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Community Production



Community Production





We stand at the threshold of an epochal change in the history of work. The changes now emerging will be as incisive as the leap into the Industrial Revolution 200 years ago. One important question will be how we use the possibilities of new technologies for the labor market. Directly connected with the labor market of the future is the production of the future. It is a hybrid of bits and bites. And it will be made by all of us.

The tools we gave out of our hands in the course of industrialization are tools we want to reclaim. With advanced technology we aim at forms of communal self-production. Workshops with high-tech DIY machines can be the factories of the future.

Community Formation

Production capacity in these community workshops is already impressive and advanced in part today. The Grand Garage in the Tabakfabrik Linz is equipped, among other things, with fabricators, laser cutters, computer-controlled milling machines, and robots.

During the industrial age, most work was done with muscle power; it was dull, grinding, exhausting physical labor. In the post-industrial age, this work will be done almost entirely by machines. Two thirds of all work can then be work that makes one stronger, is attuned to oneself, advances one, and serves self-realization. That represents enormous progress, because in the past only small privileged elites – artists, intellectuals, and inventors – could enjoy the hearty elixir of such work. This can now change.

Community Production is green like lucky clover

Community Formation in an alternative economy

NANK wants to create free space for ideas and action that are not yet on the market. The priority is bringing people and cultural techniques together with suitable technologies. Neighborhood centers with autonomous, regional production in small spaces make it possible for everyone, for example, to breed fish themselves or simply make everyday objects themselves and thereby shape part of their own work.

The chance to invest two thirds of one’s own work deliberately in one’s own development may make possible what neither democracy nor education nor prosperity has achieved: we, the people – and this includes the 85 percent who until now had to row the galleys – will finally have the chance to mature into fully developed human beings.

Computers are used at home to burn DVDs, make books, furniture, and spare parts oneself. But this is only the beginning. Technological possibilities are emerging for making a large share of the things we need ourselves – in one’s own workshop, at home, or, even more economically and sustainably, in a kind of community center. The role of producer, distributor, and consumer is thus fundamentally changing.

To escape more easily from the stranglehold of the decaying job system, we need a completely new economy. The backbone of this new economy consists in our moving incessantly, step by step, toward an economic form in which we make our own products and thereby gain resilience. It is not only about producing tomatoes or jam intelligently. It is also about producing our own tools, our own infrastructure, our own capacity to act.




In classical wage-labor society, optimizing a company means optimizing “human resources”, as the phrase so nicely goes. What is meant are human beings and willing employees. New Work after Bergmann counters this efficiency mania with a sustainable strengthening of the individual’s free will and a collaborative spirit on equal footing. Working with one another, with the vigorous aid of empowering technology, becomes an exploration and discovery. The core statement is: “Work on what you really, really want!”

This important nucleus of freedom joins craft in “Community Production” and links work on high-tech DIY machines with a proper dose of entrepreneurial spirit. Finding out what one wants, finding one’s “calling”, can help defuse problems in the labor market. Allowing a little more flamboyance for what is uniquely one’s own to make, and a cleverly linked network of collaboration in connection with entrepreneurship and fair remuneration mechanisms, can offer protection against job loss, decline, and poverty.


Gespräch zwischen Mark Linsenmayer und Frithjof Begmann zu Community Production ( in englischer Sprache)



Mark Linsenmayer and Frithjof Bergmann discuss, on December 10, 2013, an important component of New Work: community production, also known as high-tech self-providing. Instead of acquiring all goods by buying them with wage money, you make them yourself by using advanced technologies that can be used, or soon will be usable, in community centers.

Community Production is a form of local economy in which people produce goods themselves by means of adequate production technology. In particular, fabricators and automated machines that are easy to handle, powerful, and multifunctional make it possible to provide for oneself: “We could develop a series of devices, apparatuses, materials, machines, and methods of production that would enable us, or a not very large group of people, to make 60 to 80 percent of what we need to live ourselves.” (The Era of New Work, interview with Frithjof Bergmann, Focus, No. 24/1999, p. 140).

Local Economy

The application of production technology for an economy based on self-provisioning makes “individual production” possible: “In place of gigantic production halls with many robots come more versatile individual robots that allow individual production. They make chairs and tables according to our designs and ideas, sew clothes, or cut car parts.” (The Era of New Work, interview with Frithjof Bergmann, Focus, No. 24/1999, p. 140).

Individual production means that every person makes what they need for themselves. Production and consumption are therefore determined by the human being. This distinguishes Community Production both from traditional self-provisioning and from the prevailing economy with its industrial mass production.

Traditional self-provisioning is “naturally” limited in scope. It has to orient itself to what can be wrested from nature. Ultimately it is nature that determines what and how much can be produced and consumed. In this respect, traditional self-provisioning always also means a relatively modest material standard of living. Community Production does not know this kind of self-sufficiency. Rather, it is the individual need of the respective person that determines production, meaning it serves to satisfy individual needs. Community Production guarantees production independent of natural production factors. What can be produced does not depend on nature, but on technology. Thanks to technological development, Community Production makes possible a self-provisioning that is incomparably more versatile and demanding than traditional self-provisioning:
• Fabricators and networked computer-machine systems make it possible to produce everyday objects such as clothing, shoes, dishes, household appliances, and furniture, as well as non-everyday things such as jewelry and works of art.
• “Food houses” and procedures such as permaculture make food production possible in the city. People can thereby provide themselves with food in a simple and, above all, inexpensive way.
• New methods of building will make house construction possible for far more people than is currently the case. At present, owning one’s own four walls has become so expensive that fewer and fewer can afford it; whoever does afford it takes on a decades-long financial burden that becomes a millstone around the neck for many. Housing, which is a basic human need, should be affordable for everyone. This will be achieved when one can build simply and on one’s own responsibility.

The use of “high tech” implies that Community Production is not a return to nature and therefore not a return to heavy physical labor or muscle power. Rather, Community Production uses the most modern, advanced technology in such a way that the main burden of work is not borne by human beings but by machines. In contrast to traditional self-provisioning, Community Production is not laborious, exhausting, and draining, but creative, shaping, stimulating, and self-determined. It is not human labor power that is demanded, but the human mind that makes use of technology.

While self-provisioning in earlier times had to manage without much technology, or, by its own self-understanding, did not make technology as much its own as it could have, Community Production positively relies on it. One can put it this way: what labor power is for classical self-provisioning, technology is for Community Production. This leads to another distinction: while traditional self-provisioning was time-consuming and left little time for other things, Community Production wants precisely to limit the time needed to produce what is necessary.

An example to illustrate this is the automatic washing machine. While washing in earlier times was laborious drudgery that often took several days, especially in winter, washing today has become such child’s play that it is hardly perceived as effort anymore. The washing machine has largely taken over the work of washing and freed us from it. It is therefore simply impossible to imagine everyday life without it – even the greatest enemy of technology has one in the basement and no longer wants to do without it. The automatic washing machine shows what matters in technology: namely to ease necessary work for us in a practical, useful, effective, and efficient way, and where possible to take it away from us.

