Community of people to share ideas and projects
Among the trends related to sustainability that have been proliferating in the last years, certainly the shared creative spaces stand out.
One of these is “Casa Netural” (link), a house in Matera, in southern Italy, hosting people from all around the world, where they can regenerate themselves, realize their ideas about social innovation, culture and creativity and experience the contamination by sharing their knowledge.
Casa Netural is a co-working and co-living space, but also an incubator for cultural and creative enterprises. It was born in 2012 and it actually has 150 members.
The co-working is a perfect solution to save money and share the working space with many interesting people. Through the co-working people can also share knowledge and skills.
The co-living is an experience of community life, “an opportunity to bring your professional projects and life changes, a new way to unplug yourself from the routine, get inspired, meet new people and clients, and connect with an interesting reality while exploring a unique city”, states the President Andrea Paoletti.
At Casa Netural, participants often organise group lunches and dinners, avoiding food waste.
The space is economically more accessible than other solutions in terms of co-working and co-living.
Through the incubator, Casa Netural supports people prototyping their business ideas, in exchange for their skills, services and activities.
Casa Netural implements the principles of circular economy and supports itself through the members' stakes: everyone has to invest something in terms of time, money or knowledge.
The internal space of the structure is entirely made of recycled materials, as shown by Andrea and Susanna (guest of the house).
Casa Netural has so far developed several projects.
With the "Green Netural" and “San Pardo” projects, some green public deserted areas in the neighbourhood have been redesigned with the community for the community.
Through the project "Incubatore Netural", Casa Netural analyzes the feasibility of projects of other realities (mentoring role). For example, some time ago an amateur beekeeper decided to incubate his project to become a professional beekeeper, exchanging his honey with the services provided by Casa Netural.
With the project "Bibliomater" a library was created only for children and teenagers with books donated by families who no longer used them.
Furthermore, projects were carried out for the construction of a composter, book crossing and the neighbourhood clothes exchange ("Swap Club" project).
Author: Alessandro Zito / Materahub