In 2024, we first put out a call to “Occupy the Foundry” for two years, and a group of stewards was formed that is taking care of the space until now.
Beginning in the autumn of 2026, we want to once again make the space available for free to a collective that wants to develop their project at the Foundry over a maximum of two years. The only condition is that the group taking control of the space helps to maintain the building and its surroundings, and that some of the rooms remain available for guests (this includes a few regulars and current residents).
The Foundry started in 2018 as a self-organized and non-profit artist residency in an abandoned Galician village. After thorough renovations, the space now comprises 12 bedrooms, 6 bathrooms, a large workshop, 5 hectares of land including a river and several orchards, and numerous common spaces.
Since its beginning, the Foundry was built on three pillars: openness, self-organization, and the exclusion of profit. It was open to anyone who wanted to come, without complicated application procedures. It was self-organized, meaning that maintenance and organization were done by the people that used the space rather than by paid staff. And finally, the Foundry is a non-profit association, so no one can extract money from the project. It was conceived as a piece of counter-infrastructure, a place that exists on the fringes of state and capital in which a vision of collective liberation through the communisation of living and working space could be prefigured in a more tangible form than what is possible in territories totally colonised by the logic of the commodity economy. We would like to keep some of this ethos alive while taking a leap forward by ceding the space to other collectives.
As temporary curators of the Foundry, you are free to use and develop the space, host events, invite guests, apply for grants, build your digital landing page, et cetera. The space would lend itself perfectly to an exploration of permaculture or agroecology, but one could also set up a hackerspace, a radical education experiment, a performing arts workshop, a decolonial healing center, a music studio, a nondual contemplative arts institute, a writer’s retreat, or an ancestral rewilding crafts collective.
You are free to use all income generated by onsite activities to support yourselves and to pay for the low running costs of the space (approx. 500€/month), we only ask a small financial contribution for the long-term maintenance fund (approx 1500€/year minimum – more is always welcome!) as well as taking responsibility for any day to day maintenance requirements necessary.
We’re seeking folks who can commit to caring for this space and leaving an impact that supports the endurance of the whole project. If your onsite activities generate significantly more income than required for your own running costs, we encourage and request a portion to be shared with the association in the form of voluntary donations. While we understand that everyone needs money in order to survive, and we support your decision to do whatever you need to do with the space for your financial sustainability as long as an ethics of care for people, the land and future generations are taken into account, we still expect that any income generated onsite will for the most part be used either to support life at the Foundry or the long-term sustainability of the project as a whole. Preference, of course, is given to activities that are pro-social, radically innovative, culturally/ecologically regenerative, and politically revolutionary.
Proposals (max. 1000 words) can be sent to foundry@bravosfoundry.com until the end of the year. Feel free to contact us with any questions you may have about the space before before writing up a proposal. Please include some information about your collective, the proposed length of your tenure at the Foundry, and what you plan to do here. The transition could take place in the beginning of 2027.