StreetDinners brings local neighbours together by helping them to create community dinners in their street. The organisation removes all the barriers of community dinners through an online platform with ticket sales and coordination of volunteer as well as promotion materials and organised programs. National coordinators work with local administration and the individual organisators to gather volunteers and tell the stories from our communities. On the same days across Europe!
Denmark, Netherlands & Germany
Both urbanisation and migration over the last decades have resulted in a huge influx of new residents to our cities. At the same time the centralisation of shops and spread of digital technologies have lead to fewer local meeting places and less practical reasons to visit your neighbour. Yet a strong local community has time and again proven vital to the feeling of safety, trust and belonging for residents, especially the ones with lesser means.
We are aiming to gather 50 streets in 3 different European nations to have streetdinners on the same day and thus connecting around 2500 guests and 500 volunteers. We will gather the stories of how European communities come together and thus build an online community of local organisers. That will be the start of a local movement sharing their stories and connecting across European borders building up links from a level as local as private homes and everyday life.
We already have an existing platform which has been running in the Netherlands and tested in Denmark. The first step will be to reach a final agreement with a national coordinator in Germany, who will reach out to local municipalities and partners. In the meantime we have to make online adjustments to be able to include German cities and have more traffic as well as legal and practical registrations for the ticket-sales and administration in Germany. By the beginning of the summer we start the promotion for a number of local organisers in the 3 countries resulting in 50 dinners during a weekend in September. Afterwards we gather their stories in audio, video and text and publish on the platform to support an online community and printed as postcards and books to send across Europe.
We initially target local community organisations as organisers in poorer neighbourhoods as well as informal neighbour-groups in a bit more developed parts of the cities. Together with the local neighbours we then target a wide group of local residents to ensure a diversity at the dinners that reflects the local community. Other stakeholders and usual contributors are cities, local governments and food producers.
The idea originated from personal needs as neighbours ourselves and has been constantly developed together with the local organisers. Today it reflects what neighbours seek with a specific flexibility for anyone to make it their own, while still maintaining a certain framework and connection from street to street. It is a unique combination of local community work and international online collaboration, where up to 20% of the participants are active volunteers and create the future cities.
office expenses 9450 EUR
travel and accommodation costs 5000 EUR
web and legal costs 9000 EUR
public relations / promotion 6200 EUR
unforeseen 3000 EUR
personnel 59400 EUR
Do you want to be a part of organising streetdinners 2016? we are always happy to invite new local partners on board as well as gain input, feedback and ideas for further development.