• Center For New Work: Metro-Detroit

The Detroit Center for New Work will synthesize three integrated components to form the foundation of a comprehensive, sustainable urban village that will serve as a catalyst for innovation-based entrepreneurialism, community-providing base economy, and an attractive cultural life. Organized around a community center, advanced technologies are utilized to create a platform for new businesses, knowledge and resources for economic independence through community self-reliance, and awakening of what individuals authentically want to pursue to develop and express serious desires, interests, and talents. The Center for New Work offers pathways for economic, community, and individual development by employing advanced technologies in a community organization that self-provides the lion’s share of life’s needs while creating entrepreneurial businesses for economic growth and offering opportunities to develop individual talents, interests, and desires for self-affirmation and cultural enhancement.

New Work has been deeply rooted and influential in Europe, particularly in Germany.  Over the years since Professor Bergmann began promoting these ideas a variety of projects have developed which are deeply rooted in New Work.

• Neue Arbeit Neue Kultur - The German home of New Work.  See also the Berlin wiki on Mixxt.

• Hallenprojekt.de in Berlin aims at enhancing the prospects, community and collaboration of self-determined work styles in the digital age.
  

The Hallenprojekt creates and links virtual places with real ones to build up a comfortable as well as an inspriring work atmosphere for everyone.

"The heart of the New Work Curriculum is a dedication to freedom and personal fulfillment that do not depend solely on the old job market.  More than finding employment the curriculum wants young people to find themselves and take charge of their lives as workers, consumers, and providers.  The object is not just a job but full possession and ownership of one's life."

From New Work for a New Generation, a 6 unit High School Curriculum funded in part by the WW Kellogg Foundation, CW Mott Foundation, and produced by Detroit Educational Television.  The full course guide may be downloaded here.

New Work Educational Best Practices may be found here or the navigational link to the right.

"Yoking the Local Food Movement to Small Scale Meat Producers: Challenges in Translating Urban-Rural Identities"

The Year of the Environment lecture series featuring Scout Calvert (Library and Information Science)

Friday, March 12, 12:30pm in Room 2339, Faculty/Adminstration Building, Wayne State University, Detroit. 

Flyer attached here

Kronk Village 

This project in Detroit, MI includes the historic rehabilitation and “green” adaptive reuse renovation of the existing Kronk Community Building (including the Kronk Boxing Gym founded by Emanuel Steward) and adjoining sites (Atkinson Playground) as a multi-use center and the redevelopment of existing vacant public blocks as a sustainable residential neighborhood consisting of various forms of affordable housing in the area bounded by I-94 on the south, McGraw and Warren Avenues on the north, 28^th Street on the east, and 35^th Street and the ThyssenKrupp facility on the west.

"The now dying culture was founded on the premise that human beings are ferocious feral beasts that need to be socialized, i.e. de-clawed and un-teethed.  The now culture knows that exactly the reverse is true, that the “mass of men” are fragile, easily discouraged, and even walled off from their own deep desires."

• Hallenprojekt.de in Berlin aims at enhancing the prospects, community and collaboration of self-determined work styles in the digital age.
  

The Hallenprojekt creates and links virtual places with real ones to build up a comfortable as well as an inspriring work atmosphere for everyone.

• Workstation Berlin, established in 1998, deals critically and unconventionally with many subjects surrounding work.

These are just a couple examples of the flowering of New Work ideas worldwide, and the significant ways that communication technologies are affecting both the nature of work and the workspace.

Do you know of innovative, useful, intriguing, or exciting New Work ideas or projects?  We invite you to post comments or ideas here, join or start a discussion in the forum or contribute to the wiki.

The homes of the project villages or neighborhoods would be built by the community members themselves using building components and systems that are especially designed for people who have no previous experience with building.  Crucially important would be the fact that the entire community would not consist only of homes, but would be designed from the start as prototypes of self-sufficient communities.