High Tech

The use of “high tech” implies that Community Production is not a return to nature and therefore not a return to heavy physical labor or muscle power. Rather, Community Production uses the most modern, advanced technology in such a way that the main burden of work is not borne by human beings but by machines. In contrast to traditional self-provisioning, Community Production is not laborious, exhausting, and draining, but creative, shaping, stimulating, and self-determined. It is not human labor power that is demanded, but the human mind that makes use of technology. While self-provisioning in earlier times had to manage without much technology, or, by its own self-understanding, did not make technology as much its own as it could have, Community Production positively relies on it. One can put it this way: what labor power is for classical self-provisioning, technology is for Community Production. This leads to another distinction: while traditional self-provisioning was time-consuming and left little time for other things, Community Production wants precisely to limit the time needed to produce what is necessary. An example to illustrate this is the automatic washing machine. While washing in earlier times was laborious drudgery that often took several days, especially in winter, washing today has become such child’s play that it is hardly perceived as effort anymore. The washing machine has largely taken over the work of washing and freed us from it. It is therefore simply impossible to imagine everyday life without it – even the greatest enemy of technology has one in the basement and no longer wants to do without it. The automatic washing machine shows what matters in technology: namely to ease necessary work for us in a practical, useful, effective, and efficient way, and where possible to take it away from us.

The Difference

Community Production and the prevailing economic system differ fundamentally and in every respect:
• Like every form of self-provisioning, Community Production brings about the unity of production and consumption; our economic system, by contrast, separates precisely these two areas, which makes mediation through markets necessary. In such a market economy no one is autarkic; everyone depends on everyone else and especially on the market. Community Production aims at the economic autonomy of the individual. That means dependency on markets is abolished, and with it their dominance and the constraints they impose on us.
• The currently prevailing economic form is a private economy, whereas Community Production represents a “public economy”. In it, the means of production are public or quasi-public goods in corresponding facilities. Only then is it guaranteed that they are accessible to all people and that their use is affordable for everyone. In the private economy, by contrast, the means of production are privately owned. This makes the mass of people who are propertyless in this sense doubly dependent: first, they depend on what is produced for consumption. They themselves cannot decide what is produced and what is not. Second, their work depends on production, which is why one speaks of “dependent employees”. Without production there is no work; without employers there are no employees.
• It goes without saying that work differs essentially in the two economic forms. In the private economy, people work for a third party: for the employer, for the market, for production, for money, and so on. Community Production, by contrast, means working for oneself.
• Community Production takes place in self-provisioning centers that, unlike our present companies or factories, are small. This is partly because these centers do not produce masses, but individual production; and partly because the production technology required for this is multifunctional, so only a few machines are needed.
• Market economy inevitably brings competition with it: just as companies compete with one another for market share, people compete for jobs. The globalization of the economy intensifies this competition, to whose constraints people have to submit. This competition disappears in Community Production, because each person produces their own material basic provision – and in doing so does not stand in competition with others.
• Our current economic system is growth-oriented or growth-driven and therefore boundless. Community Production not only abolishes the separation of production and consumption, it also limits them. While our economy wants to produce the largest possible quantities, “individual production” is oriented toward small quantities, thereby preventing excesses. Self-provisioning knows no overproduction, no bubbles, and no resulting financial and economic crises of the kind that currently shake our economic system.
• Mass production and mass consumption place a considerable burden on the environment; every ecological improvement of a product is neutralized by the increase in production demanded by economic growth; the globalization of the economy wants to spread the Western material lifestyle across the earth, which far exceeds its carrying capacity. Community Production, by contrast, is characterized by limitations of many different kinds that benefit the environment: it replaces industrial mass production with individual production; mass consumption gives way to individual need fulfillment; economic growth is a foreign word for Community Production. It is not the absurdly artificially inflated material lifestyle of the West, not its consumer frenzy, that is carried into the world, but a basic provision that can be individually shaped. Since Community Production is local economy, it decisively reduces the immense global transport of goods, which contributes substantially to environmental pollution. At the same time, it abolishes the now prevailing separation of life and work that spread with the economic and job system. This reduces the disastrous mass commuting to and from work worldwide, which also means less environmental pollution. Apart from that, thousands upon thousands of traffic jams are avoided in which we senselessly waste our time and nerves.

• Community Production starts from individually limited needs; consequently, production and consumption are limited as well. In contrast, the prevailing economic system propagates limitless needs, to be met by constantly increasing production and consumption. The only thing that dampens or limits mass production and mass consumption is money. It is the money available to us that decides what we can buy and therefore consume. Without money we could not satisfy our needs or pay homage to consumption, which would immediately affect production. What is decisive, therefore, is that producers and consumers have sufficient money, or access to additional money in the form of credit; then, monetarily speaking, nothing stands in the way of increasing production and consumption.
• While the prevailing economic system depends entirely on money, Community Production decisively reduces this dependency: the more people provide for themselves, the fewer goods they have to buy; the less money the individual needs in order to make a living. In place of earning and spending money comes self-production. For the sake of contrast, Frithjof Bergmann therefore calls the economy of “New Work” an “economy of minimal buying” as opposed to the prevailing economy, which he characterizes as an “economy of maximal buying” (Frithjof Bergmann, New Work-New Culture, Arbor Verlag, 2004, p. 316).

Incidentally, self-provisioning is cheaper than buying goods. It is often claimed that mass production is cheaper than individual production. But that is a “myth”: a large part of the price of a product often consists not of production costs, but of other costs such as transport, advertising, packaging, storage, distribution structure, intermediaries, and overhead costs of all kinds. All of these disappear in self-production.

Self-production is also advantageous where production costs are high. Anyone who has ever bought a house knows how expensive it is. But whoever can build their house in an effective and efficient way – and that is precisely the concern of Community Production – will massively reduce the costs of home ownership. In any case, the cost reduction, or the value one creates through one’s own work, will amount to more than an average earner could earn in money through employment in the same time. At the same time, the self-provider saves many incidental costs, of which the outrageously high broker fees are the most annoying and unnecessary.

Community Production is an economic approach that can be applied worldwide, especially since it has solutions ready for problems to which conventional economics has no answer: Community Production can counteract the global rural exodus, since such a self-provisioning center can be implemented in every village; it can make basic provision possible in the growing slums of the world, where regular jobs are scarce; and Community Production can give work to the masses who, in view of global population growth, stream onto the labor market and find no jobs there.

Suppose Community Production were to prevail and the world’s population could be materially provided for by it sufficiently; suppose individually definable self-provisioning could be achieved with limited effort: the economy would no longer be an end in itself, but a means to an end. Concretely: its function would be to create the necessary condition for “free work”.


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NANK Modules


Willkommen bei
New Work – New Culture



Understand Frithjof Bergmann’s New Work, explore example projects, and much more.



For Frithjof Bergmann, the point is that every person can find work in harmony with their own wishes, hopes, dreams, and talents, and that reorganizing work is the key to an alternative and a new culture.

Work can be understood as a polarity: work can exhaust and drain, but it can also be the opposite – something that gives strength, draws us into life, and gives us meaning. When it comes to work, and when we talk about sustainability in society, we should be interested in the question of power. The power that gives freedom, but also the power of better concepts of work, is the subject of this text. On the meta level it is an invitation to think about whether we want to remain servants of other masters, or whether we should take our fate more firmly into our own hands. To answer this, we first try to reach an understanding of the discussion around the “Grand Challenges” against which the world is struggling. Among these challenges, the gap between the obscenely rich and the devastatingly poor has a special position for “New Work”. We consider how the deepening trenches between the “desert people”, who have hardly any resources, and the “oasis people”, who revel in luxury, might be bridged. There seems to be no remedy for this. Unless a loud and comprehensible voice for something “new” begins to form. This new thing is often linked with hopes about digitalization. Over time, however, we have had to revise some of these romantic ideas of freedom through the digital network. Alienated, alone, and angry is what the digital revolution has really done to us. We were promised community, civics, and convenience. Instead we found ourselves confused, mistrustful, and without orientation.





D. Rushkoff warns: “The digital economy is going wrong. Everyone knows it, but nobody knows exactly why, let alone how to fix it. Workers are losing to automation, drivers are losing to Uber, investors are losing to algorithms, hotels are losing to Airbnb, and even tech developers are losing their visions to the demands of the start-up economy.”
It is not the digital itself, but rather the way we apply it. More a legacy of early corporatism and central currencies than a feature of digital technology. We are running the 21st-century digital economy on a 13th-century operating system.

The operating system for the next epoch could be New Work after Bergmann, with AI and blockchain as important tools for it.

So that this application of technology does not go wrong again, New Work New Culture considers which ethics, which concepts, and which terms this innovation requires, and negotiates the question of how the transition to a more sustainable society could succeed. Which alternatives to the world of work and to the growth economy are being attempted, and which strategies are crystallizing? We also highlight commonalities between different initiatives and schools (common-good economy, post-growth economy, basic income, Theory U, solidarity economy, Transition Towns, peer economy, New Work). In the analysis of today’s work society, we emphasize positive changes and diagnose an intensive shared movement of reflection in order to shape the important process of upheaval that is emerging in a deep transformation of the relations between economy, politics, government, and civil society.



Where are we going? How do we want to live?

In the part-time revue we call life, we are slowly coming to recognize that as a society we are somehow stuck. We can go neither forward nor back. The most beautiful side effect of this “dystopia” is that we can now recreate life itself, recode it. Out there is a new world, and in this new world you can redefine at every moment who you damn well want to be.

Navigating uncertainty

We could once again stand before the blank canvas and wait, wait, wait … endure ourselves … mirror the world within us, turn it around, and then, when we are certain, paint the next picture: the next picture of our society. Let us try to await the moment in which the new arises within us and then have the courage to bring the new into the picture in broad gestures.

New Work New Culture – tools for the next economy

What we need for this is the will and a few tools. We want to develop these further with `share your factory`. Our tools revolve around co-design, human-machine interfaces, and circular-economy solutions. They are intelligent applications insofar as they make networking, excitement, and also evaluation possible. Beyond that, we are for the first time connecting blockchain with micro-production.


„Es geht uns um die Schaffung einer Gesellschaft und Kultur, in der wirklich jeder, Mann oder Frau, die Chance bekommt, einen beträchtlichen Teil seiner Zeit mit einer Arbeit zu verbringen, die er oder sie erfüllend und faszinierend findet und die die Menschen aufbaut und ihnen mehr Kraft und mehr Vitalität gibt“, Frithjof Bergmann: Neue Arbeit, Neue Kultur. Freiamt 2004, S. 19.


Calling

The period around the coronavirus, with its unspeakable, hysterically excessive measures, did have one good side. Many people understood that change in work is possible and very present, and that control must not only come from outside, but also happens bottom up – and that this transformation begins, not least, with each individual. This pause was an impulse for NWNC to push once more in the attempt to bring about a model of work that makes it easier for all people on this planet to do what they really, really want. When asking what one is especially good at, where one senses meaning, happiness, and talent, it helps to negotiate wishes, longings, and abilities face to face. Nevertheless, for most people it is very difficult even to find out what they really, really want.
Sometimes it is a film, sometimes a conversation. Everyone probably has their own experiences. In any case, it already helps to have guidance and assistance.

How does it work, how does one find out what one really, really wants? As Frithjof Bergmann says, one does not find it like a tennis ball under a green tree. It takes time, guidance, tools, and a lot of communication to find this out, and there are also traditional structures and weighty interests that stand in the way of democratizing work and production. But with the Covid virus holding us in its breath, we are also experiencing the greatest experiment in the history of humanity concerning work. New Work New Culture wants to reshape this transformation on three levels:
1. Personal perspective: Do what you really, really want! Realize opportunities on the path to fulfilling activity.
2. Organizational perspective: testing new solutions based on the principles of decentralization and co-creation.
3. Technological perspective: Fair Pay re-evaluates work by means of AI and DLT and thereby also supports relocalization and climate protection.

Community Production

Community Production, or “Distributed Microproduction”, is a universe of personal and social making. We connect concrete places, actors, and tools. Innovation approaches around code and production receive a stage and a showcase. In the learning world of the New Factory, design is developed that advances forms of collaborative production into future practice. With this set of cultural techniques, a universally modelable, decentralized system of work and production exists, stretching its tentacles deep into the city and out into the world.

Socio-techniques such as “Share your Factory”

Share Your Factory wants to update the operating system of production and uses the real experimental environment for this. In this context, the project opens up diverse spaces of possibility for novel value-creation concepts. Forms of collaboration and decentralization will continue to gain relevance, and with 1hWork innovation efforts and technological trends can be constantly implemented in production and fairly accounted for through work input.

The economic and social designs derived from this (visions and scenarios) in turn provide the necessary knowledge base for further steps around products and technology sets of decentralized microproduction.
With the New Factory we develop reference architecture and technology. Know-how transfer takes place through pop-up factories, home delivery, and communication and learning offers for schools, universities, and vocational support institutions. A DIY stream and the Your Own Fabric Box, which comes to the population, describe current engineering competencies in a playful way in connection with a competition format. The longer-term goal is the designer as factory. The construction of entire micro-machine parks and mini production lines.




„Jedem der an den verschiedenen Projekten Beteiligten war klar, dass die ökonomische Freiheit, welche die High Tech Eigenproduktion (Community Production) uns ermöglicht, auf lange Sicht eine unerlässliche Voraussetzung dafür ist, tatsächlich das tun zu können, was man wirklich, wirklich will. Das ist ohne den durch die HTEP erreichbaren Grad an materieller Unabhängigkeit nämlich nicht möglich. Wo diese nicht gegeben ist, wird der Druck der ‘Realität – oder dessen, was Bertolt Brecht ’die Verhältnisse’ nannte – uns zu beschämenden Kompromissen zwingen. … Wo sind die Werkzeuge, die Maschinen und Apparate, die Herstellungsmethoden, die uns in die Lage versetzen, das zu tun?“, Frithjof Bergmann: Neue Arbeit, Neue Kultur. Freiamt 2004, S. 22-23


Socio-techniques such as Share Your Factory

Share Your Factory wants to update the operating system of production and uses the real experimental environment for this. In this context, the project opens up diverse spaces of possibility for novel value-creation concepts. Forms of collaboration and decentralization will continue to gain relevance, and with 1hWork innovation efforts and technological trends can be constantly implemented in production and fairly accounted for through work input. The economic and social designs that can be derived from this (visions and scenarios) in turn provide the necessary knowledge base for further steps around products and technology sets of decentralized microproduction. With the New Factory we develop reference architecture and technology. Know-how transfer takes place through pop-up factories, home delivery, and communication and learning offers for schools, universities, and vocational support institutions. A DIY stream and the Your Own Fabric Box, which comes to the population, describe current engineering competencies in a playful way in connection with a competition format. The longer-term goal is the designer as factory. The construction of entire micro-machine parks and mini production lines.



Concrete Projects

New Work New Culture has a philosophical and theoretical background. The people who over the years connected themselves with Frithjof Bergmann’s ideas, however, have kept a very precise eye on practice because they are deeply convinced of his vision. Many projects are looking for ways to make the groundbreaking ideas about work simple and practically applicable in everyday life.

