DOORNAKKERS social projects. Report-december 2012

S O C I A L

P R O J E C T S

DOORNAKKERS REPORT D ECEMBER

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R E P O R T D E C E M B E R

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Placemaking workshops for DOORNAKKERS on initiative of NeRu Citylab project

NE RU CITYLAB

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REPORT: `Placemaking workshops for Doornakkers on initiative of NeRu Citylab project | Dec 12

INTRO

The Doornakkers social project is a result of the collaboration of NeRu Citylab, a Brabant Academy project, & Lively Cities, the European platform deals with “reclaiming public spaces for public use”.

This part of the brochure is a report of the first step realization of this project. The previous part of the brochure consists of a general project proposal for the neighborhood.

This first step of a realization is an attempt to implement the project in a specific place & in current conditions. As a specific place the square near the De Boog school was chosen. Without any attractions this square is not a popular place for people from the neighborhood to spend their time. Nevertheless this place was selected as a site for Winter Festival, a holiday for the neighborhood. So preparation to this festival was current conditions of the Doornakkers project realization.

The adaptation of the furniture project and the “City of the neighborhood” project gave an opportunity to turn the space of the square into a well organized & cozy area for the festival. This process was organized as a series of placemaking workshops with people from the neighborhood. This project of adaptation was presented to Lively Cities and after support was started to realize.

One of the main goals of the Doornakkers project was to activate the neighborhood community, to make communicate different kinds of Doornakkers residents with each other. This idea has been realizing through the placemaking workshops that we held in the Carousel, a club supported by Lively Cities too. This club with Anna-Maria Janssen, the holder of it, organized the Winter Festival. So people who visit the Carousel, people from a retirement house invited by us were the main participants of our workshops. All together we prepared the square and an interior of the Carousel to the holiday.

There were some people who actively took part in a life of the neighborhood. For example, Talitha, an artist & a resident of Doornakkers helped us a lot and Jochem Romkema, a municipality intern & an active participant of such projects. Moreover the bottom-up initiative was made with the help of social network. For instance Heather Adams, a habitant of Doornakkers, was a volunteer who helped a lot with realizing different ideas.

So during the process of the Doornakkers project realization residents were involved on different levels and phases of project: participants of placemaking workshops, volunteers and just people who contributed a lot to organization of the project.

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INTRO

R E P O R T

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REPORT: `Placemaking workshops for Doornakkers on initiative of NeRu Citylab project | Dec 12

The preparation for the Winter Festival started in the middle of November with the first placemaking workshop under the coordination of Elena Lovich. Its concept was based on the previous pilot project realized in Doornakkers, “City of neighborhood�.

This workshop was dedicated to build a small scale model of the neighborhood. So every participant, who at the same time was the resident of Doornakkers painted a little house, decorated them with mosaic. So after that finished houses, painted and decorated were put on the base with map. The base was an old door, along with concept of Furniture project it was denoted as symbol of the friendly neighborhood.

Carousel was the location for first workshop and all others various placemaking workshops. Along with making the Doornakkers model participants were painting branches and chairs.

The approximate duration of workshop was about 2 hours. Our task was to make all necessary preparations for workshops and along with this to coordinate the process of placemaking workshops. Chairs, branches and houses elaborated with mosaic were meant to become art objects to decorate the Square of De Boog School as a preparation to the Winter Festival.

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REPORT

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REPORT: `Placemaking workshops for Doornakkers on initiative of NeRu Citylab project | Dec 12

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REPORT

A great work was made by participants during these workshops! Involvement of people from “Carousel club� and the retirement house contributed a lot to realization of all targeted tasks. As for process of workshop it has become a really inspiring process for people who took part in them whereby enthusiasm, excitement and curiosity were the atmosphere on such events.

At the same time the participation in process of the preparation to the Winter Festival was of different kind One of the organizers of the Winter Festival and one of the main supporters of our project, Emin Ustuner, had offered chairs for painting.

As for mosaic workshops, Talitha Koffeman, an artist and resident of Doornakkers was precisely who took an initiative for elaborating painted houses. Previously she used to hold different workshops, for example the Social Sofa project (another project of Lively Cities for Doornakkers) that was made by her with involving people from the neighborhood. During workshop houses for a little model of the neighborhood were decorated.

Extra staff made during mosaic workshop could be taken by participants as souvenirs back to home.

To live up the space of square near school there was realized proposal to paint tiles.

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REPORT: `Placemaking workshops for Doornakkers on initiative of NeRu Citylab project | Dec 12

The concept was to paint a shape of tulip as a pattern colored in green, red and blue colors. Interesting that in this composition every segment of the pattern was also a different colored tulip.

Essential part of realization was volunteering. Exactly in this part of the preparation for Winter Festival Heather Adams took part involved by the help of facebook connection.

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R E P O R T

WINTER FESTIVAL

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REPORT: `Placemaking workshops for Doornakkers on initiative of NeRu Citylab project | Dec 12

The event that happened in the day of winter festival has become final in a series of placemaking workshops. Especially for this event children were actively attracted into the process of creativity. Making of paper snowflakes was kindly welcomed both by children and their parents. The atmosphere of easy chatting, getting fares and different presents, all these contributed to light, warm and cozy atmosphere of the upcoming holidays.

Along with art objects and activity on the square during the winter festival there was active social activity that strongly contributed to improvement of communication between inhabitants.

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WINTER FESTIVAL

RESEARCH According to demand of Municipality there was made short research dedicated to analyses of crowd flows on the square in different daytime and days of the week. In collaboration with intern from Municipality Jochem Ramkema our goal was to evaluate positive and negatives aspects of urban space of the square.

With the help of time-lapse techniques two days of the week and one day of the weekend were researched. The analysis results of the regular days of the week showed that the biggest flows of people happen in the morning time and at 15:00, according to school schedule. Moreover it was investigated that the activity on this square took place only during week. During weekend almost There were also determined particular places in the square popular for small groups of people. As for usage of public space during the weekend it was determined that square serves basically as transit pathway but most of the time it is empty.

As for further development it was very important to make first start analyses that could be used in case of extending and transformation of the square. As for current conditions, result of the analyses contributed a lot to evaluation of placing art-objects (chairs, branches, houses) onto the square.

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REPORT: `Placemaking workshops for Doornakkers on initiative of NeRu Citylab project | Dec 12

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RESEARCH

R E A L I Z A T I O N

CALENDAR

The Winter Festival has become one of the first realized steps aimed to improve social life of Doornakkers. As for further development there is a strategy to continue moving in this direction.

Moreover, new series of placemaking workshops are anticipated in spring and summer which are aimed to attract more people from neighborhood. The Furniture Project with installing doors and painted chairs for permanent exposition, painting more tiles of the square into bright colored tulip pattern and a lot of more interesting workshops are expected in the social life of Doornakkers!

In case of further extending and transformation of the square results of placemaking workshops might be useful in creating favorable public places in Doornakkers.

Moreover it could contribute a lot to organizing such places around neighborhood and in the city as well.

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REPORT: `Placemaking workshops for Doornakkers on initiative of NeRu Citylab project | Dec 12

This brochure is produced with the collaboration of the municipality of Eindhoven Repro of the municipality Eindhoven Editing and graphic design Alexandra Predeina Nadezhda Bobyleva Anna Khodyreva

REPORT: `Placemaking workshops for Doornakkers on initiative of NeRu Citylab project | Dec 12