Housewarming: Collectief Eigendom (Collective Ownership)

Natasha Hulst is the Schumacher Center’s Program Director for European Land Commons. Natasha’s role is to support international and national collaboration for land commons. Raising awareness of Community Land Trusts as a proven vehicle to broaden access to land in a fair, place-based, democratic, and voluntary manner. Additionally, she has established Stichting Grond van Bestaan, a Dutch Community Land Trust organisation supporting local commons and ecological stewardship of the land.  Natasha is also the co-founder of Voedselpark Amsterdam, where she spearheads the preservation of farmland and the creation of a large-scale urban agroecological food park as a living lab for ecological solutions. Natasha has worked for more than 20  years at the nexus between economy and ecology. Including roles at the European Center for Nature Conservation, DOEN Foundation, Drawdown Europe and the Biomimicry Institute. Always combining social innovation for communities and nature-inspired innovation to support commons and conditions conducive to life. 

Andrea Verdecchia (1982, Jesi, Italy) has a Master in Architecture from the University of Ferrara. He is specialized in housing, affordability and co-production developments. Together with Mira Nekova he founded Time to Access, which is an Amsterdam-based platform devoted to the development of radical architecture. Together with an evolving team of architects, urban planners and activists, they create participative forms of housing, spatial design and social environments. Operating from within increasingly exclusionary urban fabrics, their aim is to make affordable housing accessible for all.

Marije Baalman is an artist and researcher/developer working in the field of interactive sound and light art, based in Amsterdam. She makes music and music-theatre performances, worked with dancers and has made several installations. Topics that she addresses with her work are the nature of interaction between and entanglement of humans and technology, the influence of algorithms on society and the human experience, and environmental change. She also works as a cultural organiser, curator and as an activist to improve the rights of artists and promote self-organised housing. She is a member of iii collective and Grond.

Ivo Schmetz moved to Amsterdam after graduating from art school in Maastricht. By accident he rolled into the squatting scene and was involved in squatting the OLVG hospital (1998-1999) and the OT301 (1999-now). Living and working in these experimental free spaces has inspired him to not only work on an individual level as a graphic designer and video maker but also explore collective projects. Besides still being involved in the OT301 as a board member, music/cinema programmer and designer he is co-founder of Basserk records (2005-now), co-founder of design agency 310k (2003-2023) and one of the initiators and driving forces of Amsterdam Alternative (2015-now). Besides publishing a bi-monthly free newspaper (since 2015) Amsterdam Alternative is an online platform and collective organizer of lots of public discussions, music events, docu screenings and other small scale, non-commercial events. Under the umbrella of Amsterdam Alternative Ivo has also developed a project called Vrij Beton (for realizing new, collectively owned free spaces) and created the extended, multimedia webdocu about collective ownership. 

Ivo is always in search of ways to combine his interestes in graphic design, music, free spaces, writing, activism, video making, autonomy, interaction, experiment and collectivity. Not only because he enjoys it but also in order to create with a purpose.