More about implementation




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10 Steps


Die 10 ersten Schritte





Reformation or revolution. Throwing everything that has existed so far overboard would be an understandable but probably exaggerated reaction, and therefore belongs among the less intelligent proposals for what now needs to be done. Nevertheless, the power and dominance of capitalist economic activity also need a strong and powerful response. One assumption of New Work New Culture is that the response could lie in withdrawal. More and more people are not only mentally saying goodbye to this way of living; they are putting on gloves in order to roll up their sleeves somewhere completely different. We need indignation and a Solidarność 2.0 that simply gets to work where politics looks away.

“We as the building people of the coming world”

New Work-New Culture is so groundbreaking and also means such comprehensive change in everything that one could spend a lifetime dealing with it. Not even Professor Frithjof Bergmann had the time and leisure to grasp every aspect of the new epoch of work into which we are entering. Precisely for that reason it makes sense not to wait until everything around New Work appears clear, logical, and structured enough, but simply to begin with New Work New Culture.

Work Matters – Wage Labor, Calling, Self-Provisioning

Changing work can be approached quite pragmatically. NWC offers three basic approaches for this: redesigning existing wage labor, redefining one’s personal attitude, or quite concretely becoming a prosumer. It does not have to be an entirely new job; it does not have to be a leap into cold water, although for some people that might do them good after years of routine. The model of the three pillars makes it possible to find one’s emphasis between different forms of work and to shift between them as needed, ultimately finding one’s own personal style of work and life.

Step 1 – Thinking About a Personal Alternative

One can enter wage labor at a solid, financially strong company or at an experimental start-up. One can look for work at a company such as Semco SA in Brazil, in a system where management functions without managers – that is, in a revolutionary, self-referential leadership model – or place oneself in the hands of a charismatic and trustworthy leader. Some would rather found a company on their own or work as a one-person enterprise in a “third existence”, collaborating with changing teams from project to project. What may be decisive is that one takes what one really, really wants seriously and also applies it to the other forms of one’s working life. If one gains the possibility of responding with one’s working time and, for example, becoming more independent of monetary remuneration by making things oneself, spaces open up in which one can explore how to find, sustainably, for oneself, for one’s family, for the employer and for society, a stable, meaningful, and healthy work system close to happiness.


New Work-New Culture Principles

* Work as little time as possible for fiat money.
* Work as much as possible on what you really, really want and what fulfills you.
* Work as much time as necessary in communal self-provisioning.

Thinking Work from Life – Fields of Action

Examples:

– Health – The health of the individual is strongly linked to their willingness to perform and their potential abilities.
– The question of meaning – We are burning the violins. The social compatibility of one’s own work; looking at the common-good balance sheet for oneself.
– Money&Value – relations of domination. Freeing oneself from one’s own limitations and from those of others. How and where do we see our value?
– Performance – Individual talent is more important than the concept of performance. When one passes through today’s job centers and the rituals of the modern economy, the performance demand is excessively determined by others and fundamentally wrong in its claim to be good for society. The concept is used against life, against aliveness. Thinking work from life means here: if performance is to be a principle at all, then it would have to be self-determined performance. Performance must be an experience that motivates me because I notice that it is good for me, because it is exciting, alive, inspiring. In the present system, the diversity of the definition of performance is reduced, and with it the intelligence in the system. With the concept of performance we can once again develop strength, develop energy, create an ecosystem of talents. What do I nourish myself from? That is the central question one has to ask, and what can I do to take a courageous step?

Examples of Obstacles:
– Change often means fear and worry. In principle, this is all right. It lives in human beings as an important aid to orientation. But often it blocks us in completely illogical ways. That is why irrationality has to be reduced in processes of change. Change triggers emotions that are not necessarily rationally anchored and can therefore be difficult to justify. Often they are archaic patterns that well up from our self-understanding like demons. What are these demons, where do they come from, and how are they programmed into us? It is about reducing loss of control and learned helplessness.


Orthoprada, Thomas Schneider - Vienna Biennale


Steps 2-10 for Thinking Work from Life

(After Harald Welzer)
2. Finally trust your feeling that a grand theater of illusion is taking place around you. The scenery simulates stability, but the play is a farce: again and again fat men appear and shout “growth!”, speculators play country dominoes, and number girls keep dancing across the stage with images of catastrophe. The audience is annoyed and angry, yet remains seated until the end of the performance. But: when will that come?
3. Better leave the performance and begin asking very simple questions. For example: why do people have to work more and more when they are already working more and more? Why do debts grow larger when more and more is being saved? Why does everything else shrink when the economy grows?
4. Look for answers together with your friends. For example: because all the idiots are working more too. Because the savings wander into other people’s pockets. Because many listed companies form parallel societies remote from the state.
5. Decide from now on not to participate anymore if your answers trouble you.

6. Begin by stopping. Stop believing European politicians. Stop believing economic research institutes all the more. And, for God’s sake, stop allowing yourself to be told without objection that any decision was without alternative. There is no such thing in democracies.
7. If you have now reached the point where you no longer tolerate everything, use your room for action. You live in one of the richest countries on earth, perhaps you are even excellently educated, you enjoy life and think fairly well of yourself. Why the hell do you do the same thing every day and never anything different?


Festival Urbanize, Wien 2015

8. Your room for action? Simply look at what others are doing. There are incredibly good approaches and projects: energy cooperatives, neighborhood gardens, fair consumption, local currencies, great foundations, companies that refuse the compulsion to grow. Write more politically if you are a journalist. Research for a different future if you are in academia. Change the break-time topics if you work on the assembly line. Shop differently if you run a restaurant. Ask where the fish comes from when you go out to eat. Take an interest in the future of your pupils if you are a teacher. Merge with a kindergarten if you run a senior citizens’ home. Think of hellfire if you head one of the four large energy companies. Produce cradle to cradle if you own a factory. Risk something if you consider yourself intellectual.
9. Try to belong somewhere where you can proudly say: “We do this differently!” Find ideas more interesting than experience; do not live at the expense of others.
10. Form laboratories of the future and have fun doing it. Forget the “five minutes to midnight” chatter of the ecological movement and the talk of the “world community” and the necessity of global solutions. No one stood at your cradle and said in a hollow voice: “You have come to us to save the world!” It is completely enough if you begin to deal responsibly with your life, your loved ones, and your country. But please start right away ; ))

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New Culture Campus


New Culture Campus




Thinking school in entirely new dimensions

Where will tomorrow’s skilled people come from? Everyone who understands the world of New Work not merely as an experimental field, but as the reality of the future, must ask this question. The idea of the New Culture Campus describes an educational landscape that turns our understanding of school upside down.

In the major and important debates about New Work, one significant aspect is sometimes pushed into the background: the question of how preparation for it can begin as early and as holistically as possible. Until now, the youngest generation has hardly been included in the social upheaval currently underway with regard to a different world of work. It is the adults who are facing the transformation. They strive for agile organizations, flat hierarchies, more responsibility for the individual, and lifelong learning. Yet the necessary skills, technological knowledge, awareness of sustainability, and capacity for open cooperation are not given to school and university graduates as basic equipment. The idea of New Work therefore has to begin earlier – namely in education and in the values with which the following generations are to grow up.

