Hub Oaxaca

AND WE’RE IN! Tuesday November 10th, 2009

A big day in the short life of a little project with a huge vision: today we got the keys to a small space with two rooms and a mezzanine, that will become the testing ground for Hub Oaxaca. The work of the project is already underway, through this blog, linking, celebrating and supporting local social innovators, and through regular events to bring together local actors around pressing themes such as permaculture, alternative education and urban mobility. Now, with the space, things step up a gear, beginning with a session today on space design and utlization, in which the team conducted ‘post-it note design’, indicating how spaces, areas, corners, features, could be used for different purposes (photos below). The team was so inspired that they continued into the evening, discussing and designing by candlelight as the electricity hasn’t yet been connected in the space!

This initial session will be complemented by a similar event (hopefully this time with electricity) convening members of the Hub Oaxaca community to further co-design the space in the way that will attract and inspire them.

Next steps: furniture. Next week Oaxacan designers will come and inspire us with their vision, hopefully inspired by ours. We are aiming to invite selected local social innovators to come share the space with us from December, and begin to collaborate and co-create. This invitation will be extended to a broader user base in January. In this way we will be able to slowly but surely test our model, build our community, implement our offering and respond to our user’s needs. This critically important pilot phase has been made possible through the committed support of Halloran Philanthropies.

we have the keys!

discussing criteria of great spaces

space design by candlelight!

WE ARE LOOKING FOR FUNDING AND KNOWLEDGE PARTNERS     July 2009

With the feasibility phase coming to an end, the business plan nearly done, the team and initial community waiting for the green lights, we are ready for the piloting of space and services. We are fortunate to have huge and invaluable support of Halloran Philanthropies but are still looking for partners for the renovation and fitting out of a space and the development of new and exciting services such as our action learning and access to finance programs. If  you are interested in finding out more about ways of contributing to this initiative please email oaxaca@the-hub.net We’d love you to be part of it!

HUB OAXACA MODEL July 2009

During the last couple of months the development team has been feverishly working to get ready for the piloting phase. From the interviews carried ou in February with future potential members and key social actors we’ve come up with this image to explain what we are planning to develop. Click on the image for an enlarged version.

Hub Oaxaca Model

OUR DREAM SPACE June 2009

A video is worth a thousand words. Click here.

POST-SKOLL MEXICAN LUNCH  28th March 2009

A day after the Skoll conference, Halloran Philanthopies and The Hub hosted a lunch for those at the event who were involved or interested in the Hub Oaxaca project. We hosted a true Mexican-style lunch with totopos, beans, guacamole…and were very happy to see more than 10 people in the meeting room at Hub Kings Cross in London. We shared our vision, process and the birth of a new model for supporting people with social initiatives in Latin America.  You can see the Interim Report here.

GOING PUBLIC – FIRST COMMUNITY GATHERINGS 13th February 2009

Today we had a fantastic event in our temporary space. A diverse group of local people with interest in what we´re developing here got together to discuss a wide variety of topics concerned with the ´what´, ´how´and the ´why´ of starting a project like this in Oaxaca. Photos below..!

Meeting starts

Carlos is the host of the evening

Group discussion during the community gathering

Impassioned debate

'The main and universal challenge is self-sustainability. It will be very difficult to charge people for space and services.'

THE FIRST STONES LAID February 5th 2009

This week saw the first team session for Hub Oaxaca.

Plan for the day!

An intensive afternoon’s discussion saw the two delegations sharing their ’story so far’, setting out their ‘tools for the task ahead’ and coming together around a vision for this initiative.

Hub Oaxaca development team discussing the vision

Sharing vision

To make sure that, within this critical phase of development and creation,  sufficent time is given to listening and reflecting, we are borrowing a tool known as the U-Process, which is a basically a structured way of doing something which many people (particularly in indigenous cultures) have done for centuries.. listen (a lot), retreat, reflect, consult, create, implement.

U-Process for Feasibility Phase