Coconat –workation retreat – A rural hub for innovation, community, and societal change
Coconat stands for Community and Concentrated work in Nature. ‘Inviting. Inspiring. Inventing Sustainable Stuff.’ is our purpose.
As an impact driven company we base our values on positive impact rather than capital growth. We do this through our innovative model of tourism, combining workation, coworking, coliving, and makerspace; as well as special rural development projects.
Coconat is a physical place, but also a fertile hub connected to a multitude of international and local networks.
Local
Germany
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It addresses urban-rural linkages
It refers to a physical transformation of the built environment (hard investment)
Yes
ESF : European Social Fund
ESF: European Social Fund business coaching programmes cofinanced by the ESF were a great support for us in different phases of our business development:
• 2016, 2017, 2019 Förderung unternehmerischen Know Hows [promotion of entrepreneurial Know How] / grant provider: Bundesamt für Ausfuhrkontrolle (ESF/Germany)
• 2019 Brandenburger Innovationsfachkräfte [Brandenburger Innovation Assistent]/ grant provider: Investions- und Landesbank Brandenburg (ESF/Land Brandenburg)
• 2020 Unternehmenswert Mensch [people as main company value] / grant provider: Bundesverwaltungsamt (ESF/Germany)
We also have taken the advantage of the Erasmus for Entrepreneurs programme, financed by the European Commission, first to travel as new entrepreneurs and nowadays to host new entrepreneurs at our place.
In 2016 we applied for the Horizon 2020’s SME instrument phase 1 and got certificated with a Seal of Excellence ´as an innovative project proposal` but didn’t receive the grant.
No
Yes
2022-10-31
As a representative of an organisation
Name of the organisation(s): Dietrich & Kokosnuss oHG Type of organisation: For-profit company First name of representative: Janosch Last name of representative: Dietrich Gender: Male Nationality: Germany Function: Owner Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Klein Glien 25 Town: Bad Belzig Postal code: 14806 Country: Germany Direct Tel:+49 33841 448299 E-mail:janosch@coconat-space.com Website:https://coconat-space.com/
Coconat was created by 4 founders and now works with 24 mostly part-time employees, as well as the support of many local and international volunteers.
We are a rural creative hub. Imagine a secular monastery for digital workers and change makers, updating the old Benedictine monk motto ´Ora et labora` to the slogan ´Relax and get some work done`. We strongly believe in the future of the countryside and founded a diverse community that is fascinated by the possibilities of contemporary Information and Communication Technologies. We created an entity with positive impact that is based on a sustainable business model, financially independent from public money. Coconat is not a UFO that landed in a remote region but strongly connected with the local community with the mission to transfer local learnings to other regions.
Coconat succeeds by networking worldwide with great people and organisations. In 2017,we initiated Smart Village e.V., an association working to make the Fläming region a hot spot for creative tech-oriented people who are eager to set up their own projects and/or move to the region. Netzwerk Zukunftsorte e.V. (Network of Future Places), which we co-founded in 2018, practises, tests, and develops rural possibilities of collaborative living and working.
We started Coconat in 2013, had two pilots in 2015 and 2016, and in 2017 we found our final home in a historic manor house. In Oct 2022 we reached our last original aim of opening a makerspace, a workshop focussed on open source tech and design, for local makers, and interested people to learn basic 2-D and 3-D design. In this first phase we strengthened a sense of belonging in the region and used sustainability, aesthetics, and inclusion as our guiding values.
Now that we have completed the build-up of our original idea, the Coconat project, we are expanding in the region to an additional property and addressing the local housing issues by developing a non-profit cooperative living project.
Rural Innovation
Workation
Societal Change
Coworking
Social Entrepreneurship
Ecological, social, and economical sustainability are the foundation of our work, if we refer to the Millennium development goals.