The Campus of Longing

The idea of the New Culture Campus, born from philosopher and founder of the New Work movement Frithjof Bergmann, is a radical departure from today’s idea of school. In such an educational landscape, the process leads from daycare through primary school to university and the first steps of one’s own entrepreneurial activity. Instead of teaching and learning, the children’s and young people’s own experiences are at the center. They engage with art, technology, craft, and IT; they experience nature directly and develop a practical understanding of sustainability. „In the current classical school system, children are functionalized into performers chasing the best grades,“ explains Margret Rasfeld, whom Frithjof Bergmann brought on board for implementing the New Culture Campus project. „When people think of school, everyone is so stuck in old patterns that a revolution in education seems unthinkable. Instead, we work away at small improvements to the old system. That is why it is an important approach to first bring an idea like the New Culture Campus into the world so that it can be discussed.“ Margret Rasfeld, current managing director of the initiative „Schule im Aufbruch,“ has already gained experience as a school principal in setting transformative processes in motion. But New Culture Campus thinks beyond all the limits imposed by German school and curriculum obligations.

„Our New Culture Campus is still in the planning stage,“ explains Andy Mayer, friend and right hand of Frithjof Bergmann. „For the implementation of the project, we want to bundle the knowledge of several bright minds and use synergies from different directions.“ Another pioneer for the project is therefore Marcus Fink, managing director of the Kreisjugendring Münchner Land. He too criticizes the structures in which society and school move – faster, higher, further. He brings experience from extracurricular education and does not see the New Culture Campus as a distant utopia. „Since 2010, the Jugendbegegnungsstätte am Tower in Oberschleißheim has already been for youth work what the campus could become for education. A large site, workshops, proximity to nature, and technology. People interested in the idea can come to us and see how such a concept has already been implemented at least in parts. And if more and more people are convinced by the idea, realization can happen very quickly.“

The holistic education aimed for on the New Culture Campus equips learners with skills they will actually need in the world in which they will live. „Ninety-five percent of what children laboriously acquire in school today is forgotten,“ Margret Rasfeld makes clear. „We want to prepare them for a world of work that places the human being at the center, their potential, not the economy. With the new form of learning, they would have the chance to try things out and discover what suits them, what they burn for, what they want to carry into the world. They gain systems knowledge that opens up how everything is connected. And they learn meta-competencies, such as the ability to work in teams and the attitude that they are allowed to make mistakes.“ Marcus Fink adds: „It is no longer enough to memorize things in order to recall them in a world in which everything turns and changes every day.“

Transformation always begins with small steps. Similar approaches, though not with this degree of social radicality, have been pursued since 2017 by the learning center „Learnlife“ in Barcelona. Inspired by this approach, the campus „Life Hamburg“ is currently emerging. The project of mail-order heir Benjamin Otto aims to realize the vision of intergenerational learning.

For financing New Culture Campus sites, Margret Rasfeld can imagine a fund founded and maintained by companies, from which municipalities build such educational landscapes without any company being able to exert direct influence. However, it is not only funders who must be convinced by the revolutionary educational orientation for the new generation. There are the parents, whose advance trust such a school needs; the lawmakers, on whose approval such a far-reaching design depends; and the teachers, who will face entirely new challenges. „Of course, teacher training also has to change,“ explains Margret Rasfeld. „But we must not delay this too long. By 2030 we must have changed the world. The future does not wait for administration.“

INFO/LINKS

Jugendbegegnungsstätte am Tower

Learnlife Barcelona

Life Hamburg

Colearning Vienna


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Contacts – New Work New Culture


Get in touch with us!




There are various ways to get in touch with New Work New Culture. It depends on your interest in New Work:

Do you want an overview of what is happening right now? Then the Facebook group is the easiest way to make contact.

Or do you want to know when members of the NANK community can be heard speaking about Frithjof Bergmann? We publish the important dates here on the website.

Is it about direct contact with the press spokesperson? Then contact Andy Mayer.

Is it about content on New Work New Culture, the Bergmann archive, or exhibitions? Then Thomas Schneider and Harald Gründl are the right contacts. Depending on what you want to know, we have listed experts in New Work-New Culture on this page with their different focuses, whom you can contact with specific questions.

____

Texts on New Work after Bergmann

Nina McDonagh, Frithjof Bergmann , Günter Thoma, Thomas Staehelin, Thomas Schneider

General lecture / New Work New Culture

Günter Thoma, Thomas Staehelin, Franz Nahrada, Claus Seibt, Sebastian Becker, Thomas Schneider

____

Calling – what one really, really wants – the mentors

Christine Jung , Thomas Diener, Jörg Beger

OMA (Open Mentors Academy)
Since 2006, mentors have met annually in changing locations (Potsdam, Vienna, Osnabrück, Freiburg, Munich), working together on the connecting aspects of New Work-New Culture.

____

Community Production

Thomas Schneider lecture More punk, less hell, workshop, New Work socio-technology (generative production methods, AI, blockchain, cultural memes)

Blair Evans (Incite Focus Fablab),

Prof. Andy Gebhardt (University of Aachen)

____

Education

Katrin Steglich, lecture, workshop,

Florence Holzner, Colearning Vienna, lecture, workshop

Sebastian Becker, lecture, workshop, link to a lecture recording

Günter Thoma, lecturer, speaker

____

Social enterprises

Tom Zuljevic (Die Querdenker, Caritas, Pro Mente)

Gerd Neuner (Neue Arbeit Neue Kultur Kiel)

Walter Häcker (Genossenschaft Arbeit Zuerst) – sadly died in August 2020

____

Entrepreneurship

Prof. Günter Faltin, Thomas Schneider

____

Environment, mobility, housing, living, working

Claus Seibt, Thomas Schneider

____

Exhibitions / Social Design

Harald Gründl, Thomas Schneider

Places and regions with contacts

USA

NWNC | Ann Arbor, Frithjof Bergmann
NWNC | Detroit, Richard Feldmann/James & Grace Lee Boggs Center, Blair Evans/Incite Focus Fablab
NWNC | Madison, Mark Linsenmayer/The partially examined Life

CANADA

NWNC | Toronto, Ruth Spitzer/dorkenwald&spitzer

SOUTH AFRICA

NWNC | Johannesburg, Lerato Tahane

INDIA

NWNC | Mumbai, Anil Saldanha/Radical Ecological Democracy

GERMANY

NANK | Kiel, Gerd Neuner/Neue-Arbeit-Neue-Kultur-Verein Kiel
NANK | Stuttgart, Walter Häcker/Arbeit Zuerst Genossenschaft
NANK | Berlin, Thomas Staehelin /+ZONE KG, Frauke Hehl/Workstation, Babette Scurell/Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau (originally Neue Arbeit Dessau eV.), Prof. Günter Faltin/Stiftung Entrepreneurship, Freie Universität Berlin
NANK | Neustrelitz, Katrin Steglich, Thomas Staehelin
NANK | Hannover, Christine Jung/Frei-Räume
NANK | Potsdam, Rosalind Honig/OMA Mentorenakademie
NANK | Hamburg, AK Lokale Ökonomie, Contraste magazine, networking alternative-economy projects across Germany
NANK | Wuppertal, Christine Nordmann/Bergische Region , Schnürsenkelfabrik-Startpunkt
NANK | Freiburg, Jörg Beger/Transition Town
NANK | Köln, Sozialistische Selbsthilfe Mühlheim
NANK | München, Sara Dorkenwald /dorkenwald&spitzer

AUSTRIA

NANK | Linz, Tabakfabrik/Koop Arbeit/Fair Markt – Tomislav Zuljevic, Thomas Schneider
NANK | Vienna Co:llaboratory/Thomas Schneider, Claus Seibt, global villages/Franz Nahrada, Florence Holzner/Colearning Wien/Markhof, Thomas Diener/FairWork
NANK | Vorchdorf, OTELO
NANK | Ottensheim, Elke Hinterndorfer/NANK OTELO
NANK | St. Leonhard, Tommy Zuljevic/Wohneinrichtung OASE
NANK | St. Veit, Martin Maitz/Institut für Zukunftskompetenzen
NANK | Schlierbach/SPES Zukunftsakademie
NANK | Innsbruck, Manfred Blachfellner/change the game

Further people and NANK locations in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland on a map

Groups on the web

Official NANK Facebook group with about 1,300 members

Collaboration and the innovations that organize it shape the lifestyle of an entire generation. In order to find forms of new cooperation, the framework in which the working world is ordered is increasingly changing. This is reflected not only in new spaces and the changing infrastructure of work in large companies, but also in the new cultural techniques of the diverse ventures of entrepreneurs, which are now growing strongly far beyond the urban context.

