Learning from Context
Building social competence from local knowledge
Conference
Berlin, Südblock Aquarium
22-23 September 2017
Learning from context
Building social competence from local knowledge
Registration
Traditional forms of education and training for employment are increasingly focused on chasing job market demand through specialisation. Meanwhile, a multiplicity of voluntary, self-organised, citizen-based initiatives is breaking new ground in experimenting with skills and competences. Local communities and neighbourhoods provide a fertile soil for innovative practices of sharing and caring, inventing alternative modes of production and economies, building new paradigms of solidarity and commons, developing forms of bottom-up city making and constructing their own narratives in the folds of global urbanisation.
Such modes of learning outside formal settings (both informal and non-formal) have received much attention over the past decade, especially as a means to counter social and economic inequalities. Often innovative and successful in the short run and in response to a specific context, these practices struggle to find continuity, self-sustainability and produce radical change at different scales.
The Learning from Context conference aims at confronting and setting in constructive dialogue different experiences of urban education, knowledge exchange and capacity building. The conference will pay special attention to:
- the valorisation of knowledge produced in informal, bottom-up initiatives to improve employment and neighbourhood-based welfare;
- the learning process and skills developed in voluntary engagement within local communities and their recognition, measurement, acknowledgement;
- tools and techniques to improve the capacity of communities to understand their contexts and to better devise appropriate solutions to local challenges;
- how new forms of co-productive city making lead to the development of skills that are complementary to the urban planning profession or practice;
- how collaborative economic paradigms can improve the resilience of neighbourhoods in crisis;
- how artistic and communication skills can be employed to fight exclusion and counteract stigmatisation and gentrification.
The conference is the closing event of the EULER Erasmus Plus project coordinating training programs in the cities of Antwerp, Barcelona, London and Berlin. It aims at presenting the participatory toolsets developed by the local laboratories in the four cities and enhancing reflection, sharing and dissemination of the produced knowledge in a profitable confrontation with similar experiences.
The conference will have a practice-oriented multidisciplinary approach. We will favour presentations introducing concrete experiences and tools rather than theoretical papers. We encourage non-strictly academic formats and interactive presentations.
Download the program of the conference in PDF.
FRIDAY, 22 SEPTEMBER 2017
08:30-09:15 REGISTRATION AT AQUARIUM
09:15-09:45 WELCOME & PROGRAM
↘ What Are we doing here – Lorenzo Tripodi
↘ The EULER project – Jim Segers
↘ Where are we – Aquarium – Kottbusser Tor
09:45-11:00 KEYNOTE Session – Moderated by Laura Colini
↘ Prof. Michael Edwards (UCL Bartlett School / JustSpace London)
↘ Questions & Answers
11:00-11:30 COFFEE BREAK
11:30-12:45 EULER NEIGHBOURHOOD APPLICATIONS
↘ Open Promoter Platform – Antwerp
↘ Som La Marina – Barcelona
↘ Elephant Path – London
↘ Switch On Mehringplatz – Berlin
12:45-13:45 LUNCH BREAK
13:45-15:15 PARALLEL SESSIONS
ROOM A Learning Cities: empowering through knowledge exchange
↘ The metroZones Schoolbook – Kathrin Wildner, Anne Huffschmid, metroZones, DE
↘ Atlas of Invisible spaces: mapping the interface between school and city – Antje Lehn, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Institute for Art and Architecture, AT
↘ Turning school into a space of community – Zuzana Tabačková, SPOLKA, SK
↘ To work means to belong – Jonas De Maeyer, HEIM, BE
↘ We are here now: a pedagogy of urbanity – Jens Brandt, UEL – Urban Education Live project, Technical University of Tampere, FI
ROOM B Mapping neighbourhoods, challenging spatial disadvantage
↘ Mapping San Siro – Francesca Cognetti, Elena Maranghi, Gabriele Solazzi, Politecnico di Milano, IT
↘ Learning from, with and for Anchieta’s community: building peripheries’ citizens inclusion from local dialectics – Caroline Custine, Alice Larsimont, Lucas Lerchs, KULeuven / MAHS-MAUSP, BE
↘ Kottikratie: