BEK video from BEK kolektiv on Vimeo

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At the heart of our supply partner chain is a sewers cooperative from Croatia. With a fixed percentage of our net sales we support garment workers in South Asia in their fights for better working and living conditions. This way, we want to create a positive impact for both workers in the alternative and in the mainstream economy.[1]

After two successful crowdfunding campaigns[2] and almost three years of business experience, we are now planning to take the next step by developing an innovative web platform which ultimately shall be collectively owned and governed by every party involved in the value chain; from the producers of the raw material all the way to the people who buy the clothes.

From platform capitalism to platform cooperativism

Never was it more obvious than today that capitalism fails to deliver on its promise of benefiting the many and not just the few. By grabbing after the internet, capitalism has given birth to business platforms that increase inequality, undermine democracy and lead to monopolies. The likes of Airbnb, Uber, Amazon and facebook are transforming our workplaces, relationships and societies and we have virtually no control over them. While nearly all aspects of our lives are being shifted online, a new and fairer model for the digital economy is needed. A promising model in that regard is co-ownership, transparency and democratic governance as promoted by an emerging number of so-called platform cooperatives. Contrary to venture capital funded platforms and their systemic flaw having to excessively extract and maximize value only for their shareholders, platform coops seek ways of including everybody who is affected by the platform’s activities in the equation.[3]

Applying the platform coop model to the buyer driven and undemocratic garment industry

How the industry works

Global fashion online sales are expected to grow massively from €415 billion in 2018 to €615 billion in 2022.[4] Approximately 75 million people are employed in the textile, clothing and footwear sector worldwide. Most of them are women. The industry is buyer driven which means that corporate giants such as H&M, Inditex, Primark or Kik usually do not own any of the factories they produce with, yet they basically control them. Their buying power lets them dictate where to produce, what to produce and at what prices. This, together with the rise of fast fashion, a business practice where the brands change their collections in very short time frames, puts enormous pressure on farmers, factory owners and workers. Supply chain transparency is another big issue.

Ways to gain power for workers

One way for workers to turn their often poor labour conditions into good or at least better conditions, has always been by organizing in independent labour unions and subsequently force the employers to negotiate collective agreements. However, this is easier said than done because anti-union practices are widespread in the global garment industry. Even though fundamental rights to join a union and bargain collectively are guaranteed in the big brands’ code of conducts and through various certification schemes, reality on the ground often looks very different.[5] Hence, the percentage of unionised garment workers in today’s main producing countries is very low.

Another way for workers to gain collective power and a higher level of self-determination is by organizing into worker cooperatives. Here, the workers collectively share the ownership of their workplace. Consequently, their work benefits themselves and their local communities rather than just filling the pockets of external shareholders, bosses or factory owners. However, there are currently just very few garment factories operating as a worker cooperative. In the first step of the value chain though, there is already a considerable amount of smallholder cotton farmers who are organized in cooperatives, primarily because together it is easier for them to sell their product and it also allows them to reach a higher price.[6]

Revolutionizing our garment value chain by becoming a platform coop

As of today, our immediate supply chain consists of three main partners. We buy 100 percent organic cotton for our fabric via Fair&Organic from India. The Social Cooperative Humana Nova receives these fabrics and sews them into t-shirts. Printex finishes these shirts with screen prints using water based eco-colours. Counting in the employees of the small manufacturers Fair&Organic works with, the combined number of people working for these three partners is likely to be around 50 to 60. It is safe to say that at least half of them in one way or another work for us during the realisation of a certain project. We should of course not forget all the additional people involved in logistics and transportation as well as in the raw material production. The products offered on our platform/website are only possible through the combined efforts of farmers, mill workers, fabric cutters, patternmakers, sewers, truck drivers, just to scratch the surface.

Now, imagine if all these hard working people were to become co-owners of the dna merch platform.

The co-ownership model would not only allow them to raise their voices concerning issues that affect them (e.g. delivery times, labour costs/wages and working hours), it would also make them eligible to a share of the surplus revenues generated by the platform.

And now try to imagine if all the other people in the value chain will become co-owners as well, those who will be using the platform to buy t-shirts and other garments either for their own use or to source and retail. If implemented properly in a truly inclusive way, this will lead to a fully democratised value chain in which both consumers and producers are empowered likewise. The technology for them to finally meet on eye-level and practice solidarity through direct interaction and trade is available. With the dna merch platform we want to put it in practice.

But why would it be so empowering to facilitate that sort of direct interaction between consumers and workers/producers? Two popular beliefs in today’s mainstream sustainability debate are that a) consumers have the power to make globalization fair and sustainable by shopping ethically and consciously, and b) that companies, to build trust in consumers, should certify their supply chains and guarantee universal standards through the means of independent audits.

While there is absolutely no doubt that our day-to-day shopping decisions matter and can drive companies to adjust and change their policies in a progressive way, it is way too easy to put all the responsibility in the end consumer’s pocket. We think it is hardly possible to always filter all products according to their social and ecological footprint and always make a conscious and ethical decision without going crazy, especially when the majority of products are known to be produced under poor conditions. What’s most important though, is that an approach which solely relies on the consumer power tends to treat workers in the global south as passive subjects who depend on our goodwill and help. Hence, it hinders us from seeing them as people just like us and makes it harder to create relations on eye level.

Audits are problematic, too. The vast majority of them has proven to be merely a paperwork exercise and does not lead to sustainable improvements of working conditions. A study from 2016 titled “Ethical Audits and the Supply Chains of Global Corporations” concludes that audits “are ineffective tools for detecting, reporting, or correcting environmental and labour problems in supply chains [and] they reinforce existing business models and preserve the global production status quo.” As with the consumer power argument, the biggest problem with audits is the passive position that the workers are put in.

