Principles

We are an open, collaborative place to incubate, start and maintain beautiful, regenerative practices for the region.

Our founding principles are meant to guarantee free association, free speech and personal commitment. 

The principles are published on our DAO and re-discussed periodically with the members to ensure that they stay relevant.

• participation to the chapter is on a voluntary basis;

• participation is open to all members of the New European Bauhaus Community as well as to non-members;

• participation is open to organizations beyond the Brussels region, as long as they participate to a Brussels-based project or intend to;

• any member can invite organisations and individuals to the chapter;

• any member can propose a project if he/she commits to move it forward, there is no minimum amount of members required to start a project;

• decisions affecting the chapter are taken in a collegial way, for the common good of all members. The actual mechanisms will be defined if necessary on a case by case basis;

• projects proposed and carried out in the chapter are not by default “endorsed by the New European Bauhaus” or, in short, “official NEB projects”. Official endorsement is only a faculty of the New European Bauhaus Unit at the European Commission, through the official procedures;

• the chapter has no exclusive rights to develop NEB projects in the region, but all project of the chapter must be developed in the region;

• existing local official and non-official NEB projects can join the chapter at any time if they believe that it’s beneficial to them and to the chapter;

• non-official local NEB Lab projects are welcome and encouraged to join if they clearly satisfy the triad "beautiful, sustainable, together". However, since the interpretation of the triad is open and may change with time, there are no set rules for exclusion: projects are accepted by default. Members’ interest is the only discriminating factor: the more interest is raised, the more the opportunity to advance the project;

• individual members in their personal and institutional capacity can (publicly) disagree with or discourage a project from joining, but the position of the Chapter will remain neutral;

• projects have independent governance. The Brussels region chapter's governance structure (if it is set in the future, i.e. a steering committee) or any of its members cannot intervene in the strategic or operational dimensions of any project that adhere to the chapter, unless requested;

• any project can ask for help to the members of the chapter, but participation to the projects is not mandatory;

• projects with overlapping or identical themes are allowed and welcome as independently managed experiments, or pilots. They can use contradicting methodologies and give contradicting results. The resolution of contradictions (if needed) is left to conversations among the projects and their governance structures. The Chapter has no official position on any of the approaches taken or on the results. Each project needs to be considered as an "independent pilot", the value of the Chapter is in producing the highest number of independent pilots, to enable complex sense making.