CityToolBox Festival. Building together the city of Aveiro.
CityToolBox.net is an online platform for the dissemination and sharing of tools for transformation and urban appropriation developed in partnership by 6 European organizations, namely ZK/U – Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik from Berlin (Germany), Hiša from Maribor (Slovenia), Teren Otwarty / Open Territory Foundation from Lublin (Poland), Place Identity from Athens (Greece), Mjestimice svjetlo from Zagreb (Croatia) and 4iS – Plataforma para a Inovação Social from Aveiro (Portugal).
On the platform, initiatives share their community project and explain how it was created, funded, communicated and executed. The knowledge shared by others on the platform is translated into practical ‘tools’, simple steps that other participants can use to start a similar bottom-up activity in their own neighbourhood – according to the CitytoolBox’s motto ‘CIY – Change it yourself’.
This project was born of the partners’ joint will after they met when participating in the first edition of the program Actors of Urban Change of the Robert Bosch Foundation & MitOst.
Together, they organised the CityToolBox Festival, held on 7th-11th May, 2018 in the city of Aveiro, Portugal.
Celebrating the team first two years of activities, the five-day Festival included platform’s tools testing, on-site workshops and a conference with inputs by experts and practitioners on citizen participation and cross-sector urban development.
The first four days were dedicated on hands-on workshops, using the tools “Micro-Scale Urban Regeneration”, “Urban Hackathon” and “Dine with the Locals” focusing on the revival and maintenance of the former urban void Largo São Sebastião in Aveiro city centre, the creation of urban furniture for the Experimental Theater of the University of Aveiro, as well as the promotion of cycling as a means of transport in the city.
Largo Sao Sebastiao revival
Three workshop sessions were held by 4iS and Warehouse Collective (Lisbon, PT) for the collaborative design and construction of urban furniture and the maintenance of the garden at the public space of Largo Sao Sebastiao. The collective intervention was celebrated with a community dinner on the square.
GrETUA upcycling workshop
During the upcycling workshop, Critical Concrete (Porto, PT) with participants collectively built new furniture for the Experimental Theatre of the University of Aveiro (GrETUA) using old wood beams and metal. Apart from its tangible results, the workshop raised awareness on the advantages of upcycling, while the participants acquired practical knowledge on furniture construction.
Urban Hackathon
The Urban Hackathon was organised by Hiša! Association from Maribor and by 4is, Platform for Social Innovation from Aveiro with the participation of urban planning students and citizens. At the site of the university campus, the participants have created small physical interventions for the promotion of cycling among youth in Aveiro.
CityToolBox Conference
On the 11th of May, the CityToolBox Conference that was held in GrETUA (Experimental Theater of the University of Aveiro) addressed issues about citizens’ contributions to a sustainable change of their cities. If doing so, how they can be involved and learn from one another? How can they mutually exchange gained knowledge and make it broadly accessible? In more than a two-year process of the CityToolBox platform implementation, artists, city planners, cultural managers, activists and city enthusiasts from all over Europe got together to discuss questions and to develop such a platform that can facilitate the distribution of experience and knowledge.
In pecha kucha presentations and discussions, the conference critically examined the long-term impact of citizen-driven urban practice in regards to policy making: Are initiatives directly changing the urban landscapes in scale and visibility, that can compete with the everyday city planning? Can these initiatives create symbolic conflict-fields, that influence and change the attitudes of decision makers and political representatives?
In specific, keynote speaker Levente Polyak discussed about his insights from Funding the Cooperative City Project in order to ensure spaces and strengthen networking. The Project focused on emerging models of cooperative city-making and raised questions about the potential impact and scale of these models. An input on Urban Change Strategies from the bottom-up was given by Sebastien Schlueter, coordinator of Actors of Urban Change Program. By presenting the Program which has supported more than 30 cross-sectoral urban change projects so far, tried to identify their impact, the most significant changes and the outcomes of each project. Elena Archipovaite, an independent urban development practitioner shared insights from the long-term process of change. Being part in many projects while working in Ukraine, Uganda and other countries, underlined the importance of understanding the context, respect the ethics of communities to co-create the change-making actions.
In the second part of the Conference, short presentations by local and international initiatives and institutions related to urban activism, citizen bottom-up actions and community activation were given. Hannes Gotsch from Slanders, Italy presented his project BASIS Vinschgau Venosta and its attempt in the community changing process. Prof. of the University of Aveiro, Fernando Nogueira, discussed about the interrelations in between participation and planning in terms of energy management. Angela Maria Cunha from the Municipality of Aveiro, presented the experience of VivaCidade project in 2014-2015 and her current insights from P2020 about Development of Urban Strategy and Rehabilitation Areas. Last but not least, Laura Sobral, a Brazilian Urbanist and Architect, talked about her research on implementing participatory tools, giving insights from her experience at Instituto A Cidade Precisa de Você.
Final Comments and Q&A in an open discussion with all the participants of the conference were moderated by Matthias Einhoff, from ZK/U – Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik.
The day ended with an indoor collective barbecue due to the weather conditions and a concert by Lemon Lovers band.
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photo credits: © Délio Sá
Funded by ‘Actors of Urban Change’, a program by RBSG in cooperation with MitOst e.V. and the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union
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CityToolBox is open and willing to expand! If you are an urban changemaker, include you tool in the platform. It is easy and that way you are connected with changemakers of many other cities, and can exchange knowledge with them.
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