We run as climate-friendly as possible. We try to prepare our 3 daily vegetarian meals with local, organic ingredients, and a zero waste policy. We grow edible plants in our garden and produce apple juice and plum-liquor. Many guests and 3 of our 15 on the ground companies work in sustainable food. With our non-profit organisation, Smart Village e.V., we are part of the Klimawerkstatt innitiative, aiming to develop a local climate protection strategy. Our media projects support environmental and filmmaking activists with media training and a free editing suite. With a wilderness-school and the Naturpark Hoher Fläming we cooperate in nature tourism projects and environmental education. To measure our status and get better we conducted in 2022 a circular assessment.
We have implemented car-sharing and bike rental, consult our clients on sustainable travel, and offer local coworking space for a low price to reduce commuting. Where possible we build circularly, reusing materials or using long-lasting local materials. We also ran a seminar at the university Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft (HTW) about social entrepreneurship.
Our Employer Value Proposition and Code of Conduct, help us achieve social sustainability through horizontal and appreciative management structures, creating a positive company culture and avoiding team burnout. In 2020, we offered external team development to support in the pandemic and address structural challenges.
For financial sustainability our financing is based on our community (crowdfunding/investing), we grow from our own resources and diversify our business model to create a more solid foundation instead on relying only on investment or grants.
Our operational development and structures have been shared through the non profit organisation Netzwerk Zukunftsorte to multiply our learnings.
Our purpose is: Inviting. Inspiring. Inventing sustainable stuff. To co-create this fertile ground we, most importantly, include our community. In the first months, more than 80 helpers supported us preparing the historic building for guests. We created a design-collective with 10 volunteer architects, including one from our town of Bad Belzig, to create our own open source furniture designs and an inspiring experience for our guests.
We built a fully equipped makerspace on-site for local and visiting makers, startups, and more. And gained great results from design projects with universities from our region and beyond. Our rooms are individual and flexible (e.g. furniture on wheels, or tables which can be turned into flip charts). We still organise subotniks, community actions, for special building projects.
We emphasize and respect the historic 1822 building, but also create disruptions; like placing an old subway car as the heart of our mobility innovation campus, or our steampunk-welcome-robot out of a socialist hospital machine in the oak-dominated lobby. We have interest in turning former agricultural infrastructure, like barns, silos or greenhouses, into contemporary architecture, i.e. the new makerspace in the old cowshed.
We try to use local available resources, like wood or fieldstones, and historic materials like lime plaster or clay paint, and work with modern production tools (i.e. CNC milling machine or laser cutter) and have many upcycling projects on-site, often using stuff found the grounds.
Nature plays into the aesthetics, we include our park and surrounding nature reserve by building furniture and constructions; like stages, fire places, hammocks, a tree with hanging chairs, raft, lake-terrace, and glamping tents.
We work with local designers, run arts and crafts markets, host a craftwork-café and develop our own design products like a ´chicken’s that cowork` calender or a line of mobile office furniture for digital nomads.
Promoting diversity is of high value for us. We take care that the communications of Coconat feels specially inviting for PoC and LGTBQ+, which in rural Brandenburg often is not the case. A core topic is the adequate representation of women where we are fighting specially against the tendency in the media to produce the picture of a male founder and the fact that women are extremely under-represented in expert panel discussions.
Our work is organized with many horizontal structures in place. We offer regular bi-lateral feedback sessions, and involve the whole team in our business development strategies.
More than 50% of our clients and team are non-native to Germany. We run an international work-exchange programme, and cooperate with the local refugee organisation to raise numbers of international team members. English is our internal language, which creates a barrier to the local community, so we take care to translate all communications into German.
In a historic building it´s a challenge to reduce architectural barriers for people with disabilities, but we try as much as possible.
Although our target groups are mainly digital workers, we make Coconat also an easy to access place for people of all socio-economic backgrounds with concepts like a pizzeria, films, and local concerts in the unused village church. Our annual festival, Fläminger Kreativsause, is combined with another to invite an older demographic (over 70s) for intergenerational exchange. We bring our ideas to people by having booths at fairs or the old-town festival.