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New Work New Culture Networks


newwork-newculture.networks




The New Work-New Culture philosophy now blows through entire towns, regions, countries, and continents, and manifests itself in NANK centers, NANK associations, small enclaves, workshops, and a loosely connected global community.

Over the years, NANK has initiated or co-organized many centers and project initiatives. The central question has always been how people can be strengthened through work and thus arrive in a new culture and in more freedom. Many people who have no opportunity to visit one of these nodes of New Work ask themselves: where can I concretely take something from?
NANK is a globally active social think tank, and the NANK community consists not only of places; many individual NANK people are active in associations or try to make a difference where they live, improving their work situation and livelihood in the spirit of Frithjof Bergmann. New Work includes topics such as sustainable mobility, high-tech DIY, gardening and farming, green professions, work organization, social enterprises, commons, and distributed ledger technology. Many companions of Frithjof Bergmann are engaged precisely in these fields.

Mottos such as „away from consumption“ and „pressure out, desire in“ give rise to many initiatives: artist collectives, food co-ops, urban-farming initiatives, exchange circles, and craft markets that work quietly in individual neighborhoods and rural communities. Bergmann’s ideas are implemented there in whole or in part, critically questioned, tested a great deal, and sometimes discarded again. In the best sense, NANK is an emancipatory movement that everyone can walk in their own way. Many young people experience „small“ again as very „beautiful,“ and also rediscover the connection of hand and head.

New forms of work for more freedom and resilience

Craft is experiencing a revival. Linked with mixed forms of social design, social sculptures around living and working, creative districts, building groups, and coworking, new societies are emerging everywhere. A new lifestyle with its own flair has been born. Being able to help shape one’s own working conditions is becoming increasingly important to many young people, and in doing so they are developing a very professional and responsible culture that is by no means apolitical.

Locations, associations, people

Collaboration and the innovations that organize it shape the lifestyle of an entire generation. In order to find forms of new cooperation, the framework in which the working world is ordered is increasingly changing. This is reflected not only in new spaces and the changing infrastructure of work in large companies, but also in the new cultural techniques of the diverse ventures of entrepreneurs, which are now growing strongly far beyond the urban context. Below we have listed the projects, places, and people in which New Work-New Culture has participated and which currently (2020) invite people to join in.

USA

NWNC | Ann Arbor, Frithjof Bergmann
NWNC | Detroit, Richard Feldmann/James & Grace Lee Boggs Center, Blair Evans/Incite Focus Fablab
NWNC | Madison, Mark Linsenmayer/The partially examined Life

CANADA

NWNC | Toronto, Ruth Spitzer/dorkenwald&spitzer

SOUTH AFRICA

NWNC | Johannesburg, Lerato Tahane

INDIA

NWNC | Mumbai, Anil Saldanha/Radical Ecological Democracy

GERMANY

NANK | Kiel, Gerd Neuner/Neue-Arbeit-Neue-Kultur-Verein Kiel
NANK | Stuttgart, Walter Häcker/Arbeit Zuerst Genossenschaft
NANK | Berlin, Thomas Staehelin /+ZONE KG, Frauke Hehl/Workstation, Babette Scurell/Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau (originally Neue Arbeit Dessau eV.), Prof. Günter Faltin/Stiftung Entrepreneurship, Freie Universität Berlin
NANK | Neustrelitz, Katrin Steglich, Thomas Staehelin
NANK | Hannover, Christine Jung/Frei-Räume
NANK | Potsdam, Rosalind Honig/OMA Mentorenakademie
NANK | Hamburg, AK Lokale Ökonomie, Contraste magazine, networking alternative-economy projects across Germany
NANK | Wuppertal, Christine Nordmann/Bergische Region , Schnürsenkelfabrik-Startpunkt
NANK | Freiburg, Jörg Beger/Transition Town
NANK | Köln, Sozialistische Selbsthilfe Mühlheim
NANK | München, Sara Dorkenwald /dorkenwald&spitzer

AUSTRIA

NANK | Linz, Tabakfabrik/Koop Arbeit/Fair Markt – Tomislav Zuljevic, Thomas Schneider
NANK | Vienna Co:llaboratory/Thomas Schneider, Claus Seibt, global villages/Franz Nahrada, Florence Holzner/Colearning Wien/Markhof, Thomas Diener/FairWork
NANK | Vorchdorf, OTELO
NANK | Ottensheim, Elke Hinterndorfer/NANK OTELO
NANK | St. Leonhard, Tommy Zuljevic/Wohneinrichtung OASE
NANK | St. Veit, Martin Maitz/Institut für Zukunftskompetenzen
NANK | Schlierbach/SPES Zukunftsakademie
NANK | Innsbruck, Manfred Blachfellner/change the game

Further people and NANK locations in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland on a map

PARK – a prototype for New Work was an initiative with young Viennese architects in the summer of 2017. How can we use the predicted transformation in the world of work for new forms of working together and living together? In the summer of 2017, Team Vienna pursued this question with the temporary and participatory spatial installation PARK, transforming the parking lot at the edge of Vienna’s Naschmarkt into a public experiment. For four weeks, the wooden structure with its work infrastructures was open to all city residents for collaborative programming. The process concluded with the symposium New Work – New Social Housing. You can read the results of the experiment here.

Groups on the web

Official NANK Facebook group with about 1,300 members

Collaboration and the innovations that organize it shape the lifestyle of an entire generation. In order to find forms of new cooperation, the framework in which the working world is ordered is increasingly changing. This is reflected not only in new spaces and the changing infrastructure of work in large companies, but also in the new cultural techniques of the diverse ventures of entrepreneurs, which are now growing strongly far beyond the urban context.

Below we have listed the projects, places, and people in which New Work New Culture has participated and which currently (2020) exist.

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New Work Projects


Projects Overview




`NWNC / New Work New Culture` is a social think tank around Frithjof Bergmann that has spent 40 years intensively engaging with social transformation and its effects on work, economy, and culture. The New Work concept of work philosopher and anthropologist Prof. Bergmann places the human being at the center of this inquiry and explores how one could work much more on what one really, really wants. Since then, the implementation of more freedom at work has been tested and evaluated in countless projects. In essence, all these projects dealt with an economic alternative to the existing economy. An alternative as an ascent – technologically smart, ecologically sustainable, and humane.




New Factory

Today we are able to take concrete first steps toward a decentralized, socially just, and ecologically compatible mode of production. The latest computer-supported organization and manufacturing technologies play a role here, as do traditional craft skills and a creative culture of repair and reuse. Building a network of local centers of community production forms the backbone of an increasingly regionally oriented economy that is less vulnerable to crises, resource-conserving, democratic, and integrative.

