Description

In Castelfranco Veneto there were no free places for meeting and exchanging ideas, so in 1999 we decided to found a cultural centre ourselves, without waiting in vain for institutions’ initiatives (just think that our town library was practically closed for 12 years).

Our legal status is a non-profit association. The Buenaventura is completely self- financed and managed by volunteers. To create it we used our own savings and a bank loan. Nowadays we pay each month 2000 euros for house-rent, and about 1000 euros more for other expenses. We obtain all this money, plus 300 euros more, from membership-fees and from our activities.
We receive no money from institutions neither from our town hall.

We have almost 40 volunteers from the surroundings (three of them are living in the Buenaventura) and o­ne volunteer from European Voluntary Service, besides 10 part-time workers serving in the bar (which are also involved in the management and are volunteers in other activities).

Quite often musicians from abroad come to the Buenaventura, so we started a basic Music/Art exchange program for musicians willing to exchange o­ne or two nights of performances for some days of free boarding.

Besides concerts we often organize conferences with journalists, politicians and writers.
Activities mainly take place in the evenings. The bar is open from 7 p.m. till 2 a.m.

The administrative/management board meets o­nce a week and it’s open to all members. We want to encourage members to take decisions and to feel responsible for the Buenaventura.

Two words about our future dreams. We would like to move to a bigger place capable of containing 400/500 people. We wish we could occupy an old factory, but we know it will be hard for our community to accept this. Then we wish we could buy some big industrial place borrowing money from our community, from a bank and maybe with the help of a EU project. We are convinced that having a community as a part of this project is fundamental.

Two more dreams are to create a newspaper and also a cooperative with which we’ll be able to live, situated in a beautiful Croatian island with headquarters in a sailing boat and in the Buenaventura.

Former use : house/firms

Total surface of the site : 600mq

Architect of the rehabilitation : no architect at all... all homemade easy and cheap fixes

Renovation costs of the building : 10.000 euro.

Location : little town (30.000)

Foundation year of the centre : 1999

Type of occupation : rent

Owner of the building : private company

Infrastructures / Facilities

• Concert venue (seating 60 people and 100 standing) used also as a rehearsal room; 150mq
• Bar 80mq;
• apartment with rooms for five volunteers 80mq;
• Internet room with 12 pc’s with internet connection (80mq);
• conference venue (seating 40 people) used also for courses (tango, theatre, photography, video, etc...) 80mq
• kitchen (seating 40 people) we use for ethnic dinners (80mq)
• darkroom 25mq

Social and artistic disciplines

Concerts, Workshops (theatre, photography), training courses (drama, video, tango, computer science, drum, computer music, buto), conferences & debates with journalists, politicians and writers (book presentations), ethical dinners, readings.
Events are often organized in collaboration with other non-profit organizations.

Financial support

The Buenaventura is completely self- financed and managed by volunteers. To create it we used our own savings and a bank loan. Nowadays we pay each month 2000 euros for house-rent, and about 1000 euros more for other expenses. We obtain all this money, plus 300 euros more, from membership-fees and from our activities.
We receive no money from institutions neither from our town hall.

Networks

Trans Europe Halles
Coordinamento per il volontariato di Castelfranco Veneto