(NOTE: in need of editing and fact-checking)

• The members were
  • Maja
  • 2 other core members
    • One of them, a scientist, moved away after bankruptcy because he needed more stability
    • Lina, which stayed until 2011
      • She was initially supposed to be here with a temporary contract to get a permit in Europe, and then start her own project
  • Employees on a project basis
  • Nik arrived just before bankruptcy

• Starlab started a non-profit spin-off for proto-FoAM

• The mission of this spin off was to
  • Connect Starlab’s scientific research with art & culture¨
  • Put Starlab’s research out in the world
  • Explore forms at the frontier between art & technology
• Quickly make an organization in Belgium to receive money for the project (from Flemish government + Ars electronica) (October 2001)
• Create a structure to work with others in the Netherlands (April 2002)

• The members were:
  • Maja, Lina and Nik
    • They spent their 6 first months without being paid as core members
• Maja helped design the mission of this spin-off, but they did not wanted her to be on the board

• This structure was designed by FoAM’s crew, in the post-Starlab era
• A non-profit with possible commercial spin-offs
  • Non-profit as a playground
  • Develop services and products that could generate income
  • Feed part of the money back in the non-profit
  • The creation of spin-offs was not a core mission, but an economic feedback implementation to get revenue in case one was created
• Creating multiple FoAM studios rather than one big FoAM
  • Other FoAM studios based their statutes on FoAM Brussels statutes, but adapting to local situation

• The mission of this organization was:
  • Still focused on art & technology
  • However, opening to very broad collaborations across disciplines (not only art & technology) in an open way
  • Wrapping it up, the new elements brought in in this new form of structure
    • Broader than art & technology
    • Open source

• Formally, regarding membership
  • It started with Nik, Lina, Maja on the board + 1 belgium person in the general assembly
    • Strictly minimal legal requirement
  • But funders did not like it
    • Funding schemes pushed towards a certain kind of governance, even though it was not a legal requirement
• Informally, regarding membership
  • Very horizontal way of working
  • Everyone involved was invited to be part of the decision-making
  • The group came together when it was needed, people not wanting to come did not
  • All kind of decisions were taken in these assemblies
    • Yearly meetings for organisational planning
    • Meetings adressing project design & planning
      • Before submitting to funders
      • After getting the project, to decide how to work together
        • Who would do what ?
        • How would money be shared ?
  • About 8-10 people were gathering around the table, up to 20 when gathering all the participants of an EU project
  • It worked well when things were working, but an implicit power structure (mostly based on legal responsibilities) was revealed as soon as difficulties were showing up
    • Maja was involved as implicit facilitor, usually also as money handler, too many hats !

• The core members realized they were exhausted, but without understanding why until 2009
  • A lot of experiments ([?] on organizational re-design ? ) have been designed ever since

• The two main focuses were around
  • Responsive environments
  • Groworld, a project related to ecological art
    • These focuses both started at the same time
  • Most of the activities were about these two main focuses, and workshops with invited people
• No residencies at that time

• FoAM became an artlab
  • Which is a funding-driven organization

• After the LETHA project (presented at the Fuckup night), the focus was re-directed on environmentally/socially sustainable projects
  • For instance, luminous green
    • Which arose in 2004-2005, but became a project officially afterwards
  • The mission was redefined around a broader social/cultural/environmental sustainability vision
  • The circles were opened further
  • The mission also shifted contentwise
    • The world situation was quite optimistic at that time
      • Climate change was becoming mainstream
      • Multidisciplinarity was being praised for in Davos
      • And then, all came back as it was previously !!!
      • This led to the “resilients/what if thinking” phase, which started late 2009
• In late 2009, FoAM became a lab for speculative culture

• The work was distributed between
  • Projects
  • Sharing knowledge and skills
  • Both these aspects ran in parallel for a while, and then, both funding and people involved pushed FoAM’s own projects out
    • There were mostly artists wanting their own projects to be supported
    • This change was quite imperceptible, and not in the original mission
    • At some point, FoAM was just about nurturing, and not any more 50 % own work as it used to be
  • Pushed by EU, Flemish government and radical bureaucracy of funding, more and more reporting to do
    • Agencies are outsourcing their reporting work on project-managing artist-run structures
    • For instance for Grig, an EU project which lasted 3 years from 2006 to 2009
      • [? TBChecked] FoAM had to manage 5 times its operational budget