„The normal factory could be one hundredth as large as it is now; it would fit into a bedroom if only we decided to do it.“ Frithjof Bergmann

NWNC Center

In practice, New Work has from the beginning in the late seventies sought places where the new organization of work can be tested and communicated. There are two things these centers of New Work, New Culture – such as Tabakfabrik Linz – do for our consciousness and everyday life:

1. Professional support in finding out what one really wants – calling.
2. Advanced do-it-yourself technologies; to see, touch, and apply.

Community Production

Community Production, or product economy, is at first glance an aspect of New Work that is difficult to grasp. Essentially, it is a convergence of technologies and a principle of cooperation. The way we go about organizing it becomes visible in part in the open-source world or in good Web 2.0 concepts such as blockchain: people, communities, entire villages entering into virtual collaboration. Examples such as digital bohemia, cultural industries, the free software movement, Wikipedia, OpenDesign, OpenSourceEcology, and OpenInnovation show that real social power can emerge through the addition and multiplication of the competences of direct producers.

With advancing digitalization, New Work has again gained fundamental relevance and is being put into practice worldwide by people seeking alternatives in the face of the increasing erosion of gainful employment and industrial society. New Work today wants to create an existential alternative for people to what they have long ceased to want: uncontrolled economic growth that asks neither about meaning nor about the prosperity of the people subjected to it.

New Work nevertheless remains entrepreneurial. But it wants to bring about a cultural transformation and generate strengthening and gain for people that is based less on capitalist profit than on a gain in time, quality of life, and long-term security. By using the latest technologies, it shifts human activity out of monomegastructures back into the local and regional sphere, and also into the sphere of self-directed work. Important terms for this emerging new, decentralized production are Community Production, commons, and technologies such as blockchain and AI.



When the term belonging is used in the field of work, it refers to the temporal dimension through which one is incorporated into an institution, no longer to the people who stand above one. When teamwork is discussed in wage labor, Gideon Kunda writes that it is about „exerting pressure in order not to become too dependent on one another, not to promote too much interaction, but merely to wear a mask of sociability.“ The famous Microsoft model – three teams write code and compete against each other – is only one of the worst excesses of these „winner takes all“ markets. It has been found that such arrangements do not increase belonging; on the contrary, people who work in this way try somehow to survive in the system and seek other networks for belonging. In systems of competitive pressure, belonging means exploitation. If we want to take belonging seriously, we must free ourselves from these dependencies and understand that belonging has much to do with talking with one another and listening to one another, and that this is the space in which trust-building transformation can take place.



Consumption and psychological self-determination

The nature of economic value itself is undergoing a mutation: in the past, goods had to have an intrinsic value in order to be sold on the market. Now, by contrast, value is latent in the experience of each individual and can only be realized when the individual’s appetite, the individual’s longing, is addressed and satisfied by the product.
The industrial business model today encounters a social structure increasingly shaped by the new individual, who wants something quite different. It is easy to get a toaster or a car. The costs of these goods have fallen. Why? On the one hand, because automation and logistical perfection have made them cheaper to produce and distribute than ever before; on the other hand, because they no longer have the value for us that they once had. Rather than consumer goods, we would dig deeper into our pockets for resources that allow us to live the way we want to live. Yet such products and services that satisfy difficult-to-fulfill desires are hardly offered. That is the collision.

Project list on Dorfwiki with an overview of numerous earlier projects

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Sebastian Becker


Sebastian Becker




I had the opportunity to meet Frithjof Bergmann at a conference in Augsburg in 2010. He immediately inspired me and sparked my enthusiasm for his vision. I therefore invited him to my events (2012 „Schools of the Future“ in Göttingen with Gerald Hüther and 2012 „Fairena Messe“ in Munich) to present „New Work“ there. A friendship grew out of this, and I was able to record a podcast episode with him in December 2020, as well as a conference contribution in March 2021 together with Andy Gebhard (conference program). Also in December 2021, I was able to present my view of the „Centers of New Work“ in a lecture as part of Pecha Kucha Munich. In March 2020, I was invited to the Austrian conference #digiph3 for a lecture on „New Learning for New Work.“

Email: s.becker [at] lect [dot] de
Phone: please write me an email
Website: I accompanied this website as project manager
LinkedIn: profile page
Podcast: www.medienbecker.de

Places and regions with further contacts

USA

NWNC| Ann Arbor, Frithjof Bergmann
NWNC | Detroit, Richard Feldmann/James & Grace Lee Boggs Center, Blair Evans/Incite Focus Fablab
NWNC | Madison, Mark Linsenmayer/The partially examined Life

CANADA

NWNC |  Toronto, Ruth Spitzer/dorkenwald&spitzer

SOUTH AFRICA

NWNC | Johannesburg, Lerato Tahane

INDIA

NWNC | Mumbai, Anil Saldanha/Radical Ecological Democracy

GERMANY

NANK | Kiel, Gerd Neuner/Neue-Arbeit-Neue-Kultur-Verein Kiel
NANK | Stuttgart, Walter Häcker/Arbeit Zuerst Genossenschaft
NANK | Berlin, Thomas Staehelin /+ZONE KG, Frauke Hehl/Workstation, Babette Scurell/Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau (originally Neue Arbeit Dessau eV.), Prof. Günter Faltin/Stiftung Entrepreneurship, Freie Universität Berlin
NANK | Neustrelitz, Katrin Steglich, Thomas Staehelin
NANK | Hannover, Christine Jung/Frei-Räume
NANK | Potsdam, Rosalind Honig/OMA Mentorenakademie
NANK | Hamburg, AK Lokale Ökonomie, Contraste magazine, networking alternative-economy projects across Germany
NANK | Wuppertal, Christine Nordmann/Bergische Region , Schnürsenkelfabrik-Startpunkt –
NANK | Freiburg,  Jörg Beger/Transition Town
NANK | Köln, Sozialistische Selbsthilfe Mühlheim
NANK | München, Sara Dorkenwald /dorkenwald&spitzer

AUSTRIA

NANK | Linz, Tabakfabrik/Koop Arbeit/Fair Markt – Tomislav Zuljevic, Thomas Schneider
NANK | Wien Co:llaboratory/Thomas Schneider, Claus Seibt, global villages/Franz Nahrrada, Florence Holzner/Colearning Wien/Markhof, Thomas Diener/FairWork
NANK | Vorchdorf, OTELO
NANK | Ottensheim, Elke Hinterndorfer/NANK OTELO
NANK | St. Leonhard,  Tommy Zuljevic/Wohneinrichtung OASE
NANK | St. Veit, Martin Maitz/Institut für Zukunftskompetenzen
NANK | Schlierbach/SPES Zukunftsakademie
NANK | Innsbruck, Manfred Blachfellner/change the game

Further people and NANK locations in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland on a map

Groups on the web

Official NANK Facebook group with about 1,300 members

Collaboration and the innovations that organize it shape the lifestyle of an entire generation. In order to find forms of new cooperation, the framework in which the working world is ordered is increasingly changing. This is reflected not only in new spaces and the changing infrastructure of work in large companies, but also in the new cultural techniques of the diverse ventures of entrepreneurs, which are now growing strongly far beyond the urban context.

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Andy Mayer


Andy Mayer




Diploma brewmaster from Weihenstephan and studied International Business at USC Columbia. For too many years I worked for international corporations in brewery management on four continents.

