Musubu and the neighborhood: two years as neighbors
An honest assessment of what opening a cultural space in this neighborhood has meant, what we've learned, and what we still don't know how to do.
When we opened Musubu, we had many ideas about what it was going to be. A meeting space, a cultural laboratory, a place where disciplines intersect. All of this is still true, but two years later, reality has nuances we hadn’t anticipated.
The neighborhood has taught us things that weren’t in any business plan. The first: that trust is earned slowly. During the first few months, the people who came were mainly those who already knew us from before, from other professional lives. The local neighbor took longer to come in. Not because they weren’t interested, but because they needed to understand what we were before investing their time.
What worked wasn’t the most ambitious or the most recognized programming. What worked was the Saturday morning ceramics workshop. Small, regular, unpretentious. The same people coming back week after week. Getting to know each other. Forming something that resembles a community, even if no one calls it that.
We’ve learned that culture doesn’t have to be an event. It can be a practice. Something done regularly, without the need for it to be extraordinary every time.
What we still don’t know how to do well: reaching people who have never set foot in a cultural space. That remains our pending challenge.