The EduCity conference looks at the potential of neighbourhoods as spaces for social engagement. It will present ideas and tools to explore the neighbourhood as an active site for mutual learning, innovation and capacity building. EduCity has a multidisciplinary and inclusive ambition and is open to researchers, practitioners, educators, civil servants and engaged citizens active in processes of social inclusion and community empowerment. The objective is to connect and provide tools to organisations and individuals who share an interest in the potential of neighbourhoods as learning environments.
(Im)possible Complicities conference looked for ideas that come from practice and concrete engagement in distressed territorial contexts. We discussed the potential and pitfalls of co-creative projects with activists, artists and academics who share a constructive as much as critical view on the topic.
How to increase the capacity of youths to learn from their urban environment?
How can spatial exploration be used as an emancipatory practice?
How may exploratory practice assist in counteracting segregation, school dropout, and unemployment?
How can such practices support the inclusion of young migrants and refugees?
To answer such questions, the UrbEXplorerrs conference adopted a practice-oriented, multidisciplinary and inclusive approach facilitating exchange about concrete experiences and open tools among the participants.
Hohenschönhausen is a district part of the borough of Lichtenberg. During the separation of the city, this borough of East Berlin was part of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). This area is notorious for having hosted the former headquarters of the Ministry of State Security (Stasi). Nowadays, the population of Hohenschönhausen is increasing its cultural diversity, with a significant Vietnamese community resulting from a guest worker program implemented in the 1980s. In recent years, Neu-Hohenschönhausen has hosted three refugee centers, and the district is making efforts to promote integration and community solidarity through public investments. In this context, Tesserae has developed participatory workshops with local residents on topics related to issues of a memory culture being documented by residents of the district themselves, promoting activities of community storytelling.
Dragoner Areal is a key area in the heart of Kreuzberg, one of the last plots available for development. It is the nucleus of a Regeneration area (Sanierungsgebiet Rathausblock) that was planned to be sold by the Institute for Federal Real Estate to private investors. It has been the object of a mobilisation of citizens against the privatisation, and after a series of controversial negotiation its property has been transferred to the Berlin government in 2019. Project models were planned and met with enthusiasm by both citizens and several stakeholders, collaborating to advance solutions that could foster social equality and ecological empowerment to the neighborhood. However, a recent sentence from the Berlin-Brandburg Tribunal has declared the reasons behind the transaction of the Dragoner Areal to the Berlin state as illegal. Therefore, the future of the place is still undecided.
A Prussian railway workshop, a Cold War industrial wasteland, a contemporary socio-cultural center in the heart of Berlin Friedrichshain. The area is emblematic of collective and informal processes of creative transfomation reinventing Berlin’s urban landscape. The R.A.W. in Berlin-Friedrichshain was originally serving as a railway workshop in the XIX century. After being damaged during World War II and undergoing various transformations, it became a neglected wasteland in post-unification Berlin. In 1999, the RAW-Tempel association repurposed the site for artistic and cultural activities, aiming to create a vibrant hub for creativity and community engagement. In 2015, the Kurth Group acquired ownership of R.A.W. and recognized its potential for investment and urban development. Unlike other financial actors, the new owner aimed to respect the site’s identity and socio-cultural programs, giving long-term residents more control over their pre-existing properties. Establishing a participatory approach to urban planning, new plans for the R.A.W. Tower, a 100-meter-tall building, was set to be constructed starting in 2024. The project is intended to blend with older activities, integrating new offices, green areas, markets, and other services, with the R.A.W.’s role as a cultural institution. However, concerns about power dynamics and possible future compromises between top and bottom interests revolving around the R.A.W. might still challenge the current collaborations between the community and external investors.
A wasteland along the Spree river, that soon became a place of refuge for those with no place in society. Evacuated from its informal inhabitants, the area has undergone restructuring to host a complex of luxury buildings. This piece of land of 10,000 square meters located near the river Spree remained for years an empty lot in which a configuration of multiple actors were trapped in the contradictions and oddities of post-modernity, as practices of meaning-making were being played out in a dead-end struggle to assert claims over the identity of such urban void. The complexities of the social dynamics that have constantly defined and erased the use of the Cuvrybrache throughout the years unfold on several overlapping layers. The most visible of these strata is the conflict for the material control of space, which mostly involves those who envision the Cuvrybrache as an appealing potential to generate economic capital and the Kreutzberg neighborhood, which attaches a cultural value to the territory, whose story is worth to be outlined briefly.
Similarly to other cases in the Berlin-Kreutzberg, the Lause has been threatened by the possibility of an unaffordable rent increase due to the intention of the owner to sell the building to the highest bidder. The complex has been used for both residential and commercial uses, and its inhabitants vary from families, to craftspeople, from artistic collectives to political initiatives, whose work is deeply rooted in the neighbourhood’s fabric. Following the threat of being displaced from their home, the Lause community understood that in order to contest gentrification they needed to collectively self-organise. Based on principles of solidarity and community building, they engaged in a journey marked by the frenetic and chaotic rhythm that tight schedules and exhausting negotiations impose. After more than 5 years of struggle, the Lause was successfully saved, as in 2022 an agreement was reached allowing the Berlin municipality to buy back the property. Now, the Lause is able to maintain its status as an open and non-commercialized space at the neighborhood’s disposal without being threatened by further risks of displacement, as a lease was recently signed granting the residents with a free use of the estate for 65 years.
Born out of the desire to experiment with and give shape to new forms of public art practices, ZK/U is a polymorphic space that functions as a research hub, a local community space and as a repository of ideas fuelling social change within the city of Berlin. Behind ZK/U lies the artist collective KUNSTrePUBLIK, whose decade-long work in the public scenes is marked by a strong orientation towards socially-conscious and locally-embedded projects. Since 2012, ZK/U community of artists and researchers have implemented initiatives that examines urban life by using art as an analytic lens, although always mantaining a direct and practical connection with physical spaces and local realities.
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