Collaborative Cities

Piia is buying food with her timebank credits (tovis) from the food cooperative store Oma Maa.

You know how expensive is housing in London. You also know how little you are paid there as an intern. Well, Room for Tea basically tries to solve this problem. We met Milena Bottero, Founder of the service at the Hub Westminster (again!). She says the service "is for anyone but our motivation is to help aspiring interns and apprentices access affordable accommodation in London during their work experience, offering anyone, from anywhere, a fair chance at starting their dream career".

After interviewing Trade School Co-founder Caroline Woolard in New York, we had the chance to attend an actual Trade School class in London at the Hub Westminster. Taught by Lucy Baker, this class on "Basic Origami and Fortune Telling" got us from folding paper to make a simple frog to much more advanced elements! Using Trade School barter-based system, we brought bananas to attend the class.

Thanks to all the Trade School Hub Westminster team to allow us to film this great class!

Olivier is the France, Belgium and Morocco Country Manager at Airbnb. A crazy job when you are in charge of cities such a Paris, Nice, Brussels or Casablanca in a tourism-related company!

Successfully crowdfunded projects on KissKissBankBank are pinned on that wall by the team. When we first met KissKissBankBank co-founder Adrien Aumont we've been instantaneously convinced and motivated to use their website to start our own campaign (and yes, we admit that we dreamt about being on that wall) :)

After being both an industrial designer and passionate about cooking and food, Guilhem Chéron created La Ruche Qui Dit Oui !, one of France's most iconic Collaborative Economy startup. A Ruche is a group of people who buy directly from farmers and collect their orders somewhere in the neighbourhood.

Becky Thomas from Not Far From The Tree talking to gleaners after a fruit-picking afternoon in Toronto.

We are in Pittsburgh. Interviewing a voice that could not be missed. Guess who here!

Phillip Cooley gave us a visit of Ponyride last Tuesday. This collaborative workspace provides very cheap rent for creative people. In exchange of not having to worry about their rent, Ponyride members roll up their sleeves to create the space, help each others and participate in youth education. We were amazed by the diversity of its creative comunity: the Detroit Denim factory, the Order & Other film studio, the Stukenborg Letterpress Studio, the fencing club "En garde! Detroit", the RunJit dance club, ...

Detroit SOUP is a live crowdfunding event. "A monthly dinner funding micro-grants for creative projects in Detroit". More info here.

Today we are meeting with Caroline Woolard from OurGoods, "a network of creative people who barter skills, spaces, and objects to get independent projects done".

In 2010, Caroline and her friends launched Trade School, an alternative education initiative, also running on barter:

"Over the course of 35 days, more than 800 people participated in 76 single session classes." say Trade School organisers.

Video by documentary film maker and Trade School teacher Alex Mallis.

Thanks to a successful Kickstarter campaign they ran Trade School for another semester in 2011.

Today, local Trade School chapters are popping up everywhere around the world from Milan, to Paris, Guadalajara to Bangkok. This new network required a software for each chapter to organize, advertise and manage attendance of its classes. Caroline set up a new Kickstarter campaign this year to build such website.

We can't wait to meet Caroline today and learn more about Trade School upcoming plans for 2013!