Ask me anything about Blivande!

What is Blivande!?

An excellent first question!

This question has many answers, but let's start from somewhere. What is Blivande in relation to the Node? In Sickla, the Node has existed largely because of the good will of two companies. One is Atrium Ljungberg, the owner of the property. Another is Nobelberget, the primary tenant that the Node has rented from second hand. Although we have lived in a sort of symbiosis with these companies, it has been a pretty distant relationship. Nobelberget have benefitted from us bringing people to the area and putting it on the map with our events like Urban Burn, and we have benefited by having a home for our community. But to the most part, our community does not overlap with that of Nobelberget and real win-win synergies are not as many as they could have been.

So the first answer to the question is that Blivande will take on the role that Nobelberget has had, with the very significant difference that the we, the founders of Blivande, are all members of the community and wanting to build something that fits our culture. Blivande rents the house at Södra Hamnvägen 9 from Stockholms Hamnar, and the Node moves in to this house. This way, the Node stays an inclusive non-profit, nested inside a structure that runs the house and infrastructure. We are working with the goal in mind that all parts should benefit each other. Many of the members of Studio Beta, our co-working space, will also be part of the Node community and are able to bring their work and play closer together. Many of the artists at Studio Tau, our art workshop and makerspace, will also be making art for events like Urban Burn, Afterglow and the Borderland. Node members will literally see the art creation at Tau through some partial glass walls between the Node space and the Tau space, and there will be short courses available for those curious about laser cutting, 3D-printing, CNC-cutting, woodworking and other techniques. Blivande will also own a couple of containers which will be placed very close to the house, first for storage, but eventually we want to explore having welding workshops and perhaps even a garden in a complex of colourful customised containers.

So what sort of organisation is Blivande? While the Node is an association, Blivande is a company. Blivande is founded by me, Hampus, Cindy and Sero. Exactly how Blivande will be structured and what its long term goals are is a process we are on the path of navigating. I am personally very intrigued by progressive organisational forms like that of Enspiral and Edgeryders (which will have its Nordic office at House Blivande), and will be looking into that in the future. This will be a slow process of becoming, and we are not rushing in figuring it out. However, we all agree on one thing, which is that the main aim of Blivande is to create the best possible conditions for our community of shakers and movers in Stockholm to level up and create even bigger and better things together in the decade to come. Our first mission which requires our complete attention for the next two to three years is to get House Blivande to a point where it covers its own costs, with enough left over for yearly investments in making it better and some financial compensation for Hampus, who will be spending most of his time working for Blivande for the next two years.
During 2019 however, nobody will get paid, and all our efforts go towards making ends meet.

What can Blivande become? As given away by the name, this is a question that will never have a final answer. Like I wrote in my other post on Blivande, my hope with Blivande is that it will act like a container for this gradient from the Node community, to the artistic force of creation at Studio Tau, with a path to making a living for yourself together with others at Studio Beta. Right now I'm very inspired by thinking about how we can keep our love, trust and affection for each other while also starting to make a living together in small crews that together form larger congregations. Richard D. Bartlett has written about this recently. I have myself been thinking about how accelerators for creative collisions between people bring us together, which can then create the conditions for us to solve very real and important challenges. To me, Blivande is another piece of the puzzle, another avenue for us to build together and experiment. I am very excited and hopeful about it.

@hugi thanks for all those explanations :) Among the things you wrote, this particularly captured my attention:
"Node members will literally see the art creation at Tau through some partial glass walls between the Node space and the Tau space, and there will be short courses available for those curious about laser cutting, 3D-printing, CNC-cutting, woodworking and other techniques."
I'm interested to know more about projects around CNC machining and possibly contribute with my knownledge&experience.
I have, with my father (who lives in France), built woodcut CNC machine and plasma cutter. About a year ago, we have started a more ambitious project of building a 3kW CNC lathe. My father takes care of all mechanics part (design and manufacturing with his personal workshop) and I'm taking care of the electronics and control system part. The project is moving forward at slow pace since we do it on our spare time. I made some video 2weeks ago to show the current progress where we are right now: https://youtu.be/bn6DsqG35MU
We mostly do all that for fun, we have at the moment no precise goal or objective on what to do with this CNC machine when it will be fully operational.

However this is a small part of a more global vision that my father developped in a book he wrote (https://www.eco-industrie-locale.fr/livre/ all in French, sorry). I could talk a lot about it but to try to make it short the book is about "How to re-localize&re-organize the industry so it can serve the local economy and people again (instead of international funds/investors)". There have been also ongoing practical project&actions to put this concept into practice over the past 2years (https://www.eco-industrie-locale.fr/parapluie/ sorry, all in french again).
Following this concept, this CNC lathe has been designed in a way so it is possible to built it with modest means (which are more likely to be available at a local scale). This include, for example, reducing number of "off the shelf" parts (often coming from the other side of the world) to minimize international trade and maximize support to a more local economy. And regarding the control system part, I'm using exclusively opensource software (Machinekit/LinuxCNC) which in the past few years come quite close to what commercial solutions can offer.

I don't know what are the projects/ideas with CNC machining at Blivande but I know how to make control systems for 3 to 5axis machines (thanks to opensource) and I would be happy to put some of my spare time to make more people benefit of that :)
Who I should talk to to know more about the CNC machining at Blivande?

Great stuff Damien! Really cool to hear about your project with your father!
The CNC at Tau is still in the future, we've only set an intention of getting one so far, but if you join as a member of Tau the door would be wide open for you to take lead on it and make it a reality. You live in Stockholm I presume?

Yep, I live in Stockholm and regular Noden member for ~1year now :)
I read a bit about Tau, seems like a great project! I personally don't have need for it at the moment but it's good to know this space exist :)
I don't know if that fits with Tau's goals/objectives but I'm planning to put all electronics&software I developed for my CNC project in opensource so if there is some demands/needs from Tau members for CNC facilities, I could probably help in building some CNC machines and saving Tau from those rather expensive investments.

Fantastic!

You should check and out and become a member of our Studio Tau online forum. You don't have to be a member of Tau so participate in the discussions there.
Check it out here: https://forum.blivande.com/c/tau

@damiendd

What do you see as the challenges in moving the Node to Blivande? What changes do you foresee?

I didn't answer this when it came in, I'm sorry about that, it slipped my mind. In short most of the challenge as I see it will adapting to the new reality of co-existing with three other activities: Studio Beta, Studio Tau and Blivande Events. This will require more communication and coordination than before.

This is also an untested recipe, and the most honest answer is probably that I really don't know. Time will tell.