The house that Sibylle Madadkar drew more than ten years ago was her dream house. There was a cafe and a gift shop under its roof. The special thing about the house: It should be a meeting place where people with and without disabilities make connections. The café should be run by people with disabilities, the guests should be everyone who appreciates good coffee and delicious cakes. The gift shop should sell things made in workshops where people with and without disabilities work together. The drawing became the association Traumwerker in Gräfelfing, which Madadkar founded together with Katharina Zörner in 2013. The association is committed to inclusion in the Würmtal and to making the café in the dream house a reality.
The café and the gift shop symbolize the goal of the association: Away from “sorting”, as Madadkar, whose daughter works in a workshop for the disabled, calls it. What is meant is breaking down the silos in which people with disabilities are all by themselves. According to Madadkar’s idea, people with special needs shouldn’t all be “sorted” together into a residential building and a workshop for the disabled at the end of the city, but everything is much more mixed up: The jobs in the workshops should also be accessible to people without disabilities, in the local ones Canteens could serve lunch to all working professionals in the area. For them, that is inclusion – working together on an equal footing. The club wants to work hard for this.
The dream house still only exists as a sketch, but part of it is already alive. In the past ten years, the Traumwerker, which now has around 80 members, have done everything to implement the idea of an inclusive café in the Würmtal. The way is a rocky one. First, the club had an old barber shop in Gräfelfing in their sights. It was to serve as a practice café. Because people with a cognitive impairment have to practice processes, learn how to serve, take an order, use a coffee machine before they can receive guests. The local council had already approved the project, but in the end it failed because of the costs for the necessary renovation of the barber shop.
There is no such thing as simply giving up with the dream worker. Sibylle Madadkar and Katharina Zörner are businesswomen in Gräfelfing and have “doing” in their blood. They once met in the business association. Zörner is landlady of the restaurant “Wilder Hirsch” in Graefelfing and has her professional roots in film equipment. Madadkar runs a cosmetics studio in Gräfelfing. As entrepreneurs with a strong need to do voluntary social work, the two of them came up with the idea of the first mobile inclusion café in the Würmtal: coffee bar, sink, cake counter, tables and chairs fit as modules folded up on a car trailer, which can be used at any time is ready for use for catering at events. Zörner was able to win over the faculty for wood technology and construction at the Rosenheim University of Applied Sciences for the design of a thesis – “if, then big” is her motto. The café has become an eye-catcher and thus the advertising medium for the good idea: at some point to open a café as a permanent facility under the roof of the dream house.
The Traumwerker have already been on the road a lot with the mobile café, for example at the culture festival in Gräfelfing or at exhibitions organized by the Kunstkreis and have become increasingly well-known. When they served four weekends in a row at an art circle exhibition at the Seidlhof in Gräfelfing, Sibylle Madadkar received confirmation: “We’re not crazy” – it works. The café staff had a steep learning curve over the four weekends. In the end, even an employee with autism managed to look the guests in the eyes with a smile. However, this also gave rise to the desire to offer the café more regularly so that the employees could stay in practice.
When the opportunity arose to take part in the newly opened Café Gräfelfinger right next to the community center and run an inclusive café there a few days a week, where people with disabilities work in a team with other service staff, the dream suddenly became very tangible. A pilot project was created in cooperation with landlord Hans Schumacher, the district office and the Lebenshilfe workshop. But then came the corona pandemic and with it strict requirements for infection protection for people with disabilities and finally the complete closure of the catering trade. It was the end of the pilot project. The restaurants were then allowed to open again, but due to the many changes in staff, there was a lack of reliable structures that, according to Madadkar, are important for people with disabilities. But it also revealed the challenges of such a project. What each of the actors involved understood by inclusion was different, as Madadkar explains. Today she and Katharina Zörner know that the development of a joint concept with all those involved must be at the very beginning of the next project.
For the disabled, the contact restrictions applied longer
The pandemic has thrown something else into the spotlight: there is still a lot of sorting. The contact restrictions applied to people with disabilities much longer than to everyone else. The isolated life in the dormitories weighed heavily on the soul of many. Madadkar turned it into a moving, graphically elaborately designed book, published by the Traumwerker association. “Restricted – free. Corona is stupid” is the title in which people with disabilities express their feelings and experiences in the pandemic in their own texts on 190 pages. The book shows that in many areas there is still a long way to go before inclusion, the equal social participation of all people, has penetrated society. The dream workers sold it in the Gräfelfingen bookstore, but also gave it to politicians who can make things happen. It has also become a reminder.
The dream workers are still at work. The next project already exists. They want to buy a food truck. It is more practical than the mobile café with the many modules. They want to be represented with the truck at the state garden show in Kirchheim in 2024. Picking up the “unaffected” society and reducing fears of contact is the right way, says Zörner. The café showed that, people were happy to come. In the meantime, the club has become “a brand”, says Madadkar. “We are approached from the outside as inclusion experts.” The Traumwerker have made their contribution to a change in consciousness.
They go through this themselves. Again and again they have to question and check where they are still not inclusive enough in their projects and where they could dare more. At some point, they are sure, the time will come for a coffee in the dream house and not the “pity cup”, but because the coffee is good and it’s fun to go there.