Collaborative Cities. The Documentary

PARIS “Have you ever stayed on someone’s couch during a holiday? Cooked and shared a meal with your neighbor? Heard of co-working spaces? The Collaborative Cities project is a web documentary that will feature some of the world most inspiring start-ups, creative communities and projects of the collaborative economy in the most vibrant cities of Europe and North America. This new economy is made up of sharing, collaborating, and working together to inspire the greater good for all. We feel inspired by the amazing people behind it. They are reinventing the world we live in, and we want to tell their stories. The Collaborative Cities project, made possible by the OuiShare Community, is about people sharing resources, knowledge, skills, facilities, and so much more. People working collaboratively on education, food, mobility, housing, work, and finances projects.” – Maxime Leroy

In summer 2012, the Collaborative Cities project – an idea by the young french director Maxime Leroy – has successfully raised the necessary budget to its realization, thanks to 149 “kissbankers”: the supporters of the project through the crowdfunding platform KissKissBankBank. The idea is now a work-in-progress film: the team is working on the last “set-cities”.

* Maxime Leroy was born in Nantes on 19th June 1989. He’s Director and Designer (exactly, Interaction and Service Designer), always looking for sustainable and social innovation challenges. After studying for one year in New York, where he discovered about this new collaborative economy, he joined the OuiShare Community in Paris to start The Collaborative Cities project and fundraise through the crowdfunding platform KissKissBankBank. He has worked at the Mutinerie, a co-working space, and now he works at faberNovel. His last project is an App called Naow.

SEETIES New York, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Toronto, San Francisco, Paris, London, Helsinki, Berlin, Roma, Milano, Barcelona. These are the set-cities chosen for the documentary film “Collaborative Cities”: a series of interviews to people who are working on projects born from the concept of “sharing” and creating new business models.

The great contemporary scholars, from economists to political scientists, tell us: the network is replacing the old hierarchical structure. And in the meanwhile, words like – Community, Co-Working, Crowdfunding, Sharing Economy, House Sharing, Car Sharing, Bike Sharing, Food Sharing, (etc…) – are becoming more and more part of our daily vocabulary. The web revolution and the global financial crisis exploded in 2008 have changed and have been changing ideas, ways of thinking, life styles and social systems. The Collaborative Cities project tells us about this new global energy called “sharing economy” from the point of view of who lives and creates it, through real and inspiring stories.

“Collaborative Cities is a documentary about people from vibrant cities across Europe and North America sharing resources, knowledge, skills, facilities and amazing experiences. These people are rebuilding the education, agriculture, transportation, housing, and financial sectors. They are reinventing the world we live in. We want to tell their stories.”

Among the documentary stories, there are also the car-sharing community BlaBlaCar from PARIS, the member-owned and operated food store Park Slope Food Coop from Brooklyn – NEW YORK, the Teatro Valle Occupato (occupied theatre) from ROMA. Watch the videos: