Living Room is a community center in Bern’s Breitenrain neighborhood. The space enables dialogue between artists, activists and community members to create a unique space where connections can be built and unheard stories can be told. Living Room uses community building, art, expression, healing and participation to address current issues around racism and other forms of exclusion. It’s a place for all of us but especially for those of us who may not have access to other spaces. It’s a place where we can feel at home, just like in our living room, a place where we can feel free.
Living Room has an atelier, library and workspace. We sustain multiple projects: Manioca People’s School, Atelier D’Ici, Artists-in-Community, Diaspora University, Living Archiv, and Anticafé.
D'Ici is a digital, multimedia studio in which inputs and interventions are produced by users of the Living Room. Stories, analyses, experiences and visions from a polyphonic Switzerland, a polyphonic Bern are developed.
To these ends, a studio will be set up as laboratory with software and hardware, home studio equipment, cameras and lighting - a multimedia home base for the creative, participatory, anti-racist spirit. In the studio, the group meets regularly with art and culture professionals, activists and researchers to work on current issues. After the research and production, the results, opinions and stories are disseminated via social media (e.g. Youtube, Instagram and Facebook).
EVERY WEDNESDAY FROM 6PM TO 10PM. Other dates sporadically.
The diaspora is a multi-voiced community with a lot of knowledge about Switzerland, about migration and racism, about politics, community and art.
Open on Fridays from 10 am to 3 pm.
Every Friday, the Living Room is open as a work space, social meeting place and to linger, without focusing on consumption.
The Living Room offers an artist-in-community program: In it, local and international BIPOC artists or collectives enter into an honest conversation with the Living Room, with communities and the neighborhood.
Self-organized and liberatory learning and community empowerment. Existing or newly formed groups define for themselves issues they wish to address and meet regularly to gather their knowledge, discuss and, if desired, take public action.
Each meeting can include large and small group discussions, presentation of related theory, art, poetry, theater and music. The goal is for participants to build relationships with each other, develop an awareness of structural oppression in Switzerland, and work through options for collaborative action.
The Living Archive is a place for everyone, a place of learning, unlearning and encounter. A public archive that collects intersectional, decolonial, and power-critical media in various languages, selected and written primarily by Black people and people of color. A place for discussion and self-reflection, in order to bring new perspectives to local resistance. The Living Archive consists of analog and digital media.
Former collective members:
Dragana Draca, Eva de Souza, Izabel Barros, Malana Rogers-Bursen, Mardoché Kabengele, Marianne Naeff, Nicolle Bussien, Rohit Jain, Said Adrus, Timo Righetti, Timothy Perry Bwengye, Youness Bitite
"Living Room Bern - A Room of Conflicts?": Short documentary as part of the Artist in Community Residency by Luisa Wolf
Living Room
Moserstrasse 30, 3014 Bern
AntiCafé
Friday, 10.00–15.00
Living Archiv
Friday, 10.00–16.00
Warst du schon mal im Living Room? Hast du einen schönen Moment erlebt bei uns? Oder willst du es nachholen? Wir brauchen deine Unterstützung, um dieses Projekt fortzusetzen!
Bankverbindung:
Verein Berner Rassismusstammtisch
Moserstrasse 30 3014 Bern
CH27 0900 0000 1560 2522 7
