From Hackney to Essex, in classrooms and workshops CLEAR VILLAGE is engaging community centers and working with landlords to make great changes in London this summer!
Festival Village & Festival of the World, hosted by our friends from Tilt, opened it’s doors to great aplomb for the Olympic season. Congratulations to all the makers on their success. Let the games begin!
NEW PAD FOR CLEAR VILLAGE
COLLECTIVE OFFICES OPEN AT VICTORIA WHARF
On the border of Hackney and Tower Hamlets, creative and strategic director Thomas Ermacora is about to open new premises for CLEAR VILLAGE in a wharf on Regent’s Canal. A group of other companies and ventures Thomas is involved in that he has dubbed the Recode Collective will also move there soon. The wharf will be a “window to the future”, a regeneration themed hub/hive, staging experimental participatory activities and labs, blending arts and technology, where people and talents will be able to visit or make it happen.
HackMe
COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT IN LONDON
Collaboration and creativity join forces and take to the streets in Hackney with HackMe; a CLEAR VILLAGE and Rolemop, Workshop 44 and CIVA project! HackMe promotes the positive stories of Regent’s Estate in Hackney, London and connects its citizens more with their local community through workshops, street parties, and public space interventions.
Emphasizing DIY vitalization culture, we are conducting well-being analyses with estate residents and will collate this material into a graphic map for locals and stakeholders to use towards improving community capital through co-creative actions.
More information and a link to our questionnaire for Regent’s Estate inhabitants can be found here:
PARTICIPATORY PLACEMAKING IN THREE EXCELLENT WORKSHOPS
The 19th of June was a small step on the calendar, but a great leap for make.helsinki as the first workshop of our series of three successfully got under way.With over 30 participants, we started the day at the beautiful World Design Capital Pavilion curated by our partner Demos Helsinki. After brief presentations on the value of participatory placemaking, we broke up into teams. Each team was given the task to explore a different area of Helsinki to identify challenges facing the place, map out what we like to call ‘hidden gems’ (underused or overlooked spaces where a small intervention can make a big difference), and begin to generate ideas on how these spaces can be brought to life.The make.helsinki teams fanned out across the city, by metro, by bike and on foot, to search, explore, take pictures, make drawings, write notes and interview residents to get a better sense of each area and start the process of working towards the actual intervention scheduled to take place during workshop 3 of the make.helsinki series.
Back to the Pavilion, the teams then reported their findings and presented some of their initial ideas ranging from small-scale cultural interventions in Mellunmäki, to ‘Suburb Day’ in Siilitie, to gondolas and urban action games in Hernasaari, to painting physically and conceptually in Itä-Pasila.
The first workshop was only the first step of the make.helsinki journey, and the ideas that were brainstormed will be further developed in subsequent workshops: workshop two will take the snowballs that were made in workshop one, make them wonderfully large and solid, and then throw them at the city during workshop three!
In this manner, we aim to show that the city belongs to its people and that when people get together to change their living environment for the better, great results can be accomplished.
To find out more, please visit the makehelsinki.fi website or our write up here!
DYNAMIC DIALOGUES
“ART OF NOTHING” YOUTH SKATEBOARD THEATRE
The Helsingborg City Theatre Dynamic Dialogues workshop led to the creation and marketing of five sold out youth skateboard shows at the theatre! The exciting shows called, “The Art of Nothing”, were choreographed to original music and serve as the model for youth engagement in theatre. The Dynamic Dialogues methodology were also recognized as a successful model of community engagement at Svensk Scenkonst (the annual meeting of the Guild of Swedish Stagearts) and the Swedish Performing Arts Biennale for Youth and Children (BIBU). The successful work was also presented by Think Team member Kristina Borjesson at the Cumulus Conference in Helsinki this year. Well done, all!
PUBLICATIONS
WILLHELMSBORG REPORT FOR UdN SUMMER SCHOOL
CLEAR VILLAGE’s report of last year’s successful UdN International Summer School is now out! You can take a look at our report here:Partnering with the UdN International Summer School 2011, an initiative of the planning and the urban design chairs at HafenCity University Hamburg, CLEAR VILLAGE offered a two week summer program on user-centered design and co-creative, sustainability solutions in the disadvantaged neighbourhood of Wilhelmsburg in Hamburg, Germany.“When I applied for the UdN ISS 2011, I expected to learn something about environmental and people friendly planning. What I actually learnt was much more. “ – Iris Flamm, participant.
The task of the summer school was to develop an approach that makes resource-efficient lifestyles more desirable and living in Wilhelmsburg more green. Students investigated knowledge in an urban context by exploring the neighbourhood, engaging with the local community, and co-creating projects for the area.
Projects developed included a wasted space trading scheme, tactics to help isolated individuals gain healthy habits, games to engage children to be more mindful of waste, turning a local café into a hub for networking and skill sharing, and plans for cleaning the local canal through technology and community involvement with the goal of growing floating food lots.
OUT & ABOUT
PARTICIPATORY EVENTS AND WORKSHOPS:
GOOGLE ZEITGEIST 2012
Thomas joins Imogen Heap at Google Zeitgeist 2012. View the inspirational talks here.
(Photo: M. Hicks, 2012)
TED GLOBAL RADICAL OPENNESS CONFERENCE 2012
Thomas enjoys “One of the best TED Conferences ever!” More info here.
Photo: James Duncan Davidson
MAIM – CENTRAL ST. MARTINS
Alice presents at MAIM – Central St. Martins and Your Daily Bread “Happiness and Resilience” course.
WELCOME NEW TEAM MEMBERS
INTERNS VICTORIA VAN WASSENHOVE & CAITLIN ALLAN
Victoria van Wassenhove is a Belgian-American currently studying Design at Goldsmiths, University of London. She has practised fine art and visual communication and created a charity concept “By Children for Children” in 2005. She is excited to be able to utilise both her practical skills and her passion for people at CLEAR VILLAGE.
Originally from Canada, Caitlin Allan enjoys exploring new perspectives on urban issues. She is currently enrolled in a MSc. in Regional and Urban Planning Studies at the London School of Economics and emphasises her studies on different interpretations of sustainability to understand how to make healthier places. Her best sources of inspiration and education however are the creative and innovative people and communities she has met while living, studying and working in London.
