The FreeShop is a place where nothing is for sale, and everything is free.

Building belongings with what we have.
With the skills we put at the table.
Doing what we like doing together.

DIY practices, theory and initiatives are liminal sites, spaces of transformation, passage and creativity. As such they are important sites of re-skilling, in which we prepare ourselves for new forms of relationship necessary to break authoritarian and hierarchical structures. DIY culture is about sustainability and learning the diverse tasks and varied interpersonal skills necessary for collective work and living. This skill sharing serves to redistribute least desirable tasks equally, discourage the emergence of knowledge elites and old-fashioned curatorial practices, to support creative engagement.

Some of the Furnitures populating the space during the Open kitchen Weekender (17—19 October 2024) come from a collective attempt to practice DIY with care and appreciation for each other's skills and ideas. They are built with waste material found around the storages of BAK by artist and carpentry wizard Gerardo Gomez Tonda. The banner is painted by b.a.k. comrade and graphic Berend Bombarius.

The Open Kitchen FreeShop furniture is an interactive space for taking, leaving and giving coffee cups, zines, homemade jars, home brewed drinks, cables and tools, plates and posters, clothing and electronic devices.

The Open Kitchen FreeShop furniture is a conversation between Grace Lostia & Gerardo Gomez Tonda in preparation for the Open Kitchen Weekender: event that took place at BAK during 17—19 October 2024, co-convened by b.ASIC a.CTIVIST k.ITCHEN, Community Portal/Civic Praxis and their extended inter-local network of activists, brewers, artists, researchers & community kitchen practitioners.