People know me as Daan, I came here a bit more than 11 years ago to the ADM terrain because I was playing music with some people who lived here.
We were playing in a band and we were quite active in squat places to create culture over there.
We were evicted from our own squat and one of the guys invited us to stay here for a while.
Getting here was a very interesting growing experience, to have to figure out that my definition of free spaces was not other people’s definition for that.
When I arrived here I was super young and naive about certain things and I couldn’t see the amount of work that was put here until the moment I got here… I was like the young dog that needed to learn about this place. One of the things that I have really learned was to let go of past conceptions about how to do things in a group. I wanted to plan things ahead and come up with projects for the whole group, but this wasn’t Necessarily what was welcome here. This is a very unique space where the individual has a lot of freedom. This community does not have a core set of guidelines set in stone. A lot of living communities have a mission statement but this community did not have a mission statement, it was all implicit.
I've lived here in total 5 years, there were a lot of lessons I’ve learned here… but if anything I think I managed to overcome my fears, not only of spiders, who used to be an issue, they’re friends now… but that went together with my fear of failure, I've learned that experiments can lead you to unknown paths that can be more beautiful than a pre-plan designed. I lost my fear of the experiment and the failure it might represent.
Everyone who comes here learns something else, but it’s always from the way of possibilities.
That is what makes us so strong, the tendency to look at the options and possibilities in a very non-restrictive way and to have that open mind towards things creates a space that vibrates this. People who come here at a festival, they get inspired, they see the options and possibilities and take that back home with them.
