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Participation is like love: If it doesn’t touch your needs, you’re not really involved” Andrés Walliser during an online session, posted and remixed by participant Silvia Schiaulini on the DIGITAL LAB
Creative professional network are international experts who directed workshops, gave lectures and partici pated in building the local network among stakeholders in Hamar. The on-site workshops allowed participants to meet, interact, brainstorm and discuss their proposals and thoughts regarding the square and the city. The aim was to use creative methods in order to get the participants to know each other, and feel free to develop new and fresh ideas. The lectures were both an opportunity to share the creative guests’ knowledge regarding each topic, and generate an open debate related to the community, along with specic guests who were invited to assist the lectures from the front row.
URBAN ACTIONS The urban actions are a serie of events that took place at Stortorget, aiming to arouse expectation and call citizens to action on the square. They were a way of experiencing possible uses and solutions for the future square, but also to spontaneously change the urban environment for a short period of time. Painthamar: featuring the project’s opening event when Stortorget square was transformed in 3 days from a parking lot to a colourful creative space. This action was created and implemented by Boamistura, an urban art collective from Madrid, Spain. Creamhamar: this event transformed Stortorget into a huge living room offering Hamar citizens free lunch made from local products of surrounding farms. It was a tool used to gather people. This action was coordinated by ecosistema urbano and Gunvor Bakke and organized and implemented with 3rd year students from Bergen School of Architecture.
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Greenhamar: an old car lled with owers, a wooden platform-bench-stage-playground made from 400 meters of wood and 10 tons of gravel, free homemade mushroom soup and bike powered organic smoothies: Greenhamar was all about bringing sustainable actions to take over the square and what used to be a road. It was coordinated with Gudbrand Kjøs and Frode Degvold, landscape architects and teachers at Vea School- Statens fagskole for gartnere og blomsterdekoratører- whose
students developed and implemented the greenhamar installation. Playhamar: 5 trampolines on the square and the Bazaar building lled up with hundreds of children, parents, toys and laughs. The event lasted two days and during this period kids were bringing their old toys to the Bazaar building and exchanging them with other kids. Playhamar was carried out along with the local teacher Audun Jensen. Arthamar: A ctive wedding, interactive screens, and poems written in leaves were some works of the 3rd year students from the Bergen School of Architecture when they came back to Hamar in October. The students were directed by the artist Eva Kun, and worked at locations which they considered interesting or challenging with installations and performances. They explored the different areas trying to discover, putting into value or framing the qualities and potentials of these spaces, using their senses. The goal was not about making a nished product, but about revealing, adding and articulating qualities. Alicantehamar: As part of the academic network of Dreamhamar, a group of 50 students of Architecture from the University of Alicante (Spain), directed by their teacher Iván Capdevila, were involved in the design of the future Stortorget. They will be working from september 2011 to june 2012 on different proposals for Hamar’s main square. During one week they visited Hamar and interacted with locals around Stortorget. Jeffrey Schnapp, Harvard MetaLab director, as part of the Dreamhamar international network of professionals, was also lecturing at the Bazaar building and leading the student’s advisory board during Alicantehamar week. Lighthamar: Lighthamar was the launching event of the second phase of Dreamhamar process. Ecosistema urbano left the onsite action at Stortorget in order to focus on the urban proposal. The event combined an interactive lighting installation created by art collectives Uncoded + Fitzmedia, a new urban furniture for Stortorget (hamar stools) produced by local school Ungdom i Farta and the square invaded by singers from various local choirs, creating with Thomas Caplin (choir conductor at Hedmark University College) the rst ash mob ever made in Hamar.