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Our original idea was hold a two week summer camp during which we would construct the physical infrastructure, including a multipurpose strawbale building, to allow the site to be used as full time European open source ecology project space. A few weeks into preparations it became apparent it would require a substantial battle to get planning permission to construct anything and take a minimum of six months to get approval – a depressing reminder of the obstructive inertia of governments attempting to preserve existing economic and agricultural models.

Because of this we decided the camp should focus less on construction and more on open source, skill sharing and permaculture.

We first circulated a poster and brief overview of the camp, and after becoming confident there was enough interest in the camp going ahead we circulated more detailed camp description of what we were trying to organise.

We put made a camp registration form using Google Docs and circulate it on Facebook and a few blogs. With minimal effort in publicity and despite the site being fairly difficult to reach we were quickly overwhelmed with the response. At the point we were forced to close camp registration we had 50 people from across Spain and Europe registered – more than the site could comfortably support. A further 25 contacted us to get onto on a waiting list in case of cancellations. Because we were concerned the numbers would exceed what we could support we decided not to publicise the event locally – which was a shame. Despite this we still had several enthusiastic local people find out about the event and come and take part.

With two weeks to to go we issued a crowd sourced fund raising campaign to help buy items for camp infrastructure. At this point there was just two people on site doing all the site preparation and online work, so the ability to develop and promote the campaign was very limited. Even so, we raised around half of the the €2000 we asked for.

The prepare for the event we constructed a 6m geodesic dome, a humanure toilet, shade structures, a shower, a area kitchen and hoped it all would be enough. Over the course of the two weeks around 40 people turned up. Despite some oppressive daytime temperatures we ran workshops on subject such as Arduino programming, 3D printing, water management, CEB fabrication, permaculture, hammock making and cooking with natural ingredients. We had forums discussing open source, talks about natural construction methods, ran a kitchen for up to 30 people, constructed water management basins and check dams, built a 5m diameter reciprocal roof roundhouse, a 2m 3G/wifi reflector dish plus countless items of furniture from recycled wooden palettes. You can see some photographs from the camp here are here.

We wanted to the camp to be as close to free as possible. People were welcome to cater for themselves or they could pay €5 a day for communal food from the kitchen. We originally aimed to run the kitchen at cost, but as it turned out we ended up making €450 from the takings. An honesty bar also contributed around €150 after costs of ice and the cooler boxes. With donations the camp ended up paying for itself and left a legacy of infrastructure on the site. Details of the accounts are here. Angel, the owner of the land, also paid for site work such as digging a contour following basin to attempt to retain rainwater, as well as materials for several workshops.

When planing the event the kitchen was a source of anxiety – firstly that we were asking people to contribute money and then take turns cooking for everyone, secondly that we would be requiring people to cook from potentially unfamiliar ingredients, thirdly that the food would be vegetarian and lastly that we wanted to use organic ingredients where ever possible and that this could be unaffordable for some people. As it turned out, an ecological market has just started nearby and we made contact with a nearby organic farm who delivered amazing fresh vegetables throughout the camp and people really rose to challenge to create a series of amazing, varied meals almost entirely from in season, local produce.

One thing Extremadura has in abundance is sun and we managed to run nearly all the site from a small solar setup (180W of PV and 220AH of batteries), apart from gas for cooking, and about €15 of petrol for the generator (when it was needed). Extremadura itself apparently generates 22% of it’s energy from solar PV, although we saw very little of it about.

In attempt to gain experience with CEB construction I had constructed a manual CEB press using the Open Source Resilient Living design. This was primarily made from recycled scrap metal using and very basic hand tools, with material costs less than €100. While I would not recommend this approach to the first time constructors, it is a worthwhile demonstration of what can be achieved with very little money and skill and I certainly learned a lot.

We had two major issues with the CEB press: the brick eject mechanism would jam and the bricks we were producing were very fragile. We fixed the eject issues by completely rebuilding the piston and tube assembly with much closer fitting pipes. We also had to extend the guide tubes to limit the side-to-side movement on the piston. After this we could press bricks and eject them but it became apparent there were issues with the soil on site for CEB – although appearing to have a high clay and/or slit content it would require a lot of water to reach optimum water content and then would exhibit low compressibility and poor strength of the resultant brick. After attempting various experiments with adding course sand and builders lime more we less abandoned CEB construction for the time being. With more time I would have like to try stabilised bricks using higher quality lime or cement or to modify the press to produce non-interlocking (i.e., solid) bricks to see if the durability of the bricks improved.

We learned a huge amount from putting on the event and there is much still to document and share. Hopefully the foundations for future developments have been laid and discussion of events in the new year are in progress. For the moment the immediate legacy is the creation of a substantial network people and projects and the demonstration of considerable interest in this kind of event and the possibility of self funding models.

Descriptions and write up coming soon …

The following updated timetable should be taken only as a guide as to when some events will be running. Some will run over longer periods. Due to numbers we will probably be repeating some workshops. This will be decided during the camp. Some workshops will be in English or Spanish only, but we will help with translation and handouts as much as possible.