We believe that it is the people themselves who know best what needs to be improved at their workplace or their favourite product. So, equipping people with the right tools to connect directly with each other, and putting them in a position where they no longer depend on powerful and manipulating intermediaries like most of today’s corporations are, they will figure out ways that benefit all those involved. With the dna merch platform coop we are determined to set out and prove it.

Lean proof of concept: Focussing on our status-quo

With our platform we want to address three dominant problems of the garment industry, i.e. lack of fairness and democracy, non-transparent prices and supply chains that hinder buyers from making informed decisions, and the fact that there is currently no easy way for workers and consumers to directly connect with each other.

To get things going we will make use of what we already have, a transparent supply chain for t-shirts with a self-organised sewers cooperative at the core, our existing website with a lot of transparent information and a network of customers comprising of trade unions, music bands, retail shops and crowdfunding supporters. We have various functionalities planned for the platform and will add and test them step by step along the way. First, we will add options to start one’s own crowdfunding campaigns and group orders. The idea is to make it possible for bands, organizations and individuals to initiate t-shirt pre-order campaigns to collectively pre-finance the production costs. If wished, users can add a margin on top of the costs to raise money via a public campaign.

Over time, we want to extend the product portfolio and offer not just customized printing on standardized garments but also enable e.g. young fashion designers to realize their first collection through the platform.

In terms of our organizational restructuring process from a German civil law partnership towards a platform coop with a legal structure yet to define, we aim to have an established organisation by mid of 2019 with at least 5 co-owners each from our producer part and the consumer/retailer part of our value chain (e.g. 3 workers from the sewers cooperative, 2 from the print shop, 1 band, 2 crowdfunding supporters, 1 fashion designer, 1 graphic designer)

Our biggest challenges and questions

1.       How exactly could a membership and governance structure look like in practice?
2.       How can we convince our stakeholders to embrace the undertaking of becoming a platform coop?
3.       What are the arguments and incentives that are valid for everybody?
4.       Which ones differ between the various actors?
5.       How will we ensure real participation of the coop members?
6.       Which tools and forms of communication will we need?
7.       How exactly will the business model look like?
8.       Transaction fees, membership fees …
9.       Coop shares
10.       Sales of own collections
11.       Consulting services for onboarding further producer partners
12.       Commission fees for fashion designers who win contracts through the platform from other users?
13.       How exactly can we make use of the Blockchain technology and other recent inventions that foster decentralisation?
14.       Which tools are readily available that we can make use of?
15.       Which impact on membership will the power imbalance in our supply chain most likely have, e.g. the fact that other than the     sewers cooperative all other partners are conventionally structured businesses?
16.       Should co-ownership of the platform become a prerequisite for being able to access all services and functionalities of the platform?

Call to action

We need and want more people to get involved in this!

Please get in touch by briefly mentioning what aspect interests you the most and where your expertise lies. We definitely need people with a technical background, people with experience working in coops, people with knowledge of the garment industry, social media and marketing experts, organizational theorists and probably a lot more that we cannot think of right now : )

Also, please feel free to reach out if you just want to comment on the idea as such or on one of the questions and challenges mentioned above or if you would like to add another one.

We are grateful for every input and consideration that you share with us!

You can best reach us via email or you can directly comment on the document here.

Doreen & Anton

[1]

[2] See https://www.startnext.com/dnamerch and https://www.startnext.com/dna-merch-vol-2

[3] For more info visit https://platform.coop

[4] See https://www.shopify.com/enterprise/ecommerce-fashion-industry

[5] See e.g. http://speri.dept.shef.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Global-Brief-1-Ethical-Audits-and-the-Supply-Chains-of-Global-Corporations.pdf

[6] See e.g. https://www.ica.coop/en/media/news/small-scale-farmers-achieve-a-26-higher-share-of-consumer-price-when-organized-in

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ArtFarm: Since 2013, when we bought 1300 m2 of land and small stone house, Artfarm has been our international project combining art and organic agriculture on the Croatian island of Hvar.

It is situated in the Starigrad Plain (in Greek: “Hora”, in Roman: “Ager”), a UNESCO protected agricultural area, close (2km) to the fisherman village and the beaches of Vrboska.

SEE THE MAP.

Our main art activity is the “artist in residence” program, where invited artist come to Artfarm, stay there a minimum of 10 days and interact with the physical and social environment.

Our organic garden and orchard produces vegetables and fruit during the whole season from May till October.

We enjoy a special position of importance on the island, as we are the place promoting the alternative culture and at the same time staying out of the tourist industry.

In 2017 we established the “1010 Festival”. “1010” is for 10 artists (or academics) who stay on Artfarm for 10 days. We had 2 monthly events from the 1^st of May through the 6^th of October: acoustic concerts, “megaphone” lectures, performances and debates, with an audience combining local and foreign visitors.

stone festival poster

“1010 FESTIVAL” 2017 LINE-UP ARCHIVE

OMFO (German Popov)- musician, Ukraine

2 weeks residence, 4 concerts

Takako Hamano– visual artist, Japan

2 weeks residence, paintings

Nina Targan-Mouravi– visual artist, Georgia

10 days residence, performance, painting

Nova Yorke– performer, Netherlands

1 week residence, performance

Maja Vodopivec, academic, University of Leiden, Netherlands

3 weeks residence, lecture

Duro Toomato, artist, Netherlands

5 months residence, signs and installations

Marta Petrinjak, painter, musician, Croatia

3 months residence, exposition “Hora”

and 1 concert

Kingalita, singer/dancer, Hungary

5 months residence, singing lessons,

8 concerts, Hvar and Vis Islands

Otoji & Rai, music duo, violin, double bass,

Japan, 3 weeks residence, 8 concerts, Hvar

and Vis Islands

Martina Matkovic, percussionist, Croatia

2 weeks residence, 7 concerts

“Goulash Disko”, we were part of the music festival, 5 concerts in Komiza, Vis Island

“Dancing Street”, 3 concerts in Stari Grad

(co-produced with “Gallery Fantazam” and

“Music Room Paiz”).

