[hackerspaces] Dear hackerspaces, bad news

[Florencia Edwards]

Hello everybody, this week without being expected, they told us that are
going to fire half of our team. Our makerspace unfortunately, is a company.
We were all working paid with a symbolic wage, so we were sort of
volunteers also, but the space is really huge, an ex factory in a really
expensive neighborhood so we weren't making enough from memberships to
afford rent, less wages.  . The owner , who has been absent the last 7
months or so, wants to make an inversion in the space, machines, materials
for artists to make decorations. He prefers to invert in the space than in
the people who've been working because they love the community, who've been
underpaid working extra hours because they just love being there, which
makes me really sad, but I understand the circumstances are hard.

Now it's going to be sort of self administrated by the members, they are
going to have keys like in other spaces. Here where we live people don't
have the culture of doing stuff by themselves and respecting someone else's
space. They need someone watching them, telling them what to do... Maybe
this will be a good change, so members can lear how to take care of the
space.

Also they want to administrate projects,  in the makerspace for big
companies and brands that want to have new ways of communication and are
willing to pay big. And they will hire in this case experts to make the
projects in the makerspace. Like a sort of incubator.

We also use to have scholarships for people who were ex staff, who do stuff
like taking care of the space, or workshops, but he said that if people are
not working in a cool project "maker style", they won't be able to keep
coming to the space. This means they haven't offered the staff that was
fired memberships to work on their stuff or to keep being part of the
community.

This is our new reality, we don't know what to make of it, we are in shock,
and I would love to hear your opinions.
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