
THE DREAM
Our hearts know that "it takes a village" to thrive in harmony and balance as people. Friskoven has grown out of a longing to live an everyday life with a caring, vibrant and committed community right outside the door surrounded by wild nature. Our dream is to create such a "village" in Friskoven, where our children can run freely and play and learn from and with each other, in sufficient proximity to caring, inspiring and responsible adults. We dream of a committed community where we can find support and sparring both emotionally and in relation to practical projects and tasks.
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THE THREE PILLARS
Friskoven is based on three pillars, permeated by a number of values, which together are the basis for how society is built, organized, run and communicated, just as they form the basis for the common visions that are implemented in Friskoven.
Values ​​and pillars should be seen as an accompaniment to the legal statutes for the Friskoven Cooperative and convey in a more prosaic way how we see Friskoven functioning both in everyday life and in relation to long-term planning.
All decisions and activities in the Friskoven Cooperative must therefore seek to meet and reflect these values, pillars and visions, just as we believe that it is central that individuals who want to be part of Friskoven can identify with and will comply with these as best as possible.
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Economic and social freedom
In Friskoven we want to create a village where we help each other with tasks and things that society has otherwise commercialized, just as we want to create a structure where a life can be lived with private consideration and shared luxury. Friskoven will seek to create a basis for the members' economic and social freedom and security, by collaborating to create as many of the everyday necessities and facilities as possible. It is also an active choice against private financial gain from the sale or rental of housing or the work of others.
We will prioritize keeping our common expenses low, just as we as a community will set an upper limit for how much you can sell your home for, regardless of how much you as an individual have chosen to invest in your home.
By sharing resources and expenses as much as possible, ensuring relatively low housing and living costs and creating a good framework for sustainable businesses, Friskoven will be a means of breaking the need for full-time work for adults and full-time institutionalization for children. This way, life in Friskoven can be a showdown with the increasing trend towards increased social dissatisfaction and burnout, which can result from having to sell a large part of one's time to cover basic necessities, and by extension, living many hours a day separated from one's loved ones. With great financial freedom, better conditions are created for a life with space for presence and care.
We will own the land together, but still have our own private finances and the right to decide on our own home. Co-owners must jointly cover common expenses through the payment of monthly rent, as well as by reducing common expenses by working time (approx. 8 hours per week) in Friskoven, just as we must protect ourselves against future unforeseen expenses and create capital for the future development of Friskoven.
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2. Co-creation
Central to life in Friskoven is creating an environment for and a community with a focus on rich and close social relationships and a sense of co-ownership of the place. This place is created by the people who are here and come here. No one does it for us.
Co-ownership, we hope, will foster respect, joy and inspiration for the place and the work that creates it, as well as the shared responsibility we have to maintain and further develop the village.
Friskoven is the sum of the efforts and ideas we come up with – and mutual help, self-help and resilience are the prerequisites for our place, good life and freedom for all of us. Friskoven is a platform for developing one's passions and projects within our visions and values.
A village that we want to share with other Bornholm residents and visitors by providing space and facilities for events and social meetings with nature and the forest as a backdrop.
With co-creation, we want to show how our lives can be lived less dependent on capitalism and as part of a movement of movements that want a more just and equal society.
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3. Radical sustainability
Radical sustainability is a way of approaching sustainability that fundamentally changes our way of life, so that community members can live within planetary boundaries without exporting our environmental and climate impact to other parts of the world. The way we produce and use food, things, surroundings and nature will be changed along lines of local and shared supply, mutual aid, repair and recycling and cultures that value non-material goods.
For construction, we are guided by the principles of the National Association of Organic Construction (Appendix 1) on:
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local resources and waste minimization
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low energy consumption in production and use
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healthy indoor climate and working environment
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simple and sustainable constructions that are accessible to everyone and can be recycled
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a rejection of materials that are based on hazardous or environmentally harmful substances.
For agriculture, food and nature relations, we are inspired by permaculture and regenerative practices with values ​​such as:
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local and self-sufficiency
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maximizing biodiversity
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food security
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improving soil and food quality
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self-sustaining cycles for water, food and resource consumption.