WHAT ARE OUR PLANS FOR THE FUTURE?

To improve facilities on Artfarm:

– make a more powerful solar energy system to be able to project art movies and documentaries

– improve the walls/fence around our land to get better garden protection from wild pigs, rabbits and pheasants.

– improve sleeping facilities for the visiting artists

– build a dance floor/stage and cinema screen

– increase our budget for hosting “artists in residence” and produce “1010 Festival”.

“Mr.Fixer” services:

– develop further information/advice services to help our visitors to stay out of tourist industry and experience the island from the inside.

Start initiative to end the use of (Monsanto!) pesticides & herbicides in the Starigrad Plain:

–“Cidokor” (glyphosate, Round-up) is still used by many local people to kill grass and weeds. We plan to end its use as much as possible. One way is to offer to locals (mostly winemakers) to manually (4-6 times per year) cut the grass in their fields as substitute for using herbicides.

Produce “1010 Festival” 2018 – here new ideas for residenties (to be confirmed)

Visual art, performance, lectures:

Gerindo Kamid Kartadinata, performer and environmental activist, Netherlands

Elica Grdinic, lawyer, European Court of Human Rights, France

Stefan Halikowsky, historian, University of Swansea, UK

Judith Witteman, visual artist, Netherlands

3D street graffiti artists (in contact)

Music:

Baba Zula, music group, Turkey

Levent Guzel, percussionist, Turkey

Evgeny Suvorkin, accordionist, Russia/Belgium

Stefanos Sekeroglou, violinist, Greece

Tlazolteoti Orkestra, music group, Mexico

Gypsy band from Hungary (in contact)

Small music sub-festival, (3 days in September).

Dance workshops (tango, belly dancing).

Singing lessons (Gypsy style, Turkish traditional)

And more.

As a non-profit foundation (NGO, charity), for presenting our programs we depend on the donations of our supporters, members and sponsors.

WHAT ARE YOUR BENEFITS AS OUR DONOR?

10 Euro or more

– you can visit Artfarm, meet the artists, have a free pancake lunch (with goat cheese and/or vegetables),free drink and get informed about public events.

100 Euro or more

– You can visit Artfarm, feel at home, meet the artists, and have free drink and lunch.

– You are invited to attend all the events on Artfarm and get free drinks (audience number

is limited to maximum 50 invited visitors).

OMFO concert

– You get the music of the musicians we host.

– You receive Mr. Fixer advice to be able to stay on Hvar Island outside of the tourist industry.

– You get all the local tips and translations:

from booking accommodation to hand made maps of best private beaches & biking and hiking secrets.

– You get secret tips for local pesticide-free (organic/bio) wine and food.

– You get all of our knowledge and contacts for travel around Croatia and the Balkans.

For donating via PayPal, credit card or IBAN (specify “donation for project Artfarm Mola Blaca”) visit our website:

starwingartists.com

Questions before and/or after donating? Staying informed? To receive our program updates and reserve lunches and events? Contact us via email:

[email protected]

Our NGO foundation details:

László Kinga, Djuro Grdinic (board members/art farmers)

Stichting Starwing Artists

Overtoom 301

1054 HW Amsterdam, NL

Chamber of commerce registration number:

41214620

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On June 1 2016, protests all over Croatia gathered more than 50,000 citizens in support of the curricular reform. Even though school education in Croatia is an intimidating system that does not encourage its users to become informed, the amount of children, young people, high school students and undergraduates that flooded the streets of Zagreb showed that something in that system worked.

1 June protests in Zagreb. Photo N1 Nataša Božić Šarić

Recent political developments

Instinct is something that transcends knowledge, Nikola Tesla said. If there was something indicating that the new government would try to stop the first comprehensive reform of the educational system in Croatia, then the instinct would most surely point to the activities of the conservative movement rolling down the Kaptol hill, seat of the Roman Catholic archbishop of Zagreb. One of the first eruptions of voices that had not been dominant in the public sphere in the last fifteen years, was the people’s referendum on the definition of marriage to be included in the Republic’s Constitution, held in 2013.

During the process of accession to the European Union, Croatian political elites had set up an alliance and changed the quota needed for the legitimacy of the referendum, saying that the decision is adopted by the majority of those voting and not the majority of those eligible to vote. Six months later this constitutional change enabled the first referendum initiated by 700 000 signatures to take place. Unfortunately, it was used to divest a certain group of citizens of their right to conclude marriage.

Even though marriage was defined as a union between man and woman only, six months after the referendum the (former) government passed a law on same-sex partnership that provided partners with equal rights as married couples, apart from adoption. It would seem as a victory had the parliament not passed a new Labour law on the same day, designed to favor employers, allowing them maximum flexibility and lowering workers protection indicators. That was also the moment when liberal leftist tendencies departed from progressive social left movements, a move adequately depicting the current state of affairs in Croatian civil society.

Legal personalities that constitute this conservative ideological field include a number of informal initiatives and associations, all types of media – printed and electronic – even a journalists’ association, political parties and religious organisations. Very often, political parties and religious organisations form associations that use designated media outlets that promote their views. The most known case is the initiative U ime obitelji (In the name of the family) that set the stage for the aforementioned referendum, after which the initiative became an association.

Having received funding for  the referendum from private donations and a strong logistical support from the Catholic Church, now U ime obitelji  is eligible to apply for public funding for their activities. Most responsive was the mayor of Zagreb who provided necessary infrastructure (an apartment in the centre of the city and all amenities paid) without a public procedure. The next step was launching a web site that now has more than 45 000 followers on Facebook.

