Charlie Tims
Associate
Charlie Tims recently co-wrote Video Republic, a look at the social and political significance of internet videos. He is currently involved in producing a part of the TED prize in London.
at 8:24pm
on Thursday, 20th January 2005
As a Kaos Pilot Kristoffer is trained in the art of social entrepreneurship and risk taking; something close to the heart of demos. At the barely legal age of 25, Kristoffer is about to open The Chokolate Factory, Arhus�s first proper nightclub. This might sound like small fry to you but consider a few things.
1.Kristoffer and his three accomplices are risking everything that they own.
2.The club has to make a profit within 100 days or it will have to close.
3.In this event Kristoffer will be saddled with seven years of back breaking debt repayment.
4.The club was acquired four weeks ago and will open a week today. In this time it has had to be gutted redesigned and decorated.
5.The club comfortably holds 600 people. It�s about the size of two and a half Demos offices. To put that in perspective that�s bigger than The Notting Hill Arts Club, The 100 Club, the Astoria or the Scala. In fact, for those who came at Christmas; it�s bigger than Madame Jo Jos.
6.None of the team have run a business before, let alone a nightclub.
The club will operate on Friday and Saturday nights, while during the week it will act as a community space, for the people of Arhus to use in every which way they please.
Anyway Kristoffer has agreed to give us a blow-by-blow fortnightly account from the front line of his mad-cap scheme. So sit back and enjoy�.
Letters from a Chaos Pilot. No1.
On 28th January 2005 the doors of the Chokolate Factory will open and our first party will kick out. Michael, Alexander and I will be greasing to the dance floor, revelling in the climax of three months of hard work.
We are all young - Michael is 24, my brother Alexander is 19 and I'm 25. Our dream is to create the nightclub that our hometown �rhus has been craving for the last 10 years. But we also want to make our facilities available to the city, when we�re not open, so that all kinds of people can use it for all kinds of weird and wonderful things..
Three months ago we started negotiating the terms for taking over a worn-out nightclub. So far it�s had a rough history. The d�cor was horrible, the urinals are at waist height and the walls are covered in this horrible mock-cavern effect. Business wise, it's gone Bankrupt three times over the last four years. On the upside, this meant we got a good price, but on the down side we face the prospect of an uphill struggle for some time to come. The banks didn�t believe that we could turn the place around, and for a long time neither did the inhabitants of �rhus.
Closing in on the opening night we are confident that we will succeed. Fear does not help us creating our dream, and so we are working day and night for the dream.
Michael and Alexander both come from a creative environment for youngsters - the Frontrunners, where they have been employed as managing director and project manager. The Frontrunners is a place for young people that want to create instead of read and run instead of walk.
Since the Frontrunners started in the 80's, many organisations, businesses and a school has developed from it. The school is called the KaosPilots and it is this place that has been the incubator for my skills as a social entrepreneur.
Our dream with the Chokolate factory - Chokoladefabriken in Danish - is to use the property let for a variety of purposes. We want it to be a new cultural impulse in �rhus. We want the second largest town�s cultural and political life to be oriented more towards itself and not towards our Capital Copenhagen. Arhus can never become Copenhagen - copying the capital is a very long run that is nothing more than exhausting. We can facilitate a new kind of cultural life for our city�s people grounded in ourselves rather than trying to replicate the unreplicable.
During Friday and Saturday night we'll run our nightclub. In terms of size it�s, 600 m2 divided into three areas. Firstly we have a cafe area with second hand furniture to create an atmosphere that is best explained with a word not easily translated, "hygge". The closest British word is cosyness. The second area is a dance-floor while the third is a floor with a stage so we can have concerts and live music. Our goal is to help the electronic music-scene in �rhus, and give the DJ's space to play what they love instead of asking them to play top-40 hits as is often seen in our town.
During the weekdays in the day-time the three of us will prepare the concerts and happenings for the coming week, and we will also open the doors for other social entrepreneurs. Our hope is that people will drop by with ideas for what to do at the Chokolatefactory - what art to show, music to play, drinks to sell, movies to show, and what our blind-spots are - as well as ideas that they want help develop.
For me, the difference between an enterprise and a social enterprise is the mission. Do you create something where the biggest focus is the cash you make or is it the changes you make? We are of course, creating a social enterprise which means that our motivation is give something to �rhus, creating a place where ideas can grow and making the nightclub that makes it worth being awake at night.
But at the same time as we have these ambitions, we are not publicly funded. If we go bankrupt we will be in debt for a long time. Therefore we have to be pragmatic about our ambitions. We have to look at the bottom line and we want to end up with a profit. So far it is a matter of breaking even and maintaining our integrity.
Although we work 15-20 hours, we make sure that we have one hour where the three of us are alone and reflect on what has happened and will happen. We are no longer in charge of the processes going on, we can only nurse and support - the snowball is rolling and we are trying to make sure that is rolls the best possible way. At these meetings we try and get a stomach feeling of where things are taking us. Is it moving away from the core, from what we stand for? And if so, how can we effect it in a different way?
As a Kaos Pilot Kristoffer is trained in the art of social entrepreneurship and risk taking; something close to the heart of demos. At the barely legal age of 25, Kristoffer is about to open The Chokolate Factory, Arhus�s first proper nightclub. This might sound like small fry to you but consider a few things.
1.Kristoffer and his three accomplices are risking everything that they own.
2.The club has to make a profit within 100 days or it will have to close.
3.In this event Kristoffer will be saddled with seven years of back breaking debt repayment.
4.The club was acquired four weeks ago and will open a week today. In this time it has had to be gutted redesigned and decorated.
5.The club comfortably holds 600 people. It�s about the size of two and a half Demos offices. To put that in perspective that�s bigger than The Notting Hill Arts Club, The 100 Club, the Astoria or the Scala. In fact, for those who came at Christmas; it�s bigger than Madame Jo Jos.
6.None of the team have run a business before, let alone a nightclub.
The club will operate on Friday and Saturday nights, while during the week it will act as a community space, for the people of Arhus to use in every which way they please.
Anyway Kristoffer has agreed to give us a blow-by-blow fortnightly account from the front line of his mad-cap scheme. So sit back and enjoy�.
Letters from a Chaos Pilot. No1.
On 28th January 2005 the doors of the Chokolate Factory will open and our first party will kick out. Michael, Alexander and I will be greasing to the dance floor, revelling in the climax of three months of hard work.
We are all young - Michael is 24, my brother Alexander is 19 and I'm 25. Our dream is to create the nightclub that our hometown �rhus has been craving for the last 10 years. But we also want to make our facilities available to the city, when we�re not open, so that all kinds of people can use it for all kinds of weird and wonderful things..
Three months ago we started negotiating the terms for taking over a worn-out nightclub. So far it�s had a rough history. The d�cor was horrible, the urinals are at waist height and the walls are covered in this horrible mock-cavern effect. Business wise, it's gone Bankrupt three times over the last four years. On the upside, this meant we got a good price, but on the down side we face the prospect of an uphill struggle for some time to come. The banks didn�t believe that we could turn the place around, and for a long time neither did the inhabitants of �rhus.
Closing in on the opening night we are confident that we will succeed. Fear does not help us creating our dream, and so we are working day and night for the dream.
Michael and Alexander both come from a creative environment for youngsters - the Frontrunners, where they have been employed as managing director and project manager. The Frontrunners is a place for young people that want to create instead of read and run instead of walk.
Since the Frontrunners started in the 80's, many organisations, businesses and a school has developed from it. The school is called the KaosPilots and it is this place that has been the incubator for my skills as a social entrepreneur.
Our dream with the Chokolate factory - Chokoladefabriken in Danish - is to use the property let for a variety of purposes. We want it to be a new cultural impulse in �rhus. We want the second largest town�s cultural and political life to be oriented more towards itself and not towards our Capital Copenhagen. Arhus can never become Copenhagen - copying the capital is a very long run that is nothing more than exhausting. We can facilitate a new kind of cultural life for our city�s people grounded in ourselves rather than trying to replicate the unreplicable.
During Friday and Saturday night we'll run our nightclub. In terms of size it�s, 600 m2 divided into three areas. Firstly we have a cafe area with second hand furniture to create an atmosphere that is best explained with a word not easily translated, "hygge". The closest British word is cosyness. The second area is a dance-floor while the third is a floor with a stage so we can have concerts and live music. Our goal is to help the electronic music-scene in �rhus, and give the DJ's space to play what they love instead of asking them to play top-40 hits as is often seen in our town.
During the weekdays in the day-time the three of us will prepare the concerts and happenings for the coming week, and we will also open the doors for other social entrepreneurs. Our hope is that people will drop by with ideas for what to do at the Chokolatefactory - what art to show, music to play, drinks to sell, movies to show, and what our blind-spots are - as well as ideas that they want help develop.
For me, the difference between an enterprise and a social enterprise is the mission. Do you create something where the biggest focus is the cash you make or is it the changes you make? We are of course, creating a social enterprise which means that our motivation is give something to �rhus, creating a place where ideas can grow and making the nightclub that makes it worth being awake at night.
But at the same time as we have these ambitions, we are not publicly funded. If we go bankrupt we will be in debt for a long time. Therefore we have to be pragmatic about our ambitions. We have to look at the bottom line and we want to end up with a profit. So far it is a matter of breaking even and maintaining our integrity.
Although we work 15-20 hours, we make sure that we have one hour where the three of us are alone and reflect on what has happened and will happen. We are no longer in charge of the processes going on, we can only nurse and support - the snowball is rolling and we are trying to make sure that is rolls the best possible way. At these meetings we try and get a stomach feeling of where things are taking us. Is it moving away from the core, from what we stand for? And if so, how can we effect it in a different way?
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