For energy and resource supply, we will work with joint solutions with low complexity and local supply from renewable resources; local biomass and heat pumps tailored to the residents' needs and their own solar cells or Bornholm's publicly owned offshore wind. We will work actively with resource and nutrient cycles to increase the amount of recycling and reuse and reduce the need for energy input, both in construction, energy supply and handling of water, wastewater, etc.
In transport, we seek to minimize our dependence on fossil fuels through carpooling, cycling, electric transport and lower dependence on transport, while at the same time ensuring mobility and coherence with the surrounding world.
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VALUES
It is a cornerstone of a healthy and solid community that the individuals who make up the community treat each other and their surroundings properly. Our values ​​in Friskoven reflect what we believe this requires.
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Mutual aid and solidarity
Creating and realizing communities that go beyond individualism, consumption and separation between people and between people and nature requires that we together create a culture where the desire for and practice of mutual aid, care and solidarity are central.
This includes that we as people put cooperation instead of competition as a fundamental societal value and in everyday life, as well as in our structures, choose to spend time, energy and resources on being there for each other. That we as a community take co-responsibility for each other's well-being and opportunities for development and work for cultures where we can find support and sparring both emotionally and in relation to practical projects and tasks without expecting personal gain or financial gain.
Solidarity is the feeling of togetherness that arises through shared interests and values ​​and through that we as people create, invent and solve problems together. A cohesion that ranges from giving up part of one's own plan for the day to be able to help someone else realize their idea, to thinking about the interests of the community on an equal footing with one's own.
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Caring
The ability to feel empathy and care for other people is an innate ability. At the same time, caring for oneself, other people and nature is a prerequisite for us to survive and live a rich and good life. We consider caring for others and for nature to be a fundamental value in Friskoven.
Our focus on the value of caring means that Friskoven does not want to be a space for dominant, offensive or discriminatory behavior, neither internally among members, towards users and guests or towards the surrounding community.
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Trust and openness
We consider trust to be a fundamental attitude and an active choice that helps to create a safe framework. It is the basis for a culture in Friskoven, where a trusting atmosphere is created, which gives both children and adults the courage to try their hand, make mistakes, learn from mistakes and find the right solution or path. This requires openness to other ways of doing things and openness to other people's perspectives.
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Responsibility and honesty
We strive to take responsibility for ourselves and our limits in our thoughts, words and actions. We also strive to be sincere and honest with ourselves and others and thus accommodate disagreements and conflicts.
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Commitment
The strength of a community depends on the degree to which the individuals in the community commit to each other and the tasks in which they are involved. Mutual commitment creates a deeper sense of meaning and motivation. When we commit, community is created.
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Equality
Equality is the foundation of our community. We are all different and equally valuable as people. We all have an equal right to be heard, understood and acknowledged for the feelings and thoughts we express.
In Friskoven, we recognize that this mosaic of values ​​is the prerequisite for achieving our common goals.
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VISIONS IN PRACTICE
Our visions for Friskoven emerge strongly from our pillars and values.
We want to create a small living eco-community in the area around the former production college in Almindingen at Bygaden 13 to 29A. We want to create a multifunctional rural settlement, an area with space for both housing, business and associations to support as many aspects of the residents' lives as possible, create fertile ground for a nourishing and inspiring home life and reduce our transport and resource consumption - our carbon footprint.
Overall, we want a plan for the area that makes it possible to renovate most of the existing building stock for housing, business and communal activities, as well as to build a number of new homes on former building sites.
Renovation and new construction with principles of low energy consumption in both manufacturing and use, maximum recycling, healthy and sustainable materials and co-creation for the residents.
We also want the undeveloped areas on the land register to be further developed towards higher biodiversity, local food resilience, regenerative, diverse forestry and art and participation areas with nature at the center.
We want to create the framework for both a sustainable living community, a nature area and an area that addresses Bornholm and the surrounding world. We stand on the shoulders of many decades of work with eco-communities and sustainable settlement in the countryside and want to create a development area that can both show ecological, modern living in practice and explore future citizen-friendly solutions to climate, environmental and social challenges.
A village in balance - a learning center for all ages - in community and in harmony with its location in the rural zone. A place to visit for inspiration - and also just a place to live, create and work.