Housing and Communitybuilding in Stockholm, Botkyrka and SödertälYEAH!

This post was initiated by a question from my great new friend Anaïs from Paris who is working at Artfactories. She is organising a seminar on community building in november and asked me about some housing companies that I told her about when we met in Brussels.

What I told her is that some housing companies have started working in a different way as a result of seing them selves in a new way. What they seem to have realized is that they are not merely the builders and maintainers of housing but are actually community builders. Here are a few examples in the Stockholm region...

BotkyrkaByggen has started working with community theatre.

And AP fastigheter who are creating an international centre for scandinavian design at Telefonplan

Telge Fastigheter has a youth project called Hovsjösommar have started creating projects to give summerjobs to kids in a suburb of Stockholm.

Södertälje is interesting and has received alot of attention lately.

The last few months Södertälje has been invaded by international journalists because the town receives more Iraqi immigrants than the whole of North America put together. Södertälje welcomed 1,268 refugees last year of which 95% were from Iraq, a figure that is expecting to rise to 2,400 this year. Here it is appropriate to mention that Sweden took in over 9,000 Iraqi asylym-seekers, or almost 50% of all Iraqis coming to Europe. The USA in comparison took 202.

The block quote has been copy/pasted from another blog. Here is the great blogpost on Södertälje by Anna.

And Anaïs if you want some other interesting organizations for your seminar I strongly recomend you to get in touch with MIKU (one of the top youth oriented think&do tanks in Sweden)and jagvillhabostad.nu (a network for solving the housing problem in Sweden)

If you have more questions Anaïs, please feel free to call me.

/Obi-Wan Canole

Den stora MySpace-skandalen (repris)

Allt började med att min kompis Emma tog bort Anna från sin Topp-friends-lista. Sedan ringde telefonen:

- Du är fan dum i huvet! Nu kommer ju inte Peter hitta mig när han kollar din profil!
- Eh.. sorry men asså jag menade inte att bomba nån kärleksbro... Men jag har hans nummer du kan ju ringa..
- RINGA! Ehru HELT galen?! Vi är inte ens på SMS-nivå med varandra ännu! Och varför har du tagit bort den gamla profilbilden som du hadde?!
- Eh men asså jag gillar den nya, jag gillar att byta ibland så att folk fattar att jag är MySpace-aktiv.
- Det var ju du och jag på den gamla! ....VET DU, jag gillar också att byta ibland... Du är så jävla bortbytt!
- Men vaddå, för att jag bytte profilbild på MySpace? Sen när blev det så jävla viktigt?
- Men Åååhh... KOM IN I MATCHEN ...Du är fan skyldig mig en förlåt-bulletin!
- "Förlåt-bulletin"?
- Äh vaffan skicka ett FAX eller nått!

We are the pool

Yesterday me and my danish musician-friend Rasmus got an idea to go swimming at the Metropolitan Pool which is around the corner from where we live. But it was a "members only"-thing. We got really pissed of 'cos we were so stoked about our swimming-idea. I didn't really want to let it go so I started lookin' around for another place to go.

Suddenly, through Drayton a Couchsurfing accuaintance of mine, I stumbled upon an art collective and through them into something fantastic. I found out that there is an old public swimmingpool in Brooklyn that these awesome people are trying to revitalize. They started up an organization called "Poolaid"and made this fantastic event around it.

...but that's not all. They teamed up with a bunch of Brooklyn-based indy bands, like Nada Surf, The Giraffes and made this awesome music video.

Sing it! WEE ARE THE POOOL!



Ok, I don't know who reads this, but let's all give it up for Brooooklyn!

...my only question is: Where were the civic journalism people?

This is what community is about, and the kind of thing that all kinds of people can gather around (Ok, judgeing from the video there were primarily ageing hippsters and their kids...but In my little dreamworld they could even have succeeded to team up with the chassidic jewish women who swim at the Metropolitan Pool on wednesdays but... maybe they don't like Nada Surf..) I put all these thoughts within brackets because I think it was brilliant just the way it was and those people who did it were just heroes...the only real regret was me being on the wrong side of the Atlantic when it happened.

...once again I start thinking about rituals. The pool is just a symbol, the artists lead the ceremony and the people dance 'til they're delerious. ;)