Volunteering and Stays

The Foundry is a non-profit, self-organised residency project and event space in Galicia. People come here for a weekend, a season, or longer, and the arrangements differ accordingly. This page sets out the ways of staying, what each involves, and how to ask.

The underlying principle is simple and worth stating first: the place runs on reproductive work — cooking, cleaning, repairs, admin, hosting — and on money. Everyone who stays contributes through one, the other, or a mixture agreed in advance.

Ways of being here

A collective, for up to two years. From autumn 2026 the association is again offering the whole space, free of charge, to a collective that wants to develop their project here — the arrangement first tried in 2024, which produced the current steward circle. The conditions are that the group helps maintain the building and its surroundings, and that some rooms stay available for guests and current residents. Running costs are around €500 a month, and we ask a minimum of about €1,500 a year towards the long-term maintenance fund. Proposals of up to 1,000 words go to foundry@bravosfoundry.com by the end of the year, with a transition envisaged in early 2027. Permaculture, agroecology, a hackerspace, a radical education experiment, a music studio, a writers' retreat — the call is deliberately open about what might arrive.

Guest. A stay in the guest house, paying the going rate. No commitment beyond the ordinary courtesies of a shared home.

Volunteer. A stay of a few weeks in exchange for contribution to the daily running of the place — garden and land work, cooking, maintenance, helping with whatever project is live. Around two hours a day is the baseline expectation where accommodation is provided and no other support is given. Volunteers are matched with a supervisor or mentor: someone on site who is responsible for introducing them, answering questions and noticing how they are doing.

Steward. Members who carry ongoing responsibility for the project, whether on site or remotely. Stewards take part in decision-making, and the distinction between active and passive stewardship — carrying things now, versus stepping back for a period — is recognised rather than treated as a failure.

Co-liver. Somebody living here over a longer horizon, contributing to the house while running their own work or income alongside it. This category grew out of practice rather than design, and how it fits with the rest is one of the association's open questions: longer-term residents change the rhythm of a place, its decision-making and its sense of who belongs.

Artist or researcher in residence. Residencies are not free by default. A resident either contributes reproductive work like anyone else, or pays, or arrives with funding that covers the stay. When residency funding is secured for a specific programme, selection is made collectively rather than by whoever happened to receive the email.

Support

The association is small and its cash flow is seasonal, so support is decided case by case rather than by entitlement. A volunteer or resident who is contributing substantially can request help with food costs for the period of their stay; the request is discussed by the active stewards and answered honestly, including when the answer is that the money is not there.

This has been debated at length, and the reasoning behind the current approach is worth recording. Supporting one person and not another creates unfairness unless the basis is clear, so the basis is contribution: beyond the baseline hours, support becomes reasonable. Everyone who gives their time to the project should, in principle, be supported — the constraint is funds, not willingness.

How to ask

1. Write to foundry@bravosfoundry.com with who you are, when you would like to come, for how long, and what you would like to contribute or work on. Concrete is better than enthusiastic.
2. For anything beyond a short guest stay, join one of the weekly online meetings. This is not a formality — it is how you meet the people you would be living with, and how they meet you.
3. Dates and arrangements are confirmed collectively. Please do not book travel before that.

If you are applying for a mobility or residency grant that requires a host organisation — Culture Moves Europe and similar schemes — the association can usually sign a host confirmation, provided the stay itself has been agreed first. Ask early; these letters need the right signatory and that can take time. See the Funding section for what we have learned about that.

What to expect

Galicia is wet. Outdoor work is weather-dependent, and plans shift accordingly.

The house is old. It is beautiful and it is a building site in parts. Heat, water and electricity all work, and all have quirks documented on the section The Building..

Languages. Conversations run in English, Spanish and Galician, often within the same sentence. Nobody is expected to arrive fluent in any particular one, but making the effort with Galician and Spanish matters here — this is a village, and the neighbours are not a backdrop.

Self-organisation is real. Nobody will hand you a schedule. Ask what needs doing, propose things, and expect to be taken seriously — including the part where your proposal gets questioned.

Being a good guest of the place

The association exists in a specific parish, with neighbours who have farmed and lived here far longer than any of us. Several of the most useful things we know — when to move soil, how compost behaves, who to call when the heating fails — came from them. Treat that relationship as the asset it is.

The same applies to the other people staying. Retreats sometimes hold silence in the mornings; work weekends start early; somebody is always trying to sleep after a long drive. The house works when people notice each other.