Hi people!
It's time to show us, time to "spam" the list! After MONTHS of reading about all hackerspaces and bricolab stuff, ideas, organizations, it's time for us here at Poetry Hacklab to ask for HELP! 
In the past 6 months we faced the risk to LOSE EVERYTHING in just one day. Because of that, we HAD to move all our historical computers into a new place. And that was not a simple task, believe me!
In a storm and windy night, we all met together around a fire, brave mens and womens in the woods, and decided to put our hands in our pockets, extract those few gold and silver coins we had, go to the village, rent a new space and move everything there! \o/
So, here we are, at the new place, in Palazzolo Acreide, Via Carnevale 17, Italy; a first floor old 4 room apartment and a deposit, to start our main project: the "Museo dell'Informatica Funzionante", our Computer Museum made of restored computers, media, documentation, a living museum full of happiness!
Since we moved in November, we have now a biblioteque full of books, manuals, schematics; a Media Room full of tapes, reels, disks, and all kind of media (old operating systems and data waiting to be restored, copied, recovered, preserved and shared for the joy of everyone in the world), two show rooms (not so big but a good starting point after years of PANIC!), an electronic lab for repairing stuff, and a kitchen.
We have stored and saved almost 2000 historical pieces (some of them dated even back to the '40); some of them have been fixed, thanks to our effort, and are now perfectly working, while other are still waiting to come back to life.
We want a museum full of life: people using those old computers, people in our Biblioteque, seeking for manuals, copying software, installing, joining us in restoration activities, workshops, experiments... A lot of work has to be done, all with almost no money, but a lot of happiness and joy!
The vision of a museum of this kind has been motivating us for years, making us pioneers in this emerging area. Museums of this kinds are popping up all around the world, acquiring attention and help from both private institutions and single supporters; having visited some of them, we found out that the uniqueness of some of our pieces, together with the software we produced in the past, our own history and the ideas we have, could bring our Museo dell'Informatica Funzionante as an excellence in his field. In fact, in the recent past we've been able to attract the attention of national and international media and to bring in Palazzolo Acreide experts from all around Europe, people to whom we are happy to offer access to some of the computers in our old small and inadequate spaces.
We're sustaining all expenses by our own pockets, and by donations of other nice people that help us; but unfortunately we're not in a city like New York or Boston or Paris; we lay in the middle of Sicily, in the center of the Mediterranean Sea! (and you can understand what this mean!); many of us don't have any kind of regular job, we struggle to survive in this hostile ambient, costantly fighting for being understood by local authorities, that literally ignore or misunderstand our work, giving no help at all, despite many visitors and enthusiasts that are joining us at the Museum.
We are looking for contributions that will help us dealing with our expenses in this first phase of our project. We estimate an annual budget of about 10,000 EUR for this first year, which will be spent in renewing our rented locals and to pay bills.
We are asking, to anyone interested and willing to support, to sponsor us and discuss with us something that wouldn't only be a simple donation, but also an investment opportunity, which could have a important impact in the long term.
HOW CAN I HELP YOU?
4 simple ways to do this:
ONE SPOT donation, use our page here: http://museo.freaknet.org/index.php/Donations
COLLECT: Make an happening or a dinner and collect donation for us!
BECOME A MEMBER: Check out our Membership plan here: http://museo.freaknet.org/index.php/Membership
DONATE STUFF: We also need THINGS, so please read here: http://museo.freaknet.org/index.php/Shopping_list
Remember, donations are tax-free, we can release a regular receipt, being recognized by the Italian Government as a Cultural Association!
AND AS A FINAL NOTE: Being an hackerspace/bricolab/hacklab for natural attitude since years, we can HOST people at our spaces! We WELCOME anyone who want to share some time with us, working work old computers and also visiting a very interesting part of Sicilia: Palazzolo Acreide is a beautiful town, with an ancient Greek Theatre, and full of history! Wanna come visit us?
Please HELP our dream; thank you and happy hacking, together! \o/
(Share this mail everywhere you think it can be useful, thank you!)
contacts: museo@freaknet.org
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