I decided to do an Erasmus internship during my studies after completing my bachelor's thesis. An urban studies student friend of mine recommended the Kaorle collective in Vienna, where she had done an internship two years previously and was really impressed. Kollektiv Kaorle is a multidisciplinary association that focuses on cultural and artisanal production and the collaborative activation of public space.
The application process was relatively straightforward: After a short email with an attached portfolio, I received a call from Timo two weeks later, where we talked a bit about the internship modalities. In August, I dropped by Kaorle to get to know him, as I was in Vienna anyway. The internship then started in November.
My decision to do an internship at a cultural association instead of a traditional architecture firm was mainly because I wanted to try things out directly in a lower-threshold context. As part of urban planning or even more comprehensive residential construction projects during university, spaces for open cultural activities, workshops or community spaces are often planned without really thinking more intensively about how they work. There is usually simply no time for this during the stressful semester. Working in the collective, I am now learning a lot about how such spaces for culture, education and engagement - free from consumerism - actually function, how they promote creativity and a collective consciousness in the neighborhood and can serve as a testing ground for a more democratic use of space.
During a large part of my internship period, the collective was in a restructuring phase: the lease in the current interim use expires in six months, and the aim is to find potential new places for the collective to continue. At the same time, a lot of thought is being given to how the association should be organized: How will main responsible roles be distributed? How can members get more involved, take on tasks or simply use the premises more independently? Money was also an important topic time and again. Projects like Kaorle are dependent on funding to stay alive on the one hand, and on the other hand often rely on an incredible amount of voluntary work by the core team. One long-term goal is to remunerate the work that goes into running the association. It was quite exciting for me to witness these structuring processes, which are often not visible to the public.
My tasks were quite varied. Among other things, I worked on funding applications or wrote articles for public relations work, for which I researched a bit more about the history of the collective and the current premises. But there were also very practical tasks, such as making the premises cosy and suitable for winter (ongoing process), building a tool organization system in the workshop or adding a metal arch to the Alsergarten, a communal garden project on the Danube Canal, which the Kaorle collective played a key role in building. After the winter break, more public events were scheduled at Kaorle again, and I helped with the design of posters or other announcements, for example, as well as with setting up and running concerts or cinema evenings. The collective is also planning a stage for the blechsonne festival, which will take place in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern this summer. I am involved in both the design and organization teams, which will extend beyond my internship period (in a positive sense).
In general, I'm very keen to stay involved with the collective as long as I'm in Vienna! I think that places and projects like this are incredibly important for community life in the city. At Kaorle, people like to simply try things out and see what comes out of it, and the building site is already seen as a space for discourse in which everyone can get involved. Through joint visits to exhibitions or lectures, for example on the topic of vacancy, or book or magazine recommendations, I was also able to take away a lot of inspiring input on questions about a fairer and more participatory city. As the collective is very much organized on a voluntary basis, there are no fixed working hours and a lot of initiative and structuring is required. I noticed that a more clearly defined structure would have made things a little easier for me at times, but I was also able to learn a lot about self-organization, and I think that's an important skill.
I think that my experience during the internship will definitely be valuable for my planned Master's degree (I'm sticking with architecture) and future professional practice - and I can recommend it to anyone who is interested in the topics covered and who has a really nice and open-minded team!
