Come and join us in The "Mush"Room!

online community - 7pm - free entry

Zoom event online with a Portswood community focus Register your interest by getting your free ticket, instructions to join will be emailed shortly afterwards.

Join us in The "Mush"Room! A collaborative community project, the MushRoom is a pop-up space where we re-imagine our place.

This event will ask “What are you doing to support, grow and create community business this winter?"

This year has seen change like we have never experienced before, in our personal lives, on our high streets and in the work that we do. In this landscape, community businesses (such as October Books) have proved to be resilient and adaptable to the changes and are set to become the seeds of a more local economy and way of living.

So, for our second MushRoom we would like to focus on local community business, whether you want to start one, are in one or want to know how you can support one, come along and share your stories. We'll also be feeding back on projects and ideas from the first event.

So what is The “Mush”Room I hear you ask…?

This is the first event, in what we hope to be a series of events that support local communities around Southampton. The overall premise of The “Mush”Room is a Southampton based community space (online or real) where we support community action in answer to the question ‘what happens next?’, as we continue to cope with the outfall of this first acute global crisis.

With a distinct focus on ‘our place’ (both physical and personal) the “Mush” of The “Mush”Room is a Southampton colloquialism for ‘mate’. The “Mush”Room is also about the common threads that connect us and that have been ever more obvious during the Covid19 crisis, the mycelium that are unseen but provide an amazing network of community.

The project is a collaboration of three Southampton community focused organisations, The Southampton Collective, October Books (that’s us!) and SO:Linked, a local network providing advice, support and signposting to Southampton communities and bringing local organisations and residents together through SO:Link networks across the city. Transition Southampton are also supporting the project. The Southampton Collective is building on its work with their extremely successful NESTA funded Breathing Spaces project, in which the St Denys community participated in the development of plans to combat air pollution in their locality. A series of Clean Air Cafes was used to harvest the community’s ideas and opinions and it is the tools and processes that were used in these café’s that are being practised in The “Mush”Room events and activities. It is hoped that these initial meetings for Portswood/St Denys/Highfield will provide others in the city with the tools to grow the idea in other.

So, if you are thinking of doing something like this in your local area please do drop Clare a line and she will provide details of the resources and tools we are using, so that you can set up your own event - clare@socollective.org.uk

Register via Eventbrite for instructions to join this online event, it is free entry, but if you'd like to sling October Books a donation, please do.