Conscious Coliving is excited to formally announce our partnership with Gui Perdrix, Founder and Lead Strategist of Art of Co and Director of Co-Liv. We have been collaborating with Gui over the past few years and feel a deep alignment between our companies in terms of values and shared vision:
Shape coliving communities
and the coliving industry towards more
overall wellbeing and connection for all
Let’s explore the history and future of this partnership!
Conscious Coliving & Art of Co: Our journey so far
We have been working with Gui Perdrix since we met him in 2018, when he (re)entered the coliving scene. This was when he got involved with Co-Liv and helped bring a lot of momentum and energy back into the organisation and supported its development to where it is now.
Since then, we have co-hosted meetups, becoming founding partners of Coliving Insights, and supported him with the growth of Co-Liv (our co-founder Matt Lesniak is a founding member and Head of Community at Co-Liv). We have also been aligning on coliving innovations since day one, supporting the emergence of Coliving 3.0 models and speaking about future living models at conferences together.
Here you have a few articles with some of our adventures together so far:
More recently we have co-created The Community Facilitation Handbook. More on that below! Let’s now explore the reasons of the “why” of this parnership:
Why are we partnering with Art of Co?
This post is an opportunity to share this exciting news, and share a bit about how and why we are partnering with Art of Co. Here are a few of our motivations:
1. Community building experts
As someone who has operated small to medium sized coliving spaces in the past, Gui Perdrix knows the ins and outs of coliving community facilitation.
Having also visited 100+ coliving spaces around the world, Gui knows what works and what doesn’t when building coliving communities. Also, he is very passionate, committed and skilful at sharing this knowledge to empower the global coliving movement.
The Conscious Coliving team includes several community building experts who have worked on enhancing community experience strategies at large coliving companies such as The Collective.
Partnering with Art of Co, we will be providing clients with state of the art community building knowledge and resources. This expands our range of trained facilitators in sharing circles, collective intelligence workshops and non-violent communications.
2. Embodying our values
We value wellbeing, community and sustainability. But what exactly does this mean in practice?
This means embodying these core aspects of The Conscious Coliving Manifesto into the way that we work with clients, partners and our own teams.
In regards to partnerships, we take a co-opetition approach (which is one of Conscious Coliving’s core values).
Instead of seeing companies like Art of Co (or any of our partners) as competitors, we would rather share best practices and collaborate to provide our clients and the sector best in class services, TOGETHER.
Put simply, we make a conscious choice of shifting from a scarcity paradigm to one of abundance. We believe that a co-opetition approach can help fulfill the full potential of coliving better and faster than going at it alone. Better for us, better for the coliving industry and better for the world.
3. Strong coliving networks
Both Conscious Coliving and Art of Co have strong coliving networks and by working together we can expand our reach and provide valuable insights to a bigger audience.
For us, impact is also about how we inspire the coliving sector, and we are working together with our partners to help push (or nudge) the coliving sector to ensure the development of impact-driven coliving models.
As members of Co-Liv’s executive board and founding partners of Coliving Insights, Gui and our cofounder Matt are constantly helping connect coliving professionals to one another, resources and new opportunities. By working with Art of Co we strongly believe our impact can be increased and we can achieve this mission of supporting the coliving sector to evolve and thrive.
You can read more about the power of networks in a recent article from Gui himself here.
Who is Art of Co? What's ahead?
It was the beginning of 2020 when everything came together for Art of Co, as Coliving Diaries evolved to Art of Co:
A platform aimed to share resources, knowledge and education around the depth of building community and running sustainable coliving businesses.
Art of Co’s mission is to create and promote resources, knowledge and operational best practices that enable human-centered coliving spaces.
Art of Co explores the intersection of coliving, community and connection – digging into the “co”-movements and how they influence each.
The aim is to help operators and developers overcome the tension between growth and community building.
While ar this, the aim is also to shine light on the methodologies used to create state-of-the-art coliving spaces of tomorrow.
The Community Facilitation Handbook v1.0
Going back to the fruits of our co-creation approach with Art of Co, we recently co-wrote an open-source book to empower communities all over the world.
The Community Facilitation Handbook v1.0 is an in-depth guide on how to build authentic community in coliving spaces by leveraging the role of the community facilitator.
We define the role of the community facilitator (CF) as: “a person responsible for community building by facilitating group interactions, open communication and bridging the gap between community needs and operational processes”.
One of the main points we make in The Community Facilitation Handbook is that we believe that
organic community and human relationships
cannot be managed, but rather facilitated
Whilst historically, the hospitality industry has tried to create engagement and entertainment with a top-down mindset, the role of a community facilitator is precisely to facilitate the process of community building by helping to build relationships and maintain strong group dynamics.
The Art of Coliving
With the anticipated release of the new book Art of Coliving, Gui Perdrix aims to answer the question:
How can coliving operators succeed in creating transformative communal experiences at a high scale?.
With learning and interviews from more than 100 coliving operators from all corners of the world, Art of Coliving is a scientific, step-by-step method to enable operators and developers to: build high-scale coliving spaces without losing the human essence.
Filled with personal insights, case studies, and applicable modules, Art of Coliving is a must for any existing and prospective coliving founder, operator, developer and professional to apply the state of the art of coliving creation.
Why Invest in Community Building & Facilitation?
We know how challenging it can be to make the case on WHY invest resources and time into community building and specifically, community facilitation. The Community Facilitation Handbook also offers reasons to invest in community from a resident, operator, investor point of view.
From a resident viewpoint, community contributes to:
- Wellbeing
- Personal growth
- Discovery
- Feeling of belonging
Community living can also make daily life easier and more efficient. For instance, residents can share cooking and childcare, borrow things from one another, and support each other in times of need.
From an operator viewpoint, community offers several cost savings related to:
- Acquisition
- Maintenance
- Events
In addition, it is important for investors and operators to invest in community because most coliving spaces make it part of their branding promise and without it risk gaining a negative reputation.
Podcast with Gui Perdrix "Who is Art of Co?"
A few months ago our co-founder Matt Lesniak sat down with Gui to record a podcast together. We wanted to share this podcast here so you can hear a bit more of what’s going on with our partnership and the future of coliving (or what we like to call Art of CoCo 
).
You can listen to the podcast below:
Wrapping up... for now 😉
If you want to make sure you don’t miss out on what Conscious Coliving & Art of Co are up to (and also, if you want to receive monthly coliving summaries with news, events content and much more) subscribe to our e-mail updates:
Explore how Art of Co & Conscious Coliving can support you on your journey to making you coliving community thrive! Also, stay tuned for our upcoming Coliving Facilitation Training.
We look forward to sharing some more “Art of CoCo” happenings in the future!
Warm wishes,
Naima Ritter Figueres, & The Conscious Coliving Team
This article has been authored for you by:
Transformational Coach and facilitator. Trainer in mindfulness, sharing circles, and how to live and lead more consciously. Co-author of the Community Facilitation Handbook and the Coliving Apps & Tech Guide. Facilitates community engagement strategies.
