The School The School Hasselt December 2017 www.theschoolhasselt.eu Editors: Raya Stefanova & Yanina Shevchenko Copy editor: Rebecca Jane Arthur Photography: Yanina Shevchenko Graphic design: Chantalle Weerts Thanks to: Pablo Hannon, Yousra Rifi, Pablo Calderรณn Salazar, Caro Van den Hole, Liesbeth Huybrechts, Kim Vandeloo, Heleen Van Loon and all the residents of The School 2017/18.
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Liesbeth Huybrechts (L) I am researcher in the use of participation and spatial change. Pablo Hannon (PH) I talk a lot when I am passionate about certain topics; but I also enjoy silence, I enjoy driving with classical music and am at my best with chocolate. Kim Vandeloo (K) I find myself drawn to projects involving innovation, design, craftsmanship, etc. … because I believe in the power of creativity to change our world. Heleen Van Loon (H) Trained as a historian, interested in culture, work as coordinator of Cultuurplatform Design and teacher at LUCA School of Arts Genk. I love to connect people. I am always into something new, a mother of two, engaged at school and in the neighbourhood, and I’m a friend of many. Pablo Calderón Salazar (PC) I am a designer, an educator… a Colombian. A Southerner. A partner. Who I am is defined by the moment. So at this moment, I am at the end of my European journey, which has allowed me to gain perspective on Colombia and Latin America. Caro Van den Hole (C) I feel like I am a lot of pieces grouped together. I became a mum. I am a teacher. I am a designer. I am a friend. I am also a lover. I am trying to figure out all these different roles right now, and it is quite a challenge. Yousra Rifi (Y) I am restless. I change color constantly. I am a neighborhood disturber in a positive way.
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PH - Sustainable L - City-project K - Revolutionary H - Collaborations PC - Polyrhythmic C - Plural Y - Punk
The School in one word.
PH: Hasselt is a micro city: you can easily ride through it by bike; you can say hello to the mayor; you can do stuff in one to one conversations with people that can change things. So if you want to create things you are able to. And that’s why Hasselt.
Why was The School created in Hasselt? L: There are two reasons why it is in Hasselt. I think Hasselt needs a project like this, to have a more critical view on the city from inside. It should have a richer diversity of voices being heard on how the city should evolve. … In Hasselt everything is a bit slick. Policy makers are very afraid about critical engagements. I think it is a very necessary project.
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Another reason, in Limburg there is a tradition in social, participatory design and art, more than in other parts of the country. So it is not only because of a lack but it is because of experience that we have. There are the right people here who can start up and feed into projects like this one. And the other way around. The city of Hasselt needs a more critical voice and more critical mass. H: Hasselt is a small-scale city with the typical universal problems of mobility, pollution, public space, short-term thinking, and so on, that are present in a city; but because of the small-scale level, the networks are short and connections are easily made with quick results. K: I feel like we (our society, country, Hasselt, …) need to be challenged and questioned. Starting a completely independent school feels like a necessary wake-up call and statement to make.
PH: Hasselt needs The School because it lacks identity. Because it has no face; it has no clear approach to problems. Every problem is solved by halves; and so, it needs to have something external, an excuse to approach a problem in a more dramatic, experimental, explosive way. I think The School can also be an excuse to draw city-people in and be accomplices in this experimental and alternative view on the future of the city, not only relying on The School to create these reactions.
Why does Hasselt need The School? L: I think the Belgian higher educational system is too focused. You start at 18 and finish at 21. We don’t have a more mature student population. I think The School is a good addition to the current educational system here. From that perspective, it is complementary. It is a different type of education. From a research perspective, The School offers a different research-hub to the city of Hasselt and the province. K: In fact, every city needs a school that takes a close, critical look at its quality of life and brings its people together to come up with ideas and solutions to improve life in their city.
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PH - A city on a skateboard, so it’s moving. Ask me now again and I will draw something else… Do a second one… they are sitting without chairs but they are together.
