We’re pleased to announce SODAA Club as our May partners for our Grassroots Community Support Programme, with our sistet project, Orbit
SODAA (A Self Organised, Decentralised Association of Artists) is a London-based community of musicians, DJs, producers, coders, workers, songwriters, promoters and partygoers who are working towards a model for a collectively operated music venue in London, run and funded by its members.
Online and in their Discord Channel, SODAA ask questions to their community such as 'what would you look for in your dream venue?' and 'what would you hope to get out of a membership?'. With a future goal being to take over a space in London and run it with their members, pooling funds and making decisions together, this engages their members and ensures they get to consider the outcomes at every step of the way.
In their first year, the collective has been building a community around this idea, facilitating discussions, running small-scale experiments, hosting events, radio shows, parties and panels, curating a compilation co-released with 7 labels, participating in international festivals as speakers, bridging and bonding with other communities and activists worldwide, in person and via Discord, and raising funds towards their main goal.
SODAA operates at the intersection of distributed organisations and cooperatives, using ideals and criteria ensuring that the patterns of oppression that permeate our society are not replicated within intentional and inclusive spaces. These principles drive SODAA forward and keep us from falling under the influence of harmful patterns rampant in a capitalist society. It’s open-value cooperativism that allows us to work together fairly towards our goal as a collective. So how do we do it? And more importantly, how can you?
This workshop will look at the 7 guiding principles behind cooperatives and, in particular, DIStributed Cooperative Organisations (DisCO) and how we apply it within SODAA itself, and explore how current collectives can apply them to the way they work to ensure that we’re all contributing to a future in music culture that’s free and fair for all involved.
In this open event, core members of SODAA will share the progress and the findings of the first year of “working in public”, giving attendees an insight into SODAA’s collectively-developed decision-making protocol, membership system, funding mechanism, participative curation methods, and possible solutions for the legal setup for a community-owned and operated venue.
Throughout the panel, they will highlight the positives and analyse critically the flaws and biases of the work done so far, and answer questions from the floor.
An improvised performance of the ever-evolving SODAA Ensemble will follow.
Find more about SODAA via their website https://sodaa.club/ and or instagram @sodaa.club. Join their Discord to join the conversation.
Discover more about our sister project Orbit at www.orbitpresents.co.uk and follow on all socials @orbit_presents.