The affordability is another topic for us, people from different incomes are able to meet which is often rare in the rest of society. We offer different sleeping categories from tents and sleeping pods to single rooms, but the public space is the same for everyone. We offer free/cheap space for young entrepreneurs or local initiatives, work exchange possibilities for low-income guests, and scholarships for artists.
Before applying for the property the founders joined the annual village party. Shortly after we invited the neighbourhood to a design thinking workshop about the property development. Most ideas brought in by our neighbours were implemented. For example we host political and civil society meetings, elections, the volunteer fire department, and even the village party. We speak new projects through with the village representatives. We finance small investments and develop projects together. The neighbours are employees, service-providers, and entrepreneurs. Local craftsman use our machines, coworkers from the region our services and citizens our facilities and events.
To accelerate possibilities and engagement we founded the non-profit association Smart Village e.V. in 2018, with many stakeholders from the region. It is an umbrella organisation for a multitude of initiatives that create jobs and bring benefits to the region.
Another strong component of possible involvement are our media projects. We run the citizen journalist project Wirzulande (We people from the country-side) to encourage articles for the citizen online magazine, participate in our online TV show, and/or in our podcast. The open source Smart Village App, which we co-initiated, and has more than 2,500 active users, representing around 20% of the local population. We believe media plurality and media competence are very important for fighting right wing tendencies in society.
We run many participatory events where neighbours are participants or co-organisors, e.g. at our last Makers-Christmas market two of our neighbours offered 3D printing try out sessions. The events also create long-lasting outcomes like a local audio guide. We also run educational workshops to build up a local maker-scene and local people develop their own projects like a book-exchange in an old telephone booth.
(Very) Local stakeholders: The village neighbors have been here much longer than us, we take care that they are happy in their home and with us being here. They are valued stakeholders and very engaged in Coconat. A special component is the international community which is now a part of our tiny village, in addition to our guests we have employed our Thai, and Turkish neighbours, as well as a few of our retired neighbours. In 2018 we got appreciated as a demographic project by the regional government.
Regional level: Coconat is located exactly between Bad Belzig (pop. 12,000) and Wiesenburg (pop. 5,000). To purchase the property from Bad Belzig, we had to convince the town council that we would have a positive impact on the region. In 2018, we founded the association Smart Village e.V, which began a lot of modernisation projects and laid the way for Bad Belzig/Wiesenburg’s application for a large Smart City grant, and our county’s Potsdam-Mittelmark, application the Smarte.Land.Regionen grant. At the moment we plan a mobility station together with the county and a hub for smart developments in the wider region together with Potsdam, Berlin and our Smart City initiative.
National: On the national level our work is mostly about knowledge sharing in workshops, fairs and congresses, as well as through engagement with the initiative Coworkland, what we are doing in Brandenburg, to inspire people to realise similar ideas.
European (and beyond): Together with the local level, is with the highest emotional attachment to the founders. We developed the workation idea together with Paris-based coworking Mutinerie via an Erasmus for Entrepreneurs exchange. This experience was valuable and we are happy hosts for entrepreneurs from other European countries ourselves now. We are engaged in Coworking Europe, took many ideas out of the ECHN and networks Coliving Hub and Co-Liv. In 2022 we joined the ECF-financed Albanian-Romanian-German research-project SPACES.
Coconat struggles to provide a short and catchy description since the project is a combination of different fields. Some would probably answer Coconat is part of the creative and digital industry, related to the start-up world. This is true looking at the ambitious circular design approach, the belief that a workspace without a makerspace wouldn’t be complete and in the entrepreneurial mind-set of every project we start. We are also a Kreativpilot, an award of the German Ministry of Economy for the creative industries.
Others would answer that Coconat belongs clearly to the tourism industry. We combined a workspace with accommodation and food and created the product of workation. This idea was new when we came up with it and we have been awarded four times for innovation, including the German Tourism Award. Many researchers and students write about us and travel magazines publish articles.
