Digital workshop: New urban practices

Kulturungdoms Avtryck tillsammans med vårt nya europeiska samarbetsprojekt CE+ Capacity Development of Cultural Educators in the Digital Era bjuder in till tre dagars workshop på temat ‘New urban practices’ 12-14 maj. Workshopsen ges digitalt via zoom och det är möjligt att vara med en, två eller tre dagar (Dag 1: Urban strolling, dag 2: Urban gaming, dag 3: Urban Activism).

Projektet är ett Erasmus+ projekt med flera internationella partners som syftar till att hitta miljömässigt och socialt hållbara, inkluderande sätt att utbyta kunskap, erfarenheter och kapaciteter för den kulturella och kreativa sektorn i Europa.

Nedan följer information på engelska kring temat och innehållet:
Urban practices are inherently social, political, have an aesthetic dimension, and in consequence, urban action became an increasingly significant tool of arts, culture, and cultural education. Action in public urban spaces has always been characterized by highly diverse and continuously developing forms, methods and approaches. Nevertheless, the recent technological developments and the pandemic radically changed the way we perceive, use and transform public spaces.

During this workshop we want to discover new, emergent urban practices, which adapt to the new situation that is characterized by the ubiquity of digital technologies and the challenges of a global pandemic. We will get to know, try out and discuss new methods of urban strolling, urban gaming and urban activism led by international experts. This workshop aims to encourage discussion along these lines on the following topics:

• How did our perception of and our behavior in urban spaces change under the pandemic?
• Which are the new methods and approaches that work under these circumstances?
• What kind of practical, intellectual, social and political questions are raised by working in and on urban spaces at the moment?
• What can we learn from new urban practices for the future?

The workshop is part of the cooperation-initiative CE+ Capacity Development of Cultural Educators in the Digital Era, co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union.

DAY #1 – URBAN STROLLING
Workshop: The universal city guide workshop is designed as a small visual school that helps to understand why it is so difficult to concentrate on the everyday built environment. It will help each participant discover things in their everyday environment that they usually overlook or take for granted. In the center of the workshop, there will be a 30-minute remote-controlled guided tour that leads the participants through their well-known hometown by giving instructions about how to walk and where to look at.

Expert: Dr. Turit Fröbe is an architectural historian and urbanist. For many years, she taught as an assistant professor and visiting professor at the Berlin University of the Arts. Today, she works as a non-fiction author and passionate building culture mediator. In 2014, she founded DIE STADTDENKEREI, which offers unconventional playful communication projects to cities and municipalities, aimed at improving and upgrading cities by changing nothing but the perception of its citizens. As an architectural historian, Turit Fröbe is not only interested in the outstanding and special, but as an urbanist as well in everyday architecture. She has a special fondness for

the bulky and unloved and has been collecting and publishing so-called ugly architecture for 20 years. Her projects, concepts, and books could all carry the subtitle: everything is interesting, just open your eyes!

DAY #2 – URBAN GAMING
Workshop: Urban elements, such as streets, buildings, squares, parks, hidden alleys and backyards, along with multiple activities taking place in the public space, foster shape continuums of “terrains” to be discovered, identified, associated and experienced. The urban game design team UrbiLudi designed game terrains for supporting urban exploration. During the workshop we will try out the mobile game Cities Revealed that aims to connect people from different countries and cities, and foster a collaborative re-exploration of the urban environment. The main idea is to help people identify with different perspectives and establishing learning trajectories regarding architecture, storytelling, identity, usability, interconnectivity, and personal development. The game was developed within the program Trust in Play.

Expert: Kostas Kekkas holds a degree from the School of Local Government Management, from the University of Peloponnese and is an active member of the LARP Hellenic Community, participating in events both in Greece and abroad. He has previous professional experience as a public servant in the Municipality of Athens, and as a performer in various theatrical plays. He is an archery athlete with competitive claims in national and international competitions. He has developed more than a 100 LARP scenarios and participated in the co-funded program “Trust in Play”, dedicated to turn cities into theatrical scenery for the development of interactivity through gaming among population of various cultural, ethnological, and religious backgrounds. Mr. Kekkas holds the position of CEO and Production Manager at Creators of Cosmos SMPC.

DAY #3 – URBAN ACTIVISM: Curfew Urbanism. City tools for new abnormality.
Workshop: It seems like we are in a continuous curfew situation; limitations become the frame, scientists ‘discovered’ Pandemic City, diverse riots become only public events, woodpeckers revisited our inner courtyards. Although the perception is that the city has been slowed down due to the reduction of relations, urban life has been active on many levels, usually unseen due to the dimming. In this workshop, we are going to elaborate on food chains, radical political claims, (urban)-nature revival, new sports, and behavior patterns. The goal of the workshop is to see potential in newly emerged urban patterns, rather than digitalising previous routines of urban research, urban intervention, or so-called urban activism. The workshop gives cultural educators a new perception of how digital and real can be productively combined, mutually influenced, and freshly (re)-judged.

Expert: Miodrag Kuč is an interdisciplinary artist and urban theorist trained as an architect / urban planner in various cultural settings. His work explores the role of ephemeral structures in uncertain urban conditions and spatial appropriations of marginal social groups. He is the founder of the studio ParaArtFormations, which moves at the intersection of urban studies, performative planning, artistic interventions, and micro politics. As a member of the Laboratory of Critical Urbanism (EHU Vilnius), he teaches Critical Cartography at the Department of Visual&Cultural Studies and occasionally tutors at CANactions School of Urban Studies (Kiev). He works as a researcher and leads various projects at ZK/U (Centre for Art and Urbanistics) Berlin, exploring new ways of knowledge production through the lens of critical urban pedagogy. Currently, he is developing the educational department of ZK/U (ZEDucation). He is one of the initiators and active members of the CityToolBox network.

REGISTRATION

Who? Cultural educators and practitioners already experienced with urban practices or interested in learning more.

When?
12-14.05.21

10.00 – 12.00 CET – workshop (online)
12.00 – 16.00 CET – individual tryout (offline)
16.00 – 18.00 CET – feedback and discussion (online)

It is possible to register only for one of the days

Where? Online (Zoom)
How? Apply through the application form before 10.05.2021 by answering basic questions about yourself, your experiences and your curiosity for the topic.

Foto: Jennifer Lim-Tamkican