National funds for media outlets, civil society development and development of culture programmes did not acknowledge U ime obitelji  and objected their non-transparent way of working. Soon, however, U ime obitelji  registered as a political party and even participated in the parliamentary elections in 2015. They did not win any seats in the Parliament but it only took a couple of months for the new government to act upon their vision of society.

At this moment, the conservative front is directly and indirectly supported by the Catholic Church and is represented in most governmental institutions. The Deputy Prime Minister and numerous ministers, deputies and secretaries in the current government all come from Church’s ranks,  while the President of the Republic and the Prime Minister are benevolent towards the Church. They were all elected in the past year.

Parliamentary elections were held in early November 2015. None of the parties or coalitions received the majority of votes. The elections were followed by two months of negotiations between three actors who received the most votes: the former government – the liberal coalition whose title but not its deeds refer to social democracy (SDP), a nationalist-oriented coalition whose leading party (HDZ) has been in power for 18 out of 25 years of country’s independence, and a coalition of independent lists of city mayors and officials (MOST), set up shortly before elections.

The latter received enough votes to decide with which of the two major parties they would want to form a government. After two months of feigned negotiations, they established a coalition government with HDZ, a party charged with accusations for corruption, alongside its former president and Croatian PM Ivo Sanader. Both major parties, SDP and HDZ, in some way derived from the Communist Party, the only party in former Yugoslavia; both ruled regardless of domestic economic interests and according to the dictates of IMF, credit agencies and Troika. They had developed the “godfather capitalism” supported by networks of private interests and clientelism, at the expense of the most vulnerable sections of society, media freedom and environmental justice. Legislation regulating those fields in Croatia is neither systematically implemented nor regularly monitored.

An assault on civil society

With the new government came new tendencies. The nationalist-oriented coalition in power is comprised of eight right-wing parties, some of them being apologists of Second World War’s ustasha regime, and the others closely connected, business and family-wise, with the conservative front gaining power during the past three years. The latter platform insists on only one legitimate perception of society – that of one nation, one religion, one colour, one sexual orientation. It mobilises a certain part of society (polls say one-third) by denouncing prominent civil society actors as supporters of the former government and those who impose minority values on the majority, at the same time taking on their discourse on volunteering, activism, protection of civil rights and the community interests.

More than 400 CSO representatives handing off appeals on distribution of lottery funds to the Government. Photo, 2016, by Matija Mrakovčić

Their trademark is the new minister of culture – Zlatko Hasanbegović: a mixture of both extremes in the coalition in power, politically pertaining with the biggest party, HDZ, as their man on the job. And the job is to shut down all opposition – media, NGO’s, students, progressive culture – with all their liberal tendencies, acquired rights and pursue of common goods.

As soon as Zlatko Hasanbegović was appointed as minister of culture, a group of cultural workers naming themselves Kulturnjaci2016 launched protests against his appointment, declaring that his political views and CV make him unsuitable for the job. One of Hasanbegović’s controversial comments was that anti-fascism is an empty phrase and not a crucial factor in the establishment of the Croatian state, even though this fact is written in the preamble of the Croatian constitution.

The situation of the Croatian media has worsened since the new government took power, largely due to the activities of the minister of culture, responsible for the media sector. Apart from eliminating funding for non-profit media and cutting the ministry’s support for government-critical media, Hasanbegović also played a role in the resignation of Mirjana Rakić, head of the state’s regulatory body Agency for Electronic Media. In March, the government majority in the parliament removed the director of the Croatian Radio-Television organisation, HRT and replaced him with the president of a conservative journalistic association. In less than two months, more than 70 journalists, editors, directors, managers, cameramen and others have been removed from their positions or laid off from HRT.

Protest for Varšavska Street in 2010 by Tomislav Medak

Civil Society

The front needed to fight against these developments is not well aligned, acquainted or even on the same page regarding the history textbooks. Alignment, networking and collaborations between different civil society actors started gaining visibility and concrete support only in the last two years. Protests in Varšavska Street in Zagreb, initiated by Zelena Akcija and Pravo na Grad against privatization of public space and commercialization of cultural heritage, begun in 2008. In the summer of 2012, these culminated into a permanent protest of dedicated activists joined by large numbers of ordinary citizens.

Varšavska Street protests were followed by protests elsewhere in Croatia, most notably in Dubrovnik against the manipulation of public interest through real estate development, but also in smaller local communities. After succeeding in mobilizing broad popular concerns over corruption and lack of civic participation in the public sector, a campaign for ban on monetization and concession of Croatian highways begun. The biggest accomplishment of the campaign in 2014 was the mobilization of a wider platform of civil society actors: two trade unions, two networks of civil society organisations and five associations, five union confederations and more than two thousand volunteers.

In 2015, the National Foundation for Civil Society Development (Nacionalna zaklada) implemented a new model of support for civil society organisations, initiatives, active citizens and interested public. This new model consisted of an open call for proposals to establish and/or maintain various platforms in the field of participatory governance of infrastructure, institutions and public goods, cross-sectoral collaboration, sustainable development, cooperation on regional and European level. Through this model funds were invested in platform’s development after implementing an activity or a campaign thereby moving further from project planning and allowing organisations to respond promptly and effectively to urgencies.

In this year’s regulation on the distribution of lottery funds, the National Foundation received only half the funds compared to 2015 which pushed its activities to the edge of viability. Adopting such a regulation means cutting the platform support for 50 percent and shutting down numerous programmes of civil society organisations dealing with the most vulnerable groups – the disadvantaged, the poor, elderly, disabled – as well as those engaged in cultural activities, amateur sport, voluntary societies, informal education, environmental justice, volunteering, civic organisation or the protection of rights.

On the other hand, issues like professionalization and bureaucratization, project-oriented logic, sectorial enclosure, initiatives questioning and endangering human rights, forced de-politicization and political illiteracy, are breaking up initiatives and movements throughout civil society sector without any hope of finding a common ground and alignment.