• A hierarchical structure was imposed by funding in 2010, extension of board + membership)
  • The funders requested
    • An extension of the board
    • A larger general assembly
  • This change brought extreme excitement and hope, at the idea of finaly sharing benefits AND responsibility across more people (about 20 people involved in all studios)
    • The idea was to map a circle-based flexible and hierarchical structure on the legal one, including the others studios in the structure
      • The structure intertwined the board and a core team
        • The board included a member of the core team (Maja)
        • The core team included all project leaders and a board member (Nik, for oversight)
        • Its role was overall stewardship of the organization on a daily basis ([?] including other studios ?)
      • The general assembly was made of
        • All people working in FoAM ([?] Brussels ? Working as “paid” or as “participating in projects” ?)
        • New members were involved by co-optation by the general assembly
          • [?] Did some inclusion created debate ?
          • Members could also be excluded by the general assembly
            • They had few self-exclusions from voting members
            • They also had few exclusions for inactivity
          • The inclusion of other studios was designed by involving
            • A member of Brussels in the (board [?] or general assembly ?) of each studio
            • A member of each studio in the (board [?] or general assembly ?) of Brussels’ studio
            • But soon, quorum issues appeared, because the distance made it tricky for people to come at each General Assembly
            • So the statutes were changed so that members from other studios would be non-voting
          • The main default of this structure still was that the three core board members were responsible for everything and everyone
            • General Assemblies looked like a farce
          • Reasons for this structure not working may include
            • Members not wanting to be involved in governance, but just wanting to get the benefits
              • Space access, visibility, etc
            • Most of the people involved were there because they could get something out of FoAM
              • When “reciprocity time” came, there were a lot of tensions
            • [?] If you had to iterate, would you select exclusively people wanting to get involved in governance to join aboard ?
            • Starting from a crisis start up (bankruptcy), the protocols/procedures which were designed initially were difficult to break
              • It induced good processes to flow money & energy out ([?] how ?)
              • No “giving back” to the organization was formally structured
                • [?] How would you structure it now ?
            • Lessons learned include
              • Think it from the beginning ([?] How ? Don’t you have to fail to realize it ?)
              • Be very selective about the people you invite aboard ([?] how ?)
            • Untill 2012 [?] > very unsustainable practice
              • Money for project costs (materials + people)
              • The “core team” was being payed under minimal wage until 2012 !
                • Rates as low as 1,5 € / hour sometimes !
            • Share responsibility and benefits of all
              • If people are on the board and general assembly, then they should be interested in governing the organization

• Core team
  • ([?] TBChecked) This institution is designed to manage FoAM Brussels laboratory on a daily basis
  • This institution was created in 2010
    • Before 2010, this role was informal
  • Its size stayed in the 4-8 people range
  • The representation of projects was stopped in 2012-2013
  • Centralizing the core team on people running the organization

• Board
  • This institution is designed to be in between FoAM and the external world
  • It started by including FoAM members only, and then some external advisors were added ([?] post-2010 ?)
  • Its size stayed in the range of 6-9 people

• General assembly
  • [?] Did you propose to any project contributor to become a member ?
  • Its sized stayed in the range of 10-20 people

• In 2010, Maja and Nik went away for 6 months sabbatical, because burn-out was showing up
  • The first version of the manual was written at that time
  • When they came back after 3 months
  • The studio looked trashed, uncared for, people were having arguments
    • Maja and Nik spent the next 3 months with more online presence
    • When coming back from the sabbatical, at the beginning of 2011, things were getting better, but FoAM’s reputation was declining
    • Many comments of people saying “you cannot let this happen”
  • This is when the Resilients project started in June 2011

• From late 2009 onwards, FoAM Brussels is still running 100% in the “nurturing regime” - almost no “own work”
  • FoAM had its own projects, but was still nurturing other people within the projects, and not working with other skilled people on a “shared” basis
    • Realization by the end of Resilients & PARN that most of the work was still about nurturing
      • The projects always started perfectly
        • The content was co-designed during a workshop
        • Clear responsibilities were established
        • The timing was made clear too
      • But then, it did not work as expected
        • Maja & Nik felt restricted
          • They were waiting for people to catch up
          • They were spending a lot of time explaining things
          • The partners were “the people who were there”, not the perfect purposed-design crew
            • It would have been better to work with people who really cared about the topic AND knew how to work on it
            • It felt like some of the partners did not really had something at stake in the project
            • The mistake was maybe to have picked people FoAM had pleasantly worked with in the past, but which were not appropriate for these specific projects
            • These projects were a failure regarding FoAM’s expectation, but were financially successful, EU was very happy about them
              • All partners were satisfied too

• The audit came (for Grig) in 2012, and induced a breaking point
  • One year and half have been spent on the audit (March 2012-August 2013)
  • The first report from the auditors was asking ~600 k€ back
  • At the end of the process, they were asking “only” 300 k€ back, but after a lot of work, stress, etc

• In 2013, the decision was made to actively split nurturing activities and own work
  • Nurturing activities were residencies
  • FoAM’s own research project was “Future Fabulators”
    • This project worked much better than the previous ones
  • It was a “shower moment” from Maja, then shared with everyone else

• A good example of a successful feedback loop from “nurturing activities” is the “Future of Unconditional Basic Income” project
  • The nurturing activity was to train me on the methodology
  • The feedback is to get the results from the workshop

• Overarching principles of FoAM’s organization
  • Invest in the minimum required for legal compliance
    • Regarding structure
    • Regarding funding
    • Regarding reporting
    • In order to have the smallest effort for administration needed

• The loop regarding content can be summed up as this
  • Crowdsourcing interests and questions from the members
  • Craft a research program within the core team
  • Feed it back to the network

• Looking back on the relationship with the other studios
  • FoAM Brussels is the Generalists’ studio
  • Other studios focus on specific aspects - usually with a five years delay
  • This organisation happened that way, not intentional

• Do you think that a better matching between legal responsibility and decision-making power within the structure would have been better ?

• Look at Maja’s doc sent by email
  • It is now saved in the same folder as the text you are currently reading
    • Charter (txt)
    • Organisational diagram (pdf)
    • FoAM blurbs (txt)
      • [?] Dates of each blurbs
        • There are two other online docs to be read
          • FoAM projects
          • FoAM mirror (inquiry through foam network)
• Group questions labeled in this doc