Why would Exberliner magazine go out of their way to launch a mean-spirited attack against Das Baumhaus at a most critical time for the project?
We think that Das Baumhaus is an embodiment of what makes Berlin so special—a place where ideas, projects and collaborations can flourish and take shape that can actually have positive impacts on our city and the people in it.
In the spirit of clarifying the facts and rejecting manipulative and sensational journalism here in our city of Berlin, we would like to set the record straight. Check out the real facts, compare the manipulatively edited article that got published with the original article and you be the judge.
Freelance journalist Anna Gyualai Gaal came by the Baumhaus project space to interview us in May for a piece about social projects doing crowd-funding to be published in this month’s (June 2016) printed issue of Exberliner with theme of “Post Capitalism”. We agreed to the interview because it would be published during the middle of our currently running crowd-funding campaign and thought it might be helpful to spread the word about our project.
During our interview Anna seemed quite inspired and generally positive. Afterwards, she informed us that we would be contacted by someone from Exberliner to fact check our interview and that we would get to see the text of the article before publishing. However, no one ever tried to contact us to fact check and when the article about the Baumhaus came to print, it looked very different than the original version she had submitted, having been dramatically altered by an editor at Exberliner.
The original article paints an entirely different story than the issue in print. In one part, Anna describes the effect Das Baumhaus has already had on the surrounding community: “The community of Wedding welcomed the movement and there are many helping hands and the group welcomes everyone”. Yet reading the published article, one would think that the founders and volunteers behind Das Baumhaus seek little more than a fancy “café” with little regard for the context and community where it is located. And anyone personally involved with the project knows this is not true.
As it turns out, the article is a self described ‘investigation’ of a few social initiatives with “dubious philanthropic claims”. The article goes on to suggest that the Baumhaus and two other projects fit into the category of projects that could be funded via crowd-funding but probably shouldn’t and that the reader should be the judge. The article goes on to paint a rather unflattering characterization of the all three projects. (At least the other 2 projects that were slammed had already ended their crowd-funding campaigns by the time this issue was published.)
Maybe negative journalism attracts more readers, and maybe in today’s disaffected journalistic atmosphere the more cynical and snarky the tone, the better. But discrediting such a sincere and community-driven project, especially right in the middle of an important crowd-funding campaign, just feels unjust and particularly mean-spirited. Calling Das Baumhaus a “100,000 Euro café” is not only misleading and factually incorrect, but also shows a basic lack of authentic fairness and empathy towards understanding and reporting the truth, not to mention consequences.
Apparently, someone on the editorial staff at Exberliner really has it out for us and has no problem disregarding the reality of 4+ years of honest commitment, hard work, investment and sacrifice that not only the founders, Karen and Scott have made but also the 300+ other people who have invested time, energy, hope and money.
After getting the respect and support from many people in our neighborhood, lots of organizations in the Berlin change-maker community, the mayor of Berlin Mitte, the Green Party of Berlin, Dr Gerald Hüther and many others, the last thing we expected was to not meet the quality standards of one of Berlin’s largest english speaking publications.
Nadja Vancauwenberghe from the editorial staff of Exberliner was asked to comment on why the article was re-written in a cynical and sarcastic way, not fact checked and published without letting the original author or any of the subjects see the changes that were made, as was agreed. Her replies ranged from “It just worked better that way…” to, “The fact checking was done by one of our editors on the basis of the information published on your website. (we usually call people, only when directly quoted in the article to check their quotes – which was not the case here)”. However, it is clear to see that both Scott and Karen are, in fact, directly quoted in the article. Even then, Scott’s quote is a combination of several quotes put together out of context. One of our interns made a video of a good portion of our interview.
Ultimately, it seems as though Nadja just does not like our project even if the person she sent to ‘investigate’ us had only good things to say, as is illustrated in her last response to us, “Can you accept that it should be possible not to like your Baumhaus, the way people don’t like a film, a book or just give a bad review to a new restaurant? That one might feel that your baumhaus is a bit… unnecessary, and maybe pretentious,,,, especially as so immodestly presented in your marketing texts?” To which our reply would be, yes we can understand how someone might not like our project, especially if they don’t really know the facts about it, and that is fine. What we don’t understand is why someone would go out of their way to ignore the facts to undermine a project with the goal of helping us all…!
It is a shame that ExBerliner, a publication with such a large audience and such a prominent platform chose to misrepresent Das Baumhaus in a negative light. It is a pity that instead of helping community projects to succeed and achieve their goals, they are being torn down for no reason other than to attract more readers. As a community and as a city, Berlin is better than that. Clearly, the only thing that is dubious in this month’s Exberliner are the actions and decisions of some of the editorial staff.
Send comments to:
baumhausberlin@gmail.com & editor@exberliner.com
* Please be respectfully constructive with your comments to all parties. We would appreciate any personal messages of positive support for the Baumhaus to help set the record straight. It’s not too late to start putting more focus on what is going right in the world rather than what has gone wrong… Thanks!
** For the record: Nadja did offer to “hear our side of the story and publish a correction” a week ago. However, as of June 18, this publication date, she has not responded to any recent requests for comment via email or phone. There has also been a request made not to publish the heavily edited article in the online edition when it comes out.
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Setting the record straight
What the Baumhaus is, what we believe and what we do:
The Baumhaus is an event and project space for sustainable development and solutions. When a system is sustainable, that means it is in a state of dynamic balance. We recognize that in any system there are many variables constantly influencing each other in a series of feedback loops.