During the first decade of the new millennium, Croatian NGOs were mostly devoted to achieving an organisational and financial stability  that allowed them to build a stronger infrastructure, solid resources and specific knowledge, while institutions, academia, trade unions and religious organisations have not gone through any development. They’ve failed to acknowledge and act upon the phenomena of the post-Yugoslav war, e.g. the convergence of  socially owned companies and privatization, destruction of industrial production, re-traditionalisation of social values and the establishment of a national paradigm of culture and education.

Cultural and civil society sector in Croatia has been paralyzed since Hasanbegović’s instalment – the executive boards of independent public foundations (Nacionalna zaklada and Kultura nova) have been dissolved, both will soon have appointed rather than elected directors, the allocation of public funds in the cultural sector took place for the first time without taking into account the independent cultural council’s opinion, the small structural support of non-profit community media was shut down, new regulations and laws that centralises decision-making  in the hands of the minister are being passed. Here, it should be noted that in 2015 a number of procedural regulations, decrees were imposed, on civil society organisations, mainly non-profit organisations, placing them closer to – in terms of legal requirements and status – the private, for-profit sector.

Reading Umberto Eco’s essay Ur-Fascism in Mali Lošinj, action by Kulturnjaci 2016, photo by Kulturnjaci 2016

The public is being amused by the minister himself: a right-wing hero that fights back “those budget parasites” and followers of the former government or, a Croatian walking shame in the ministry of culture – a revisionist of the past, an apologist of a fascist regime and a highlighted representative of the conservative front. After forming the new government, a petition for Hasabegović’s removal was initiated by Kulturnjaci2016. It gathered more than 5000 signatures of cultural workers from Croatia and abroad and became a symbol of permanent resistance to political retraditionalization and the national paradigm of culture.

Unfortunately, Hasanbegović remained interesting for the mainstream media only in terms of his interpretations of the past, but not his moves in the field of culture. The question at hand is utterly important in times when right-wing parties and movements, nationalistic, chauvinistic and xenophobic rhetoric are taking over public discourse across Europe. But in the Croatian context, questions of cultural policies are undoubtedly connected to questions of the past. Culture anticipates almost every part of human life that society agreed on protecting through public mechanisms controlled by the state – its health, education and social care system, its public goods.

The reform of schooling system

On June 1, 2016 protests all over Croatia gathered more than 50 000 citizens in support of reform of the educational system. Protests were initiated by the resignation of national expert group working on curricular reform, due to the political pressures coming from the new government to reverse the reforms. The reform of the curriculum is just a small part of the reform of the schooling system which is, at its turn, just a part of a comprehensive strategy on education, science and technology, adopted by the Parliament in 2014.

The strategy in general is being implemented slowly, while  the curricular reform in particular has gone through the biggest progress, but also protests. The main reason for objection is the fact that the experts implementing the reforms – elementary and high schools teachers, professors and researchers – were appointed by the previous centre-left government, and are thus considered too liberal i.e. not committed enough to homeland-loving.

On one hand, that is where school subjects like history and Croatian language were caught in censorship scissors, and on the other, previous discrepancies between the Ministry of Science, Education and Sport and civil society organisations concerning health, sexual and civic education were only augmented. Curriculums suggested by teachers from all over Croatia aimed to modernise schools that will keep pupils to open up to the possibility of changing and improving their skills, attitudes and values and reorganize every day school in a more flexible and autonomous direction. More than 400 practitioners, closely connected to their working collectives, decided to reform Croatian school education system based on the needs of students, teachers and parents.

Also, curricular reform is the place where “liberal” and “radical” left tendencies confronted. For some, the curriculums suggested that educational system serves as a field for obtaining skills for the labour market and students were perceived as labour force, without taking into account their unequal starting points. Without questioning religious dogmas, neoliberal market and the form of capitalism developed in Croatia, without developing the pupils’ perception of workers’ rights and alternative forms of democracy, curricular reform could not gain support. Especially, the idea carried out by the leader of the expert working group and accepted by many, that politics has nothing to do with education, triggered negative remarks for being naive and impotent.

After the appointment of the new government, the Ministry only nominally supported the curricular reform. Guidelines of the newly formed government implicated a plan to stop the reform – later it was called a „slip“, followed by minister Predrag Šustar’s statement that it is possible to postpone the reform – but „there is no need for that“. Consequently, the budget guidelines for 2016 were published, from which the curricular reform disappeared – „we have European funds“, it was claimed as a response, And finally, the official statement of the Ministry was issued that withdrawal of money from the European funds will not happen until the testing implementation of the curriculum starts – for which the Ministry itself is responsible.

Disputes erupted after the parliamentary committee on Science and Education concluded that the national expert group in charge of the reform should be expanded with ten new members specialized in other fields. The problem with such a decision is that the curriculums are being altered by teachers that have written them after the process of public consultation have taken place, and the expert group is supposed to be there only to organize and support the process, not to intervene in the content. That conclusion revealed the government’s absolute ignorance of the curricular reform process, on one hand, and on the other, the fact that the conservative movement, now seated in the Parliament, gained too much power in a secular society.

For the last five months, the Ministry of Education has also been giving general support to providing a State Pedagogical Standard, organized and paid transport for high school students, student standard and grants, professional development of teachers or the autonomy of the University and its constituents. But no actual support to infrastructure, financing, organizing work or allocation of public money for public good has occurred. The members of the expert groups responsible for drafting 52 curricular documents have not yet seen their contracts, let alone fees, while often having had to finance travelling to teachers’ conferences where the documents were represented and discussed from their own pockets.

So they have rebelled. Teachers, pupils, students, parents, citizens took the streets in 13 Croatian cities and said that they have had enough of any government experimenting with the schooling system and that they believe their teachers more than they believe their politicians.

