Origin

It all started when somebody moved out and had a clean out. I lived in an 11-flats-house and barely knew the neighbours living above and next to me (only because they have taken in parcels or complained about the noise), never mind the rest of the house. We had a window ledge within the hallway, where basically everybody had to pass to get to their apartments. So one day things started turning up on this ledge (to his day I don't even know who was moving out). Slowly people reacted to it: they took the stuff, they put their own unwanted objects.

It was a freely self developing phenomenon and I loved it! I told all my friends about it and even posted an object, which I found extremely cool but unfortunately didn't have the space for it, and found a new happy owner. During the weeks I got some cool new stuff and got rid of a lot of things, of which one story has to be told: One morning I put a fancy photo frame on the ledge and was pretty sure that somebody would really like it, but I just haven't used it. So when I came home that same evening, my room mate excitedly came to me and proudly told me what she got from the "hallway-exchange" as we called it. It's not hard to guess now, is it?

Insights 

What I noticed during this time was odd. Somehow I felt connected to my neighbours, even though, as I told you, I didn't know them at all. Maybe it's true what Marcel Mauss wrote about objects and gift giving. As soon as an object is owned it gets a soul, the owner enriches it with a story. So when passing on an item, the "soul" comes along with it, thus creating an invisible bond to the previous owner.
This sounds very spiritual, but fact is that a sense of community was created within our house. This is also confirmed by Lewis Hyde who writes:

"Unlike the sale of a commodity, the giving of a gift tends to establish a relationship between the parties involved. Furthermore, when gifts circulate within a group, their commerce leaves a series of interconnected relationships in its wake, and a kind of decentralized cohesiveness emerges"

When starting my Masters research I was dealing with gift giving/gift economy, exchange, re-/ freecycling, 2nd Hand and community, which I was keen on working with. Evidently I remembered the hallway-exchange and found out that other people are following the same idea. As a result I set up a prototype in the School of Art and Design in Wolverhampton and observed that it developed rather well (as you can see in the picture). You can follow the latest news about it on facebook.

Consequently I now want to promote this idea to a greater audience. Therefore I have made this blog and hope to be able to excite people for this different way of commodity life cycle.

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