Still others would say that the business concept belongs to the field of New Work. We are interested in creativity, productivity, digital nomadism, remote work, innovative workspace design, freelancer’s movement, work-life-blending, diversity, and gig economy. We are members of coworking and coliving networks, leading the unconference of Coworking Europe, we co-founded the Coworking Festival Berlin Brandenburg and even got presented as a pioneer of New Work at the Expo Dubai and the Expo Real in Munich.
But on an emotional level we belong to the field of rural development, digitalization, societal change and supporting young companies and initiatives. We care about equal opportunities in rural areas, work in education and cultural projects and try to make rural life more attractive to locals, refugees, and newcomers and spread the learning to other regions.
All these answers are correct and make us a social and creative tourism company in the field of New Work which is chatoyant and fertile but sometimes hard to grasp.
From a noble family home, to family housing for German refugees in the GDR, to a ruin, to a renovated (but still empty) hotel, the manor house, built in 1823 continues it’s transformation. It is located between the capital Berlin and the original Bauhaus in Dessau, one of the least favoured areas in Germany, where the population is still in decline. In 2016, Coconat convinced the town of Bad Belzig to make it our home.
The world’s first workation retreat, hosting a creative ’glocal’ community, we bring our guests in contact with each other and with our neighbours. Our aim is the empowerment of the countryside, and through these connecting communities, to create local solutions to local challenges instead of waiting for innovation from the cities, this has a very strong effect on the topic of belonging.
Coconat is a regional hub where people from all over connect and cowork, found companies, run projects, and socialize over coffee, pizza and events. It´s a quiet rural place, but at the same time vibrant and diverse merging urban and rural lifestyles.
The small village of Klein Glien made it into global media and our neighbours are proud that the only thing some people know from Germany is their tiny village. It became a hybrid space, bridging different worlds. Young people come back or stay in the region, work for Coconat, found companies, make friends from around the world and appreciate their home. The visitors in turn are finding new important connections, combatting the sometimes-lonely lifestyle of nomadism, and some even deciding to stay, having found a new home here.
Furthermore, Coconat is a community centre for the village, the local pensioners have a place to share Christmas dinner, citizen media projects celebrate local identity. People become proud of their region, strengthening the feeling of belonging.
‘The best thing what could have happened to the village.’ quote from the head of the village at our 5-year anniversary, and our proudest accolade.
Coconat combined work and vacation into a physical space, creating the world’s first dedicated workation retreat. This idea follows historic ideas of creative and concentrated work in nature like artist colonies, artist residencies, or monasteries, places to escape from the distraction of the city. The innovative approach was to take the existing idea of coworking and merge it with this historic tradition to create a completely new touristic concept. Mainstream practises would be business hotels, urban coworking spaces, seminar houses, or village community centres which all miss elements of the Coconat workation retreat.
This new tourism product is used to foster rural development by supporting meaningful projects and provide needed infrastructure, like maker and work space, mobility solutions, yoga studio and sauna, etc. not only to tourists but also to the local people.
When we started the project we tried to apply for innovation-grants but the office of economic development rejected us because we were unable to proof our financial sustainability since there were no existing examples on the market yet. Now, after managing to implement the project without the financial support from the government exactly these institutions like to present us as a best practise example for an innovative company from a rural area.
Since we opened, Coconat got mentioned in hundreds of publications, written about in dozens of scientific papers and public studies, displayed in exhibitions and the founders got invited to a multitude of congresses. Coconat won several awards for tourism, including the highest national tourism award, the German tourism prize, and awards for creative industries, and even the international Famigro award for our innovative concept to contribute to rural economy and environment. Winning the New European Bauhaus award would support our mission a lot to inspire other people and transfer the learnings from Brandenburg to other European countries.
A good word describing our approach is serendipity. We believe the alchemist’s secret to innovation is to stir together the right space, moment, and people, and… boom!
To make serendipity possible and create this fertile ground for enabling people to come up with new ideas you have to 1) create a peaceful, inspiring environment with perfect technical infrastructure. 2) Be inviting to innovators from different professions and parts of society, since innovation, or inventing, comes from a successful combination of existing ideas.
