Placemaking Week Europe 2024 - Rotterdam

Urban arts are often used in placemaking projects to promote social change, improve the physical environment, boost local economies, and empower residents to take ownership of their communities.

But what type of urban art are we talking about? What should be its role, if any? And who has the right to create art in the city?

In this session, we will explore these questions collaboratively and answer them by creating a community mural. You will not only examine these questions theoretically but also experience a participatory artistic process.

On Wednesday, you can share your insights on urban arts as you pass by our central station at Katoenhuis. Later in the afternoon, we will have our workshop, where we will delve deeper in the questions in small groups and craft a large collage based on the collected responses.

Throughout Thursday and Friday, all conference attendees are invited to contribute to the evolving mural, adding their own perspectives to it.

Come share your insights about arts and placemaking and witness the transformative power of community art in action!

Join us for an interactive walkshop where we invite you to critically explore placemaking community engagement potentials through the lens of degrowth. We invite you to take a walk around the Katoenhuis area and exchange views on the challenges faced by placemaking practitioners, exploring solutions for more sustainable and just urban futures. Our goal is to identify challenges and solutions to the socio-ecological transformations of public spaces through everyday experiences. We will critically reflect on potential risks associated with placemaking such as gentrification and greenwashing. Lastly, we will consider how placemaking practices could be informed by concepts of degrowth and reflect on solutions that can benefit the participants’ practices in their local cases and examples.
 
We hope that participants will take away useful insights and meaningful connections, and an overall understanding of the degrowth main concepts.

How can placemaking contribute to actions and processes rooted in sharing and caring?

How can these actions and processes drive radical sustainable changes? 

Let’s think about it collectively!

Socio-Spatial Opportunities Mapping - for desired interventions

Come outside with us and explore the possibilities for placemaking, looking at and discussing the needs of the users!

Based on Placemaking education, that we teach at the University of Amsterdam, Socio-Spatial Opportunities Mapping offers an interdisciplinary research approach to inform the design of appropriate place-interventions.

During this session we engage in fieldwork in the area. We will scan relevant elements and patterns on-site and conduct effective short interviews with users. We will then integrate and visualize these insights into a multi-layered map.

You will be guided by our experienced team of university staff.

This participatory walkshop is designed to explore the connection between the city and the water. Through walking, observing and engaging with other placemakers, we look and map the presence and traces how water forms part of the city.

The first half of our walkshop, will take the participants to a playground of public space. Through a ‘Walk&Sense’ session we will explore the surrounding environment by using our senses. This experiential exercise will emphasise how we perceive, sense, frame and construct the places we inhabit.

The session will conclude with a joint reflection and analogue data visualisation exercise. This will allow participants to share their experiences and insights, showcasing the traces, marks, and narratives related to water that define our cityscape in the public space itself.

The walkshop will be conducted by the members of the Bosch Alumni Network’s Placemaking Impact Field.

When no one wanted to believe in M4H, let alone live there, artist Joep van Lieshout saw the potential of this area. After moving in 1987 and starting AVL-ville in 2001, he decided to do something big here in 2008. Something that makes a difference and that benefits the city and actually everyone. Not a modest short-term initiative, but grand, compelling and forever.  Now, a decade and years of intensive preparations later, the preconditions are there for the realization of Brutus.

Since 2018, AVL has been working with developer RED Company (Nanne de Ru) to realize this project. The time has now come to draw up a definitive plan in 2024 for the development of this globally unique project of homes, studios and a museum. The museum is secured for eternity through an innovative business case. The Museum will become a long-term public institution for the city of Rotterdam through a foundation.

The aim of the session is to introduce participants to the ideas behind Brutus and its innovative approach to creating a vibrant place that will remain affordable in the future for cultural institutions, artists and its residents. It will be an interactive session with ample opportunity for questions.