
Jim and Cari told us about the possibility of having a live skype connection with Berlin within the next weeks. This could be an opportunity for Making Worlds to connect and expose our ideas and work to the participants at the Berlin Biennial. Tentative date for the call is June 9th, although Cari and Jim will keep us updated on this. If there is anyone interested in taking care of this, please let us all know.

5. Making Worlds Forum in the Fall.
A second edition of the Forum in the Fall was proposed. We agreed on starting thinking about it.
a) Tentative date: October, 10-11-12.
We convened to devote our meeting on June 9th to discuss different organizational issues. Please bring your ideas on June 9th on these and other aspects:
b) Space: there were different proposals.
Gina proposed having the Forum at a Public School in Harlem. She will provide further information on this.

  • Brooklyn Commons: the drawback is that there is no space for kitchen there.
  • Church of the Ascension (Greenpoint)
  • Judson Memorial Church. Vicente will contact to see if it’s available.

c) Format, Structure, Content.
We discussed different possibilities of structuring the discussions. The basic approach we convened is trying to keep common discussions in the program, but given that we have a much broader network now, we could think on possibilites of allowing transversal discussions, open different discussion areas (sessions)., tI would be useful to collect a list of possible issues.
Please remember that our upcoming events and activities, and any other action/group each of us is involved in, are also opportunities for reaching out, engage new people on the Forum.
We also discussed on having a title as some basic framework for the discussions. One possibility would be is something as “Instituting the Commons”, “Building the Institutions of the commons”, or something along those lines.

Please bring your ideas on all this on June 9th.

6. OWS at Queens
David talked about an event that is being organized by Occupy Queens and other organizations for July 21-22 or 27-28. This will take place in a street that is closed and opened to the public. We need to figure out how MW will participate.

7. Occupy National Gathering – Philadelphia, July 4
This will be a big gathering with all sorts of events (workshops, assemblies,, tc)
David proposed that MW organizes something to participate, or at least, take some flyers with information and open up a discussion on the commons. A point person for this is needed!

8. Next meeting
Our next MW meeting will be take place on Saturday May 28, 5pm at the Southeast corner of Washington Square.