Embassy Network
A group of intentional communities building a cooperative movement for those leveraging housing towards greater aims, where those aims are strengthened by operating in community with others, global fluid mobility, and by connection to other networks.
Haight St Commons
A network of not-for-profit co-ops and intentional communities in the heart of San Francisco. We believe that human beings are not meant to live alone. We believe that community provides purpose and joy to modern life. We are here to help make this reality for everyone who believes the same.
Spontaneum
This is an urban hacking group dedicated to using urban space contrary to its intended purpose. All events are free, participatory, and make a creative use of urban space.
Pop Up Commune
In the experimental spirit of examining and testing alternate life-modes, a couple of us residents from the Embassy will be living within an experiment beginning next Friday. We will be setting up a temporary, unauthorized "pop-up commune" in a TBA vacant lot, and living there for the duration of the work week. This isn't just a holiday :) We're all working and getting on with our lives, maintaining our responsibilities and everyday non-residential patterns. This is urban camping in order to explore what community can be under different circumstances.
What is life in such a provisional commune like? How can we work together to make this alternative living arrangement work for us? What infrastructures can we hack together to make this arrangement work better? Might this way of being be preferable to our housed lives?
Critical Recalibrations
A three day advance (/retreat), Critical Recalibrations shifts the focus from self to ‘society,’ giving an opportunity to refine and reaffirm our commitments to universal emancipation. Organized for people who use knowledge of the past and ‘present’ to imagine alternative futures and to contest linear arcs of progress, this three-day collaborative symposium convenes in Stockton, CA—a city whose (mis)fortune tells a very different story than the talked-about global cities whose circuits and positivist narratives can be difficult to escape. It is our hope that by coming together in the economic rain shadow of the booming Bay Area, our plans for the future ahead will be both more informed and more inclusive. Drawing from our past efforts and experiences, and pairing these with new outlooks and the experience of our peers, we will review our various projects, assess their impact, and plan future efforts to make the world more equitable and just.
Governance Experiments
In 2013, the Embassy, San Francisco embarked on an eight month long series of experiments into governance and decision making. All fourteen members of this intentional community, opted to take part in a live-in experiment whereby the community operated under four different governance structures. External individuals were brought in to implement a range of measures to assess 'Satisfaction', 'Productivity', 'House Function' and 'Hours Contributed' to the community. You can read about it here