PH: The worst outcome would be if we would have nothing– that we would run around in circles and have nothing.
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PC: For me, the worst outcome is not to manage making it until the end. For people to say, ‘fuck it’ and leave. Which will lead us to be broken hearted and write sad songs! Yes, that would be it, the worst thing would be the abandonment of the ship. A mass-abandonment of the ship. Let me steer this remark somewhere positive. If we all stay on the ship, we will manage to arrive somewhere–even if it is an uninhabited island! Yes, I think this is where we are going, into the unknown. We don’t know where it is that we are going, but we are going somewhere.
What is the worst possible outcome of The School 2017-2018 that you can imagine? K: The worst possible outcome, in my opinion, would be a plain, ordinary exposition that compiles the works of individuals. H: I would be sad if The School fails to connect with the city and its inhabitants, organizations and all challenges that are related to it. That it would become an arty farty artistic residency with high walls and no open doors.
PH: A street fest! Because the end of the end is a street fest, in my ideal view. We can have that last day, if we are successful the days before. Y: The perfect outcome will be if people in the city will see that change can be made by their own hands and by their own creative thinking. That’s for me the most important thing ‌ That people are not depending on the city or some other kind of structure to do something, and that they take their life and their own space, and take action in the community.
What outcome do you want to see in May 2018 to be able to say that The School was successful? K: The perfect outcome for me would be to see the traces of the presence of The School in the city, its streets, in its inhabitants, in its spirit and in its leaders. L: That during the last festival the residents will feel that they have learnt something together, achieved something together. Something that then can be passed along to the next participants. H: I also think quantity is important: the amount of local people involved, realized challenges, outputs that can be continued, workshops, talks and master classes organised.
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L - It is always people that are in the city, in the world and they are trying to understand it from within.
K -I would draw an oil slick. A stain is a solid cohesion of fluid which is dropped and, starting from a drop, expands across its borders. An oil slick has a variety of beautiful colours to make the drop even more interesting. This is how I see The School. A solid drop that crosses borders, touches its environment and leaves its mark.
What is the goal this year? C: Having the courage to be here and to do this, and also having the courage to not know what it is going to be is one of the greatest things that has happened. If you know what you are already doing here, then the answer is not exciting. The scariest part in something innovative and creative is that you don’t know yet, but you have confidence. And I know it takes a lot of trust. Sometimes you start doubting, because you doubt, it’s human nature. I hope we can reinforce this trust. PC: What we are doing is very important. Maybe we don’t see it now, and we are missing a lot of things... It’s not my intention to defend or congratulate us. But I think it is really pioneering and something that could be quite important. I am not talking only about The School, but starting to try out in a very open, experimental, creative, non disruptive, collaborative way the different manners in which citizens can be engaged in improving the city, and how they can do this through very specific things like, for example, festivals, or the residents being here.
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I see it as a long term objective to create a movement.
PH: That The School becomes a verb and is no longer a selection of designers and artists. L: In my opinion, the long term goal is to be a body of activists, fed by really well chosen residents of The School. And that this network would grow and get stronger and stronger with time.
What are the long term goals of The School? K: Today our society focuses on the individual. People are not used to being together anymore, and they don’t know how to live as a community. People are afraid to share not only their material belongings, but also their emotions and vulnerability. In a world where people are living closer together than ever before, I think an ‘institution’ such as The School has a responsibility in changing people’s habits and mentality to make a city more comfortable to live in. Y: Long term goals would be to make something consistent, to strive for continuity in the projects, and create sustainable processes. I hope that the city sees the role The School takes and feels that it is needed for the city to work better. And, then, I hope it will spread towards other cities. H: To become a large international network of enthusiastic people who connect, share, create and alter our daily lives. The School will produce new generations of world-changing designers [and artists] who are experienced to work between blurred borders: between disciplines, art/design and society; and to take a position in a complex field of different powers.
