PB43 – www.pb43.dk – is a Copenhagen-based independent working community that consists of a wide variety of creative entrepreneurs, companies, associations, groups, craftsmen, artists, musicians, filmmakers, architects, designers, carpenters, pipe makers, and volunteers with interdisciplinary expertise in areas such as cultural production, product development, entrepreneurship, social activism, urban development, teaching, and dissemination – who each have gained personal ownership to a small part of the place and thus also to the overall development of a unique working community.
In the period 2010-2015, PB43 had a 6.400 m2 former paint factory on Amager as a creative platform and haunt. The overall coordination of the PB43 was done by Steen Andersen and Kasper Find, while Mads Ellebæk Petersen, Kasper B. Müller, and Steen Andersen coordinated the PB43 concert and cultural hall Bygn 5 approved to 499 guests. Steen Andersen was co-initiator and co-coordinator to a wide range of projects under the PB43 umbrella such as Prags Urban Garden, PB43 Publisher House, Cultural Hall 5, The Project Office, Sauna Event, the international summer school Urban Culture in Theory and Action, Copenhagen diversity festival Taste the World, the food performance Silent Lunch, Hamburg-Copenhagen Cultural Exchange Project and much more.
The organization GivRum set the framework for the working community when it in 2010 got permission to use the former paint factory as a creative platform and meeting place for creative projects, groups, and companies for two years. The users of the place were organized in an association that was responsible for the organizational, creative, and cultural development of the place. In 2012, the site’s users negotiated a new four-year contract with the site’s landowner, and at the same time set up the independent cooperative Arbejdsfælleskabet PB43 amba, which took over the financial and legal responsibility for the property, thus continuing PB43’s further development into a professional and leading user-driven entrepreneurial and cultural environment in Copenhagen.
Until February 2015, the site’s 6,400 m2 and four large buildings thus formed the framework for a unique interdisciplinary collaboration that has resulted in innovative projects and products in close collaboration with local, national, and international partners. From March 2015, PB43 had to move to new premises in Copenhagn’s north harbor, Nordhavn, where a new working community, based on the old principles, was created. The place has been given a new energy in the form of new members, who have helped to redefine the community.
The working community must not create a profit on the rental. The rent goes exclusively to the operation and development of the site and joint projects so that the tenants have the greatest possible resources and opportunities to realize their visions and projects. The working community PB43 a.m.b.a. is thus a self-financed non-profit organization, whereas tenants count both full-time and part-time professional occupations, non-profit projects, and hobby activities.
Photos by: Maiken Hviid, Flora Tosti, Steen Andersen m.fl.