The updates to the timetable are as follows:

Unfortunately Juanlu Trujillo can no longer come so the oven construction workshop has been cancelled. Fire restrictions may have also prevented us from running this workshop anyway.
The solar hot water workshop may or may not be happening, depending on being able to source local materials.

Zach Hoken may make it here on Monday 5th. If so we will be running a 3D printing workshop then.

Maria Martinez will be giving an illustrated talk about Adobe/Superadobe construction.

Ariel del Sol will be giving a talk about landscapes and public spaces applied for social change, as yet unscheduled.

Daniel Connel will be giving a workshop on building a WiFi/3G internet reflector dish.

I will be giving a practical workshop using some of the material from Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands.

Lots to say about lessons learned from the construction of the press and the soil on site, but these will have to wait until after camp.

The big news is the new composting toilet is finished and is in use. It was constructed from OSB sheets and probably cost around 100 euros to build. We’ll be posting the drawings and photographs for the design online when we get a chance to catch up on documentation.

The other significant news is the dome has been completely recovered. Open E Land can get quite windy and hot, so we had to take this in into account. The design used was multiple, smaller, overlapping tarps which could be tensioned with ropes and metal wire on the inside of the frame triangles to stop the tarps flapping about so much. The roof pentagon is covered in mesh to let hot air escape and there’s a separate tarp to go on top in case of heavy rain. This is the third attempt to covering the dome and definitely the best so far. Again, we’ll upload some documentation when get a chance.

Alicja has been making very nice signage and her work can now be seen around the camp site:

Finally, our fund raising campaign is up and running. So far we’ve raised just over half of our target and we’ve already started buying items from the list – see below our new water container. Many thanks to everyone who has contributed so far.

Unfortunate news is that Juanlu who was due to teach the oven building workshop has had to cancel, so we’ll be reworking the camp timetable over the next day or two accordingly. Details will be posted here when available.

There has been a lot of interest in the camp and if everyone who has registered turns up our infrastructure will at its outer limit. With this in mind we are looking to raise around €800 to improve infrastructure for the camp. Details of the campaign and what we would like to spend this on are given below.

Update: ChipIn widget above is not updating. We have so far raised 25% of our target. Thank-you to everyone who has contributed so far.

	Second dome: €300	This will create additional shelter and space to run a second set of workshops and make using the existing dome much easier. Constructing and covering the dome will be one of the first activities of early attendees of the camp.
	2 x 1000L water containers: €140	This will greatly simply water storage and usage on site. In the future when larger storage tanks are constructed they can be converted for use in aquaponics.
	Large cooking pots: €150	Our existing cooking pots are rather medium sized. We need some like this.
	Second stove and gas cylinder: €60	Our current burner is undersized for the number of people and a second cylinder, butane, regulator, etc will make running out or low on gas in one of the cylinders much less of a problem
	100m polythene tubing: €60	Will greatly simplify distrubuting water around site
	Path improvements: €80	The existing path is a nightmare if it rains. Actually, it’s pretty bad when dry as well. This will sort it out.
	Workshop materials: €50	Materials for some of the new workshops.

We are committed to making Open E Land as open and accessible as possible and contributing to the camp infrastructure fund raising is not required for attendance or participation in the camp. However, €20-€30 from every participant who is able to contribute something would go a long way to covering our infrastructure costs. Supporters of the project are invited to contribute as well – all of this investment will be of ongoing use to the site and future events and activities held here.

As always, we are completely transparent about all expenditure and funding. All donations and expenditure is recorded here. If you wish to remain anonymous please contact us. We attempt to use second hand, recycled and/or locally available materials wherever possible.

Gifts

We are experimenting with a giving gifts to people who donate money for the camp fund raising. Were noted, some gifts are for collection only. Everything else we will happily post.

Donations of €30 or more

Choose from one of the following:

• Handmade bookmark made form recycled materials with OEL logo during camp
• OEL logo 3D printed keyring, designed and printed at camp
• Approx 10g stevia leaves harvested from plants grown at OEL (4g pictured)

Donations of €60 or more

Choose from one of the following:

• Potted stevia plant grown at OEL (collect only)
• Sun fired ashtray stamped with OEL logo made from local clay (collect only)
• Approx 20g stevia leaves

Donations of €100 or more

Choose from one of the following:

• Hand made hammock made with OEL colours
• Hand made stool made from recycled paletes (collect only – wide selection available)

How to contribute

There are three options:

1. If you use PayPal you can use the ChipIn widget at the top of this page to transfer money. The recipient of this is Christopher, who is the current treasurer and for the past few months resident of Open E Land. The current list of donations is at the bottom of this page.

2. If you prefer transferring money into a Spanish bank account you can use the following details:

Bank IBAN No: ES32 3009 0077 0522 3156 4325
Swift Code / BIC (non UK only): BCOEESMM009

3. If you are coming to the camp and would like to pledge a cash conation, then please use the form below.

View How to get to Open E Land in a larger map

And a message board for arranging ride shares / travel partners etc:

http://piratepad.net/openeland-rideshare

If you have any questions about anything, please let us know.