PH: One of the common goals is to establish a nonlinear approach to city challenges. For this year, foremostly, it is to experiment with The School as a medium. The goal is to establish that, and not experiment on its own, but build towards a sustainable movement, so that think can be constant. I think this year is about preparation, or testing our concept. H: To create a vibrant, happy city and new generations of world-changing ‘The School’ designers. K: The common mission of The School, for me, is to create a community of city changers and people lovers by stimulating spontaneity and togetherness.
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What is the common mission of The School? L: The School exists to attract a new group of people with very interesting backgrounds that bring something new to the city and to the programme. The School should be the activists heart of the city. The city needs it. The activists that question the current system as it is and on different levels: the way the city is organised, the way technologies are implemented, the way the spaces are designed. The residents really are in a position to question critically some decisions that were made on a city level.
H: The way The School thinks about education, the notion of learning and the reshaping of the educational system relates to more global changes. This is a common driver which makes that The School, as an organization, can easily connect to and learn from other schools worldwide who share a similar vision on education. K: More people than ever are living in cities all over the world. Our micro society is a translation of the rest of the world. This makes the purpose of The School globally relevant. L: It is a phenomenon. It is not something isolated; it is something that a lot of institutes are dealing with today by asking questions such as �What are we doing? Who are we educating? And what for?� There is a tendency in design education to keep building within restrictions of the market. So The School is one attempt to escape this. So it is everywhere; something is going on. It is a global trend, global movement. In this sense, I think that The School can be seen as a forerunner of a movement that, in a few years, a lot of people will look at. I think that there is some very experimental and innovative potential that is happening here, in Hasselt, on a global scale. Even though, sometimes, it looks‌ messy.
How does The School relate to the global context?
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C: Is it the network you’ve got? PC: Yes. It is a kind of rhizome… I was reading about it… In fact, it’s a very beautiful thing. So Kafka mostly wrote in German, and it was because his actual language, Czech, was downplayed. Félix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze wrote a whole book about this kind of situation. About minor languages… They made a whole philosophical theory around it, how it applies to different aspects of life. How something minor is put aside, overshadowed by the main thing. I was reading the text by them called “Becoming minoritarian”, embracing these overshadowed practices and so on. It is like a rhizome. They also wrote about the rhizome. They said that the rhizome is like Kafka’s castle. There are several entrances, but there is no main entrance. There is no perspective. Try to draw Kafka’s castle. Depending on where you enter it, that’s how you draw it. It depends on the perspective. It is this kind of mess. It has all these different exits and entrances, and so depending on how you see it changes the whole perspective. So maybe it will be more like an Escher drawing than this kind of mess. I like it because it is this kind of a star, and it has these energies surrounding it. C: Like a universe. PC: Very astronomical. C: I like how your lines are fading out. And I tried to make a structure and then it got dispersed. PC: Yeah. Maybe the farther away the dots are from the centre of energy, the easier it gets to define it. But if you get closer…
Name two city issues that you think The School should address? PH: Poverty and creativity. Anything we do in the city has no link to creativity or design. H: The station area and sharing economy. K: Hasselt focuses very much on the elderly, which is fine; but I feel like young creatives are often second in row, if they are not part of an organization or institution. There should be more space for spontaneous creativity. Also, people don’t know their neighbours anymore – and that’s a shame.
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L: One issue is rapid urbanisation. And other one is mobility. Y: Communication. It is very hard, in general, to communicate with people, and even moreso within the city of Hasselt.
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1 COME, my tan-faced children, Follow well in order, get your weapons ready; Have you your pistols? have you your sharp edged axes? Pioneers! O pioneers! 2 For we cannot tarry here, We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger, We, the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend, Pioneers! O pioneers! 3 O you youths, western youths, So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship, Plain I see you, western youths, see you tramping with the foremost, Pioneers! O pioneers! 4
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Have the elder races halted? Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied, over there beyond the seas? We take up the task eternal, and the burden, and the lesson, Pioneers! O pioneers!
the first four verses of a poem by Walt Whitman: Pioneers! O pioneers!