Coconat must be trustworthy. People who come and work at Coconat have to believe that we are living the values we represent:
That we care about sustainability by, e.g. not selling meat and developing alternative mobility solutions even if they are not profitable
That we work towards a more peaceful world of understanding and live this by treating our team well, having many supporters and a great relationship with the neighbours
That our place is functional and stimulating by creating much of the furniture by ourselves or together with our stakeholders
To remove economic barriers that may keep innovative change-makers from different fields away, we offer cheap beds and discounted rates, subsidised by the more wealthy clients. People from different income groups meet in the public space and during the shared meals that normally wouldn’t meet. Our clients are as diverse as management teams from large corporates, to small companies and NGOs; normally very separated from each, here they sit around the same campfire.
To intensify our approach of serendipity we have an analogue community board and who’s-here-wall so different digital tools don’t create barriers. A suitable space with the adequate group of people and the being out of the usual daily life-vacation-like situation leads to unforeseeable ideas and private and professional partnerships. This is why our purpose is to be: Inviting. Inspiring. Inventing sustainable stuff.
The Coconat idea can be a blueprint to transfer the project’s results to other regions and countries. Hub founders will often stay at ours to get inspired, we present on stage in congresses and events, we collaborate with academics who publish papers about us. We consistently work to make our model replicable, as there is so much demand from communities and new founders for learnings. That’s why we founded the Netzwerk Zukunftsorte. The open source Smart Village app we initiated is already used in 28 other communities in Germany, which makes our community proud.
Invited as a ´best practise project` we took part as inspiring resource persons in the European projects Creative Accelerators for Sustainable Tourism (COSME), MaC Village (Intereg), AGARE (Europe for Citizens) and SPACES (European Cultural Foundation).
Learnings of Coconat which could be replicated could be
Sustainable tourism in rural areas: How to make remote places attractive for an innovative creative crowd
How to combine creativity (virtual and tangible) with regional development
Hybrid Spaces: How to create locations which foster encounters and innovation by combining the advantages of the urban and rural world
Social entrepreneurship and start-ups: How to inspire people to create impact-driven initiatives and companies
We strongly believe and have already seen that many elements are transferable. Due to it´s aesthetic dimensions Coconat is a visually very pleasant project which attracts people from very different socioeconomic, political, and geographic backgrounds. The project´s focus on sustainability and positive societal change makes a replication of the Coconat-ideas a desirable scenario. The founders are very happy to travel Europe, being ambassadors of inspiration. Our team is convinced that getting awarded by the Award of the New European Bauhaus would make the learnings from Coconat available to an even higher number of people in different contexts.
Coconat combined work and vacation into a physical space, creating the world’s first dedicated workation retreat. This idea follows historic ideas of creative and concentrated work in nature like artist colonies, artist residencies, or monasteries, places to escape from the distraction of the city. The innovative approach was to take the existing idea of coworking and merge it with this historic tradition to create a completely new touristic concept. Mainstream practises would be business hotels, urban coworking spaces, seminar houses, or village community centres which all miss elements of the Coconat workation retreat.
This new tourism product is used to foster rural development by supporting meaningful projects and provide needed infrastructure, like maker and work space, mobility solutions, yoga studio and sauna, etc. not only to tourists but also to the local people.
When we started the project we tried to apply for innovation-grants but the office of economic development rejected us because we were unable to proof our financial sustainability since there were no existing examples on the market yet. Now, after managing to implement the project without the financial support from the government exactly these institutions like to present us as a best practise example for an innovative company from a rural area.
Since we opened, Coconat got mentioned in hundreds of publications, written about in dozens of scientific papers and public studies, displayed in exhibitions and the founders got invited to a multitude of congresses. Coconat won several awards for tourism, including the highest national tourism award, the German tourism prize, and awards for creative industries, and even the international Famigro award for our innovative concept to contribute to rural economy and environment. Winning the New European Bauhaus award would support our mission a lot to inspire other people and transfer the learnings from Brandenburg to other European countries.
