We are a local organization called 100.Yıl Initiative. We started our activities in the course of the ‘Occupy Gezi’ protests in 2013. We aim to raise solidarity within our local community through our neighborhood workshop which is open to everyone. We need your help to keep our collective place running freely and provide a space for neighborhood residents to repair, produce, organize, and come together.
The Neighborhood Workshop is a common space for producing, sharing, and weaving the ties of solidarity since December 2015. It is designed to be an open space to anyone and everyone who came together through the 100. Yıl Initiative, a neighborhood forum formed during the Gezi Uprising in 2013.
Rather than using some other spaces which have already been established for some reasons and orientations, we decided to form an open and collective place in our own neighborhood. We thought that in such a place, as we put our effort into supporting each other's creative activities in art/arts and initiatives/attempts on different socio-political subjects, we would also produce various unexpected relationships as well as strong ties among the residents of the neighborhood. Hence, we envisioned and established our common space and called it ‘The 100. Yıl Neighborhood Workshop’.
The Neighborhood Workshop is located on the ground floor of one of the old five-storey cooperative apartment blocks in İşçi Blokları Mahallesi, Ankara, Turkey. The Neighborhood Workshop has sewing machines, woodworking machines, books, paints, a 3D printer, a kitchen, and a store-room where some form of sharing economy is taking place; people leave what they do not use and take whatever they need. The other important aspect of the place is how it creates space for meetings; there is a big table at the center, a projector to share and present, and a blackboard to discuss and make plans. These are only the descriptions of the past events in our workshop or the tools we have; what to do with them, and whatever else can take place, depends on the imagination of the people who will come and create.
The rent and the other various expenses of the Neighborhood Workshop are collectively afforded by the participants who are able to do so. In addition, contributions earned from the organized events or donations are saved in the common pool for expenses, and every transaction is regularly shared transparently. The Neighborhood Workshop sustains itself through the contributions, which are made voluntarily, and the additional earnings from the organized events. However, the current budget of the Neighborhood Workshop, mainly due to Covid-19 and its outcomes on our social and economic lives, makes it impossible for us to keep the space as it is. We want to keep the Neighborhood Workshop as an open, independent, common space and we need your solidarity in this regard.
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