We are building the Baumhaus to provide a space where people know they can meet face-to-face on a regular basis to collaborate and figure out how we can bring more balance into our local worlds in a variety of ways. Ways that we can have a direct influence on ourselves, each other and the world around us; personally, ecologically, aesthetically, culturally, economically and socially (p.e.a.c.e.s.)
As a hub space, we invite sustainable projects and initiatives to contribute and create quality event programming in addition to what we can offer. The space provides a supportive platform to explore many perspectives.
The Baumhaus is organizationally structured both as an open source, social business (GbR) and as an open source cultural non-profit organization (e.V.i.G). In the spirit of enabling broad impact as soon as possible, we are open to documenting and sharing facts, findings, failures and successes.
As a social business, our income will come from space rentals, events and selling our services and products as a ‘sustainable solutions design agency’ (staffed by a pool of interdisciplinary freelance talent). Our goal is to make enough basic income and sustain the relatively low running costs on the space so we can host more local neighborhood events and other initiatives who have little or no funding.
When we open this September, our 140 qm storefront space will have 3 rooms which can be rented out or used; the main space, the seminar room and our kitchen. Typical engagements might include workshops of all kinds, seminars, social business coaching sessions, group project work, themed co-working days, social engagements, cooking classes, film screenings or just even hanging out.
As a non-profit organization (e.V.i.G), we will be eligible to receive funding for socio-cultural projects in and beyond the Baumhaus space. These projects will be done collaboratively with organisations and individuals in our network of sustainable change makers.
Corrections, omissions and clarifications:
- We are not a cafe, bar or gallery but you may find coffee, drinks, food and art as regular elements of any event in the space
- The majority of our 1st successful crow-funding of €11,007 in 2012 was not cash but donated materials and space rental fees which can be seen on the page of our website documenting our financial transparency.
- For our current campaign we need to raise €15,000 of our €30,000 goal to get any money.
- After a year of writing a solid business plan and another 14 months of negotiating with banks, we managed to finally finance our mission impossible by getting approved for a bank credit of €80,000 in April 2015… as an unemployed guy and a student!
- We never got more than one loan. We got 2 loan offers, one from Sparkasse and another from GLS. We only accepted 1 offer that was backed by KfW.
- Typically renovating a public space to be legal starting from scratch costs on average of €1,000 per square meter, so our estimated €100,000 budget for a 140 qm space is well below the average. We could not do this without our many generous volunteers and interns who help with everything from building to cooking and other donated professional services.
- Scott’s printed quote, while meant well, is a construct of a few different quotes
- The aesthetics in our 3d rendering of the space do not represent the actual literal design of the space. The model was our starting point in the design process to share a vision with people. The actual final aesthetics are being made in the space, in the process with input from all participants who want to contribute in that regard. The vast majority of people who actually come to see the space give us very positive feedback on this process and its results.
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Here is Anna’s unedited original text she submitted to Exberliner (portions in red should have been fact checked but were not and are slightly inaccurate)
They say Berlin is a good place to start such initiatives because it’s full of change-longing people. Das Baumhaus, located in Wedding, is trying to create a space exactly for those who want to change the world. The public space project started in 2012, first rather as neighbourhood meetings, dinners, workshops in a raw, to-be-renovated shop space. Their first crowdfunding campaign was successful, they’ve managed to get 11,007€ to start designing and building but the two founders, Scott Bolden and Karen Wohlert wanted to make it more official; therefore they’d turned it into a GbR (BGB group) to be able to apply for governmental funds and bank loans. “We are not entirely out of the system, we had to play in it a bit to get going. We’ve made a business plan and applied for bank loans and we got two in just 14 months” – explains Karen, sitting next to her co-founder, Scott, being constantly interrupted by the sound of hammering and buzz-sawing while we talk in Das Baumhaus. “However, our project is not profit-oriented but it’s about caring for the people of the community” – continues Karen, a vibrant social movement activist, political scientist from North-Germany who firmly believes that there are many change-makers in Berlin who can become active together. Her co-founder, Scott Bolden, shares this belief of hers. The New York designer had worked on several cultural, art and community spaces and sees themselves as change agents. “This is it, we are at the zero hour, and we make changes now or never! It’s not enough to talk about it we have to do it. We are building a sharing collaboration society and hoping that this can turn into a whole big movement. Berlin is getting really crowded and people need spaces to meet in a meaningful way. We chose Das Baumhaus because a treehouse has a common reference to people!” The community of Wedding welcomed the movement and there are many helping hands and the group welcomes everyone. They also organise and manage events outside Das Baumhaus like the annual Emergent Berlin Festivals and their Zero Waste Week for example had just won an EU-Award.
Das Baumhaus started their second crowdfunding campaign at the middle of May and they are opening in September, pledgers can already pre-book the space for events, workshops. Das Baumhaus is not empty now either, they have several activities, such as improvisational orchestras, art projects, workshops, common dinners and they also serve as one of the CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) pick up points. “We welcome anything that creates change. It’s about transformation so the space is going to transform constantly too! Das Baumhaus is personally, ecologically, aesthetically, culturally, economically and socially sustainable. And if you read the initials of these words together, it will form ‘peaces’!” – points Scott to the different walls of the room, showing their already existing vertical herb garden, explaining where the clay wall is going to be and how can one later really go up to the indoor treehouse.
The Das Baumhaus group believes to be the bridge between the now and the post-capitalist future. “Democracy is the answer. It starts with the people. To make bigger changes, we need to gain our power back.” – says Karen, half way out the door.”