Meeting the local council
Before the meeting I wrote another, slightly more detailed description of our project, ourselves (as vague as possible) and the event - all nice and harmless and aligned with the goals for sustainable development - sent it for a last minute proofreading to my kid, and printed it 30 min before the meeting (yes, printer acted up, I should have known better, but I managed).
Four people from the council were present, and they were really friendly and really tried to help. They would have preferred to just integrate our ideas into an event they are planning and not have to think about our separate event, but we just stayed firm, pointed out again that our important community project deserved its own event, reminded that we had this incredible space available. Not like they could have really stopped us. We ended up being offered the council's collection of stands, tables and benches for our event, and maybe a cleaning of the place. Plus, we get to promote the project on the other event as well.
Lots of events. What about the community center? In the last days I have been researching how to formalize our group-to-be and found someone who knows cooperative and association law and can give us advice, and I am reaching out to other existing groups for inspiration and advice.
Next weekend we will both promote the event at another market further away, and meet some people from the local foreign community to present our project ideas.
I'm confident this will manifest in some good things, and I'm also quite dizzy and surprised about the positive reactions so far.
Next steps: find more interesting participants for the event, promote the event, get the necessary equipment booked, start to outline the structure of the project with interested locals.
This thing is really starting to take off. Not bad for something conjured out of thin air and a 'For sale or rent' sign on an empty building!