In 2012 I came across the book „New Work – New Culture.“ Because this philosophical approach to the work of the future ignited me, I absolutely had to get in touch with Frithjof Bergmann. This developed not only into a trusting and very open friendship, but also into a fruitful collaboration. This includes, among other things:

  • Press spokesperson for „New Work Enterprises“ (or „New Work New Culture“)
  • Publication of the original English book version „New Work – New Culture“
  • Initiation of the website https://newwork-newculture.dev in cooperation with Xing – New Work S.E.
  • Revival and expansion of the national and international New Work network
  • Planning and conducting events
  • Coordination of texts and curricula with Bergmann

Even after Frithjof’s death (May 23, 2021), I continue to exercise the role of his press spokesperson and want to put his idea into practice. In the following article, I talk about my motivation.

Email: havandy2003 [at] yahoo [dot] de
LinkedIn: profile page

Places and regions with further contacts

USA

NWNC| Ann Arbor, Frithjof Bergmann
NWNC | Detroit, Richard Feldmann/James & Grace Lee Boggs Center, Blair Evans/Incite Focus Fablab
NWNC | Madison, Mark Linsenmayer/The partially examined Life

CANADA

NWNC |  Toronto, Ruth Spitzer/dorkenwald&spitzer

SOUTH AFRICA

NWNC | Johannesburg, Lerato Tahane

INDIA

NWNC | Mumbai, Anil Saldanha/Radical Ecological Democracy

GERMANY

NANK | Kiel, Gerd Neuner/Neue-Arbeit-Neue-Kultur-Verein Kiel
NANK | Stuttgart, Walter Häcker/Arbeit Zuerst Genossenschaft
NANK | Berlin, Thomas Staehelin /+ZONE KG, Frauke Hehl/Workstation, Babette Scurell/Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau (originally Neue Arbeit Dessau eV.), Prof. Günter Faltin/Stiftung Entrepreneurship, Freie Universität Berlin
NANK | Neustrelitz, Katrin Steglich, Thomas Staehelin
NANK | Hannover, Christine Jung/Frei-Räume
NANK | Potsdam, Rosalind Honig/OMA Mentorenakademie
NANK | Hamburg, AK Lokale Ökonomie, Contraste magazine, networking alternative-economy projects across Germany
NANK | Wuppertal, Christine Nordmann/Bergische Region , Schnürsenkelfabrik-Startpunkt –
NANK | Freiburg,  Jörg Beger/Transition Town
NANK | Köln, Sozialistische Selbsthilfe Mühlheim
NANK | München, Sara Dorkenwald /dorkenwald&spitzer

AUSTRIA

NANK | Linz, Tabakfabrik/Koop Arbeit/Fair Markt – Tomislav Zuljevic, Thomas Schneider
NANK | Wien Co:llaboratory/Thomas Schneider, Claus Seibt, global villages/Franz Nahrrada, Florence Holzner/Colearning Wien/Markhof, Thomas Diener/FairWork
NANK | Vorchdorf, OTELO
NANK | Ottensheim, Elke Hinterndorfer/NANK OTELO
NANK | St. Leonhard,  Tommy Zuljevic/Wohneinrichtung OASE
NANK | St. Veit, Martin Maitz/Institut für Zukunftskompetenzen
NANK | Schlierbach/SPES Zukunftsakademie
NANK | Innsbruck, Manfred Blachfellner/change the game

Further people and NANK locations in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland on a map

Groups on the web

Official NANK Facebook group with about 1,300 members

Collaboration and the innovations that organize it shape the lifestyle of an entire generation. In order to find forms of new cooperation, the framework in which the working world is ordered is increasingly changing. This is reflected not only in new spaces and the changing infrastructure of work in large companies, but also in the new cultural techniques of the diverse ventures of entrepreneurs, which are now growing strongly far beyond the urban context.

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Nina McDonagh


Nina McDonagh




Freelance PR professional, science communicator, passionate storyteller of your story | Founder of PUNKT.Kommunikation

As a passionate writer and networker, I offer communication services for organizations and institutions from all fields – including classic PR, speechwriting, internal and online communication, marketing activities, public affairs, and event management. My particular interest is science and technology communication.

„Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing about“ – Benjamin Franklin

Throughout my career, I have worked on a wide range of topics in different organizations with different product and service portfolios. I studied literature and cultural studies, but technology, science, and politics are not foreign to me. I am firmly convinced that communication professionals need to dive deeply into new topics and fields in order to tell a good story.

How I work: I love dialogue and discussion, and I firmly believe that in conversation with people – sometimes in unconventional settings – you reach the essence of your story. To convey the message properly, it should be balanced and simple, but not simplistic. A story is good when it leaves traces, when people start talking, when it encourages discrepancy.

I can help you find and tell your story – contact me at mcdonagh.nina@gmail.com

Location: Berlin, Germany

Places and regions with further contacts

USA

NWNC| Ann Arbor, Frithjof Bergmann
NWNC | Detroit, Richard Feldmann/James & Grace Lee Boggs Center, Blair Evans/Incite Focus Fablab
NWNC | Madison, Mark Linsenmayer/The partially examined Life

CANADA

NWNC |  Toronto, Ruth Spitzer/dorkenwald&spitzer

SOUTH AFRICA

NWNC | Johannesburg, Lerato Tahane

INDIA

NWNC | Mumbai, Anil Saldanha/Radical Ecological Democracy

GERMANY

NANK | Kiel, Gerd Neuner/Neue-Arbeit-Neue-Kultur-Verein Kiel
NANK | Stuttgart, Walter Häcker/Arbeit Zuerst Genossenschaft
NANK | Berlin, Thomas Staehelin /+ZONE KG, Frauke Hehl/Workstation, Babette Scurell/Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau (originally Neue Arbeit Dessau eV.), Prof. Günter Faltin/Stiftung Entrepreneurship, Freie Universität Berlin
NANK | Neustrelitz, Katrin Steglich, Thomas Staehelin
NANK | Hannover, Christine Jung/Frei-Räume
NANK | Potsdam, Rosalind Honig/OMA Mentorenakademie
NANK | Hamburg, AK Lokale Ökonomie, Contraste magazine, networking alternative-economy projects across Germany
NANK | Wuppertal, Christine Nordmann/Bergische Region , Schnürsenkelfabrik-Startpunkt –
NANK | Freiburg,  Jörg Beger/Transition Town
NANK | Köln, Sozialistische Selbsthilfe Mühlheim
NANK | München, Sara Dorkenwald /dorkenwald&spitzer

AUSTRIA

NANK | Linz, Tabakfabrik/Koop Arbeit/Fair Markt – Tomislav Zuljevic, Thomas Schneider
NANK | Wien Co:llaboratory/Thomas Schneider, Claus Seibt, global villages/Franz Nahrrada, Florence Holzner/Colearning Wien/Markhof, Thomas Diener/FairWork
NANK | Vorchdorf, OTELO
NANK | Ottensheim, Elke Hinterndorfer/NANK OTELO
NANK | St. Leonhard,  Tommy Zuljevic/Wohneinrichtung OASE
NANK | St. Veit, Martin Maitz/Institut für Zukunftskompetenzen
NANK | Schlierbach/SPES Zukunftsakademie
NANK | Innsbruck, Manfred Blachfellner/change the game

Further people and NANK locations in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland on a map

Groups on the web

Official NANK Facebook group with about 1,300 members

Collaboration and the innovations that organize it shape the lifestyle of an entire generation. In order to find forms of new cooperation, the framework in which the working world is ordered is increasingly changing. This is reflected not only in new spaces and the changing infrastructure of work in large companies, but also in the new cultural techniques of the diverse ventures of entrepreneurs, which are now growing strongly far beyond the urban context.

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