No cultural base

If instinct is something that transcends knowledge, one could argue that it implies that formal education is not necessary to survive. Many texts about instrumentalization of knowledge and the idea of a knowledge society have been written, so we do not need to repeat them here. From another perspective, only systematic and on-going education can make one understand that formal education is not necessary in that aspect and that it can be different. Educational system in Croatia is often an obstacle for a mind interested in everything living and breathing, an intimidating system that tolerates but does not encourage its users to become informed.

That is why the amount of children, young people, high school students and undergraduates that flooded the streets of Zagreb on June 1 was a real surprise, a victory in itself. It showed that something in that system worked. It didn’t take long to find out what that was – 50 thousand people cheered and applauded every time the word „teacher“ was mentioned. The base. The more the politicians offended them, as the minister of culture did, calling them ‘instrumentalised by the opposition’, the more the public anger grew.

Cultural theorist, writer and  professor at comparative literature department at the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb, Dean Duda once suggested that it is absurd that we have a Ministry of Science, Education and Sport as if education should not have a sector of its own, dedicated to its growth as a precondition for higher education and scientific development, and that if there is a sector with which it could be merged with, it should most surely be culture. Because culture, and this is now my interpretation, does not have a base. Its base grows out of the educational system – pupils and students are thought to seek impulses from the outer world, to find recognition of what teaching materials they learn from in everyday life, to question what is seen and heard and to find alternative sources of information. Or they should be.

If they are not, they depend on the institutional support that will impose those imperatives on teachers but also introduce and implement such practices, from assuring that pupils attend and participate in cultural activities by financing their learning, to supporting every local initiative that upgrades the learning process. Unfortunately, it is not just that the Ministry of Education does not provide that kind of support, the Ministry in many cases resists its own educational policies.

The fact that non-institutional culture in Croatia, part of a larger organised civil society, does not enjoy protection of their own base, easily leads us to a conclusion that there is no cultural base. Why was public anger not unleashed after minister Hasanbegović shut down of non-profit media, after the state’s regulatory body for digital media was solicited rather than protected, after undemocratic practices in the redistribution of public money for cultural programmes became obvious, after paralysing Foundation Kultura Nova, after the intention to ignore expert councils’ suggestions and accuse them of shaming the good reputation of Ministry of Culture was declared, as suggested by the new Law on Culture Councils now in public consultation? There is a direct link between the two processes and the sectoral policies that have not yet been implemented much.

The former government introduced a pilot programme of cultural activities performed by associations and artistic organisations from independent cultural scene, directed towards elementary and high schools, but the programme was not well implemented, guided or monitored so there are no analyses about its benefits. The new minister decided to announce a call for the same programme under the European Social Fund, and not the national budget, but the call has not yet been published. The Ministry of Education has recently released a call for civil society organisations’ educational programmes in schools, and that is the furthest the relationship between culture and education has gone in institutional context.

That is why, among other reasons, Croatian society needs a curricular reform. From the inside it relies on individual teacher’s enthusiasm and that is not sustainable, especially given the fact that teachers are themselves educated in the same system that does not link the two sectors, two life spheres, and prevents aforementioned instinct to appear through cultural education. In Croatian context, cultural policies are undoubtedly connected to questions of past, questions of education and questions of public interest and public goods.

Society agreed on protecting public goods through public mechanisms controlled by the state because it understood that collective protection of rights is stronger than individual and that these goods must be accessible and available for everyone. This is the case for education, just as it is for culture. But the educational system provides its users only with institutionalized, retrograde culture and art, and its users are not formally informed about the existence and relevance of contemporary cultural practices. Society’s needs, in Croatian context, were fulfilled in 1991, by gaining an independent state, and everything after this period is insignificant. Independent cultural scene grew despite it.

The task for the Independent Cultural Scene

So the emergence of Zlatko Hasanbegović is a not at all a surprising event as it might look like. Keeping the public in the period of Homeland war, symbolically but also verbally, conditions the public view of the illiberal and autocratic tendencies that the coalition in power has sought to carry out. Fortunately, the independent cultural scene only grew stronger in their demands for a transparent, useful and cooperative state during the past decade. There are numerous organisations dispersed throughout Croatia, connected by Clubture network since the beginning of 2000s and Foundation Kultura Nova since 2011.

Clubture Network is a unique example of a national platform of independent cultural organisations whose activities are directed towards decentralisation of cultural production and the democratisation of culture. The innovative and inclusive model of cooperation and decision-making pushed Clubture to initiate gathering of the independent cultural organisations from the region into a collaborative platform Kooperativa. In various cities in Croatia (Rijeka, Pula, Zagreb, Split, Karlovac, Dubrovnik) Clubture’s organizations co-established cultural institutions and at a national level successfully advocated for the establishment of the foundation for independent culture. The process of founding Kultura Nova extended over several years and included representatives of civil society organisations, different state administration bodies, public government bodies and experts. The Law on Foundation Kultura Nova was passed in 2011. Since its new Managing body has to be confirmed by Ministry Of Culture, Zlatko Hasanbegović has yet to show what he considers civic culture.

In the context of civil society organisations, civic culture has been a large part of it, active in local communities where organisations for protection of rights, gathering of youth, women or ecology, educational or health services, were just forming. At this point, there is a civil society organisation in almost every local community  that can work from the inside.

An important episode in Croatian past relates to the situation evolving at present day. The government’s irresponsibility has been triggering mass discontent until the end of the 1990s and the removal of the government was initiated by a broad civic mobilization. As sociologist and activist Srđan Dvornik writes, on one side there was a regime that had everything under control, but no base to hold power, on the other – mass discontent, and in the middle hundreds of civil society organisations who themselves would never have been able to run such a crowd, but were capable of organisational support.

The exact same thing happened behind the scenes of massive protests that have marked 1 June. Anger, the first step towards articulation of the problem, has to be organised in order not to become self-pleasing but productive. Mobilisation, channelling and organisation of an idea of a better future towards a movement that cannot be out-voiced, is exactly what the Croatian civil society has to offer to those kids, pupils and students who gathered in public spaces in defence of public interest. For many of them, this was the first protest they’ve attended.

If culture, cultural movements and actors could embrace „depoliticised“ educational system as the starting point where critical, progressive and experimental cultural practices can be nurtured, there is a possibility that those practices will retain its addressees. Only from that point onwards can that system – its practitioners and users, accept political as a way of operating, as a way of forming the base for reproduction of critical, progressive and experimental ideas.

Yes, we all know that there is no possibility for educational systems to avoid being ideological, but only through cultural education can that idea become prevailing. Developers of the curricular reform, teachers, have invited engaged cultural practices into educational system; there is only the effort of responding to the invite. Since the possibilities in the institutional context are really scarce, cultural organisations could join teachers and organizations that work in education in the common struggle of breaking down government’s barriers to an educational system that is free, just and accessible to all.

Author Matija Mrakov?i? is a journalist and editor at a non-profit web portal Kulturpunkt.hr and works on some programmes of its publisher – association Kurziv – connected with informal education and documentation and historization of Croatian independent cultural scene. She writes about regional independent cultural scene, civil society organisations, media, contemporary culture, education policies, and collaborates with organisations and initiatives in Croatia, region and Europe. This article was originally published on politicalcritique.org.

Lead image: Reading Umberto Eco’s essay Ur-Fascism in Zagreb by artist Damir Bartol Indoš, action by Kulturnjaci 2016, photo by Kulturnjaci 2016.

The post Channelling anger and depoliticizing happiness appeared first on P2P Foundation.

A tentative agenda of the event can be found here.

Thematic concept of the module

“Commons is a concept which was launched into mainstream science and policy by American political scientist Elinor Claire Ostrom who for this received the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 2009. From the early 1970s with her colleagues she studied hundreds of local communities which successfully governed natural common-pool resources like forests, fisheries and pastures without the interference of both state and market. She showed how instead of government regulation on one side or privatisation of property on the other, number of communities independently succeeded to design their own rules/institutions to self-govern these resources in order not to overuse them. For Ostrom crucial condition that individuals as members of these communities achieve this personal and collective benefit is ability to communicate and sufficient level of trust.

Commons are defined in many ways by various authors but most of them consider it a distinct social practice in governing of resource by community of its users through different institutional arrangements. Three key elements here are: resource, governance regime and community. Even though the concept was used in beginning only for natural resources which refer to traditional land commons from Middle Ages in Europe to contemporary ecological common-pool resources analysed by Ostrom, the concept of commons is now also used for social and non-material resources like knowledge which refer to modern commons, for example digital commons. Element of governance regime points to various rules which are designed by users and which are different from one commons to another but Ostrom believed that all successful commons share some universal principles for design of these rules. Community is another important element as there is no commons without active role of commoners or people who co-produce, re-produce and take care of commons. To what extent are commoners a part of community and what binds them together is still a matter of theoretical and empirical debate.

Commons is first of all a scientific and analytical concept used for empirical research of existing practices, but it is also a policy concept for those who aim to create or enhance commons through institutional design which was also goal of Ostrom. However, commons are lately becoming widely used as political concept by various actors of the Green and Left spectrum who oppose on one side the neoliberal policies of privatisation of various natural and social resources and on the other side criticise etatisation of resources for the benefits of corrupted elites within neoliberal state. This is rather normative use of the commons concept as progressive but then some normative criteria related to resource are often added like fair access, collective control and sustainable use which means that commons is inherently contested concept. Nevertheless, because of its radical democratic appeal that resources should be governed by its users and unifying nature of the concept as it transcends differences between social and environmental struggles, the commons became common ground for various progressive social movements fighting against market fundamentalism and state paternalism.

However, pure commons are difficult to find within modern societies as there is always some degree of influence by the market and the state. One set of questions arises on what is the relationship between commons and markets but in this module we want to explore on what is the relationship between commons and “the state” on theoretical level and “states” on empirical level. Even if commons sphere is to be enhanced, the state seems here to stay in near future and will not “wither away” so soon. This begs the question of what to do with the state and if it can be used for support towards commons or at least prevented to hinder the commons. There is a large number of examples where states actively destroyed or enclosed commons but also a growing number of examples where states developed enhancing frameworks for commons to prosper. Also the border between the state and commons is becoming in practice blurrier as there are new experiments with hybrid forms of commons and public governance through state-community partnerships.

Theories of the state differ and there is even debate if there could be a general theory of the state. One has to have a clear understanding of what state is and where the state begins and ends before exploring relationship with the commons. There are also important debates about the nature and role of the state with liberal and Marxist answers to that questions. Critical theory does not see state as a neutral entity but rather as instrument of the upper class although there is a disagreement if there is some autonomy of the state apparatus in serving this class interests. If there are contradictions within capitalist state perhaps there are cracks to be used for transformation of the state. State which would be supportive towards commons or even to transform the state through concept of commons to diffuse its power relations through participation of users in different public services and various mechanisms of social control of the state apparatus by local communities. There is a long history of attempts and failures to do so but perhaps some conclusions can be made to progress forward if any agency is possible. This also invokes the old debate on the Left if one should transform society from “outside of the state” or state power should be first captured to make deep social transformation.

Many on the Green and Left remain sceptical towards the state for achieving systemic changes towards ecological and social justice and would rather decrease its scope or even dismantle it. Looking at the issues like climate change which will further more increase global and local, environmental and social injustice because of unequal distribution of hazards between and within societies, it is difficult to imagine coordination and redistribution needed to address these problems without some role of states. This however cannot be existing states as it is not only markets that failed to solve issues like climate change but it is also states which failed. Commons probably can’t replace states but can perhaps provide ideas on how to transform them to replace both old paternalistic state and new public management state so citizens are not clients nor customers but participants.

Exploring the relationship between commons and state(s) should be informative for participants of Green Academy who seek through research, activism or other social engagement to transform both the state and commons towards progressive ends. Objective of the module is also geographical contextualisation in order to see how theories of the commons and theories of the state apply to context of Balkans and wider European semi-periphery including Southern Europe and Central Eastern Europe. To be able to achieve this, participants are invited to steer lecturers towards regional context and participate in debate about applicability of these concepts for their local work. Finally, participants are invited to contribute to empirical part by giving local successful and unsuccessful examples related to relationship between commons and states.”

Sample abstracts of lectures

Michel Bauwens: Concept of the Partner State

McKenzie Wark calls Kojin Karatani’s The Structure of World History (Duke University Press, 2014) “an astonishing work of synthetic historical theory”. It’s premise is that humans allocate resources using different modalities that have always co-existed, but in different configurations. This allows us to look at social change not as a change in mode of productions that then overdetermine the superstructures, but as reconfigurations between the four modalities of pooling (mutualization, the commons), gift-based reciprocity, the market (capitalist or not), and the state (‘rule and protect’, ‘plunder and redistribute’). The re-emergence of commoning as a central feature of both capitalist extractivism and commons-based collaborative economies, invites to reconsider social change strategies based on reconfiguring the mutual relations of the different modalities. This has been the core practice of the commons transition strategies developed by grassroots economic coalitions and their ‘transvestment’ strategies (i.e. striving for ‘value sovereignty’ by disciplining value originating from the other modalities to the needs and demands of the commoners), which aim to subsume the state and market functions to the logic of the commons, through partner state practices and generative market forms. In this presentation, we will move from the micro-economic experience of p2p phyles (economic eco-systems at the service of the commons) to the potential for a full macro-societal strategy for social change.

Tomislav Tomaševi?: Commonising the State

In the current crisis of both states and markets the concept of commons is becoming more and more popular among progressives of various political colors. Commons are often defined as “outside the realm of state and market” but this could be criticized as no contemporary social practice is completely outside state rule(s) and isolated from the influence of markets. For example, all social practices have some material base and footprint which is linked with territory while rule over territories of the whole planet is shared between states. Commons are also usually defined as governance of resource(s) by the community of users so comprising of three elements: resource, governance regime and community of users. One might notice how this is not very different from the classical definitions of the state which define it as political community under single government ruling over defined territory so comprising also of three elements: territory, government and people in political community. There are many competing theories of the state but if we take that state is not neutral entity separated from society and economy but part of the capitalist system there is an old political dilemma on the Left if it should attempt to capture state power to change socio-economic relations or this attempt is doomed to fail. Within the New Left this debate is between autonomists who focus on building socio-economic alternatives “outside” of the state and new parties-movements who focus on taking state power through representative democracy in order to create new socio-economic alternatives from “inside” the state. One option leaves the state power in hands of neoliberals and far Right while the other option in examples of left-wing governments in Latin America shows that it is not absolved from corruption and isolation of state elites from society. Perhaps the way out of this dichotomy can be the concept of commons.

If concept of commons is to be understood normatively and politically as a force of democratization, I believe it can be also used for democratization of the state. Even if the state is instrument of upper class and has its internal logic of power relations and institutional self-preservation, if one insists on some agency then the commons experiences can be instrumental in changing state institutions to include more of real participatory and direct democracy. This would make the border between commons counter-power and state power blurrier. There is a whole spectrum of cases between pure public and pure commons governance of resources like co-management, civic-public partnerships, democratic governance of public enterprises, civic non-profit concessions etc. Progressive commons practices with fair access, collective control and sustainable use of resources can be perhaps a way forward in transforming state institutions both from the “outside” and from the “inside”.

Daniel Chavez: The state, New Politics, and the commons

The presentation will be focused on a discussion of the meanings, possibilities and limitations of the interaction between the commons and the state. The key questions to be explored will be the following: Is it realistic to think about ‘commonising’ the state’? What would that mean in practice, in the context of the current international political economy? Could the state be perceived as a tool to promote the expansion of the commons? Can the state be democratised and reclaimed by ordinary citizens and local communities? Are there real-life examples of ‘alternative’ state forms evolving today around the world? What are the implications of scale?

The presentation will also refer to highly polarised academic and political debates in Europe and in other regions of the South (particularly in Latin America). On the one hand, there are activists and thinkers who still perceive the state as a social relation and a set of institutions that could be transformed to create or expand commons, while on the other hand there are many who argue that the left (or the emancipatory forces, more in general) should stop worrying about the state and focus all the efforts in building local, socially controlled and fully autonomous initiatives for social, economic and political change. Are there possibilities for dialogue and cross-fertilisation between these two seemingly opposite approaches? The presenter will refer to the New Politics project, a recently international initiative recently (re)launched by TNI that aims to promote further conversation and eventual joint work, linking activists and thinkers from different regions and theoretical and ideological traditions.

Finally, the presentation will offer a quick review of a few processes presently evolving in different parts of the world. In Latin America and some European countries, the left has entered state institutions and have experimented with local and national governance. In the case of Ecuador, for instance, part of the national government supported the design of a commons-driven transition plan, focused on the notion of the ‘partner state’. More recently, in Barcelona and other Spanish cities, progressive social and political organisations have advanced innovative proposals for the democratisation of the state, including concrete moves towards water justice and energy democracy. The presentation will analyse the prospects and constraints of these processes in terms of ‘commonising’ the state.

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