EU Summer Camp 2024
Last updated
Last updated
1.5h north-west of Vienna, Austria, August 29th - September 4th
Microsolidarity is a community-building practice and a network of people weaving social fabric, creating spaces for belonging and purpose. Come practice with us!
It is time for our annual microsolidarity summer camp! We will come together for a week of community-building geekery, relaxation, peer learning, meeting old and new friends, and other kinds of meaningful fun between August 29th and September 4th.
The purpose of these events is for the network and our friends and families to come together, cultivate relationships of trust and cross-pollinate across different communities.
In the spirit of microsolidarity, we aim to find belonging while allowing for and celebrating our differences. So whether you are a seasoned microsolidarity veteran or just becoming familiar with what we’re up to— we’d love to have you!
We often end up in new places—we need to get used to new surroundings and make a home in a new space. How can we feel at home? How do we feel as if we belong somewhere?
Aren't we a part of the world around us already? We want to explore how that recognition can help with finding belonging. What roles do human-made constructs like art and buildings play? How do local communities contribute? How is belonging furthered and affected by “embeddedness”? We will dive into what it means to be embedded; in nature, in places, in community.
This year we want to invite you to experience belonging through embeddedness. We want to tune into the spirit of co-creation by letting our creative juices flow, making art and contributing to the place where we are staying: Kunst in der Natur (“Art in Nature”).
Kunst in der Natur is inviting us to experience their unique project: a historical farm with a camp ground and a 10km long nature art trail in the Austrian forest. The art is made of natural materials like wood and clay and thus gradually becomes part of the environment again. The owners have been running it for decades, now in the second generation.
Summer camp opens up a space to try new things. We want to encourage an attitude of playful intimacy that gives us space to practice connection and belonging, as well as new ways of enriching our souls.
Hands-on experience of the principles, practices, and vibe of microsolidarity
Enough time and opportunities to enjoy, relax and have fun together (There will be a party on Saturday — woohoo!)
An empowering environment to exercise your agency for the common good: Co-creation of everything from group meals to facilitated activities
Lots of opportunities to learn from peers and contribute your own wisdom
The hosting team (Sarah, Mirjam, Alex, Martin, Grace, Jesse) is taking care of logistics and will set up some minimum-viable structures, like a collective opening and closing. The rest of our time will be powered by the contributions from all of us, through the magic of a co-created open-space agenda.
Kunst in der Natur is a great place to tune into co-creation and bringing things into being. We are aiming to make a meaningful contribution to the place by crafting a pizza oven, an art installation or something totally different. It is up to us to bring it into being in August.
We want to integrate diverse perspectives and find belonging across differences. As such we welcome you no matter what your religious and spiritual beliefs, gender, income, nationality or ethnicity, sexual orientation, age, physical ability etc. We want to learn and grow together in community building, so whatever interest you have is enough, and we will welcome any amount of experience you have (even if it is zero).
This is not going to be a training, nor a curated experience. There will probably be some skill-share sessions or workshops on microsolidarity or related frameworks on the open-space agenda. This depends entirely on who shows up and what they want to offer.
If you are just getting familiar with microsolidarity, we recommend you sign up to the next practice program and take a look at the materials from previous practice programs that we’ve run. You can find plenty of additional reading material on this website.
The address of Kunst in der Natur is: Am Wachtberg 78, 3571 Thunau am Kamp, Austria. It is 1.5h north-west of Vienna, Austria.
Arriving by train from Vienna (“Wien” in German) Trains leave hourly from Vienna and it takes a little over 1.5 hours to travel from Vienna to Kunst in der Nature. The best train connections are:
Wien Franz-Josefs-Bahnhof to Krems/Donau (train REX4)
Krems/Donau to Buchberg/Kamp (train R4, direction Horn NÖ) From Buchberg/Kamp, it's a few minutes walk to the venue.
Helpful websites, if you are planning to arrive by train:
Austrian Federal Railway (ÖBB): https://www.oebb.at/en/
German National Railway (Deutsche Bahn, DB): https://int.bahn.de/en
General website to check ticket prices and book trains throughout Europe: https://www.thetrainline.com/
Arriving by car The best route can be easily found by putting the following location in Google Maps: Art in Nature
Getting to Vienna Vienna is well-served by rail and an international airport, located 20 km outside the city centre.
A note on ride-sharing and traveling together: We will set up a logistics doc for you to coordinate ride-sharing and traveling together.
Besides art installations and a huge wooden sculpture usable as a ceremonial ground, Kunst in der Natur has space for lots of tents and camper vans. So the amenities are:
Compost toilets & outdoor showers as well as an indoor bathroom with 3 showers
Small indoor room for exhibition space, yoga, and meditation
Reading area and sofas
Coffee machine
Foosball and ping pong
4 glamping tents with beds ~4 people capacity each, prioritized for those with physical accessibility requirements, young families and the hosting team.
We will make an effort to keep costs low, so we’ll likely be cooking for ourselves. This means we’ll need a handful of volunteers to help out for a few hours in the kitchen every day. The hosting team will take care of shopping and coming up with a menu plan, as well as coordinating the actual cooking. The property has its own veggie gardens, so we will be sourcing seasonal and regional veggies directly from the fields. Food will be vegan friendly. There is also a pizza oven, so having an artisan pizza night is very tempting.
We welcome families with kids! We haven’t yet planned out a childcare system, but we trust that together we can get creative with ways to ensure that parents can take part in sessions and their kids are happily well cared for in the meantime. Young people are welcome as full participants.
It is our goal to make this event as accessible as possible while also covering expenses for food and renting the venue. So we have made the following “small, medium and large” price tiers available:
Regular: Full week €400 / Weekend €200 — This tier covers the cost of your participation in the event. Please choose this tier as the default.
Supporter: €500 / €300, or more — if you are financially flourishing, you have the opportunity to contribute to our scholarship fund and enable people with fewer resources to also attend
Subsidized: €300 / €150— If it’s a stretch for you to be investing in this event at the moment, please choose this tier
Income from ticket sales will be used to cover venue rental, food and several scholarships to increase event accessibility. The amount of scholarships we can offer depends on donations to the scholarship fund. The hosting team is donating their time, so we’ll also use ticket income to cover their expenses. Any surplus that is left after the event will go towards the microsolidarity commons fund on Open Collective, building a pool of funds to develop the network and organize future events like this one.
We provide scholarships to support people who couldn't otherwise afford to join the gathering because we recognize that many of us are working on social impact rather than financial income and we want to “pay it forward” to those contributing their time and hearts to impact projects.. If you would like to apply for a partial or full scholarship, fill in this form. The amount of scholarships we can offer depends on the donations to our scholarship fund.
There will be a gathering happening in the US 17-21 July with a similar concept. You can check out details: https://dandelion.events/e/p65nr
Contact microsolidarity@gmail.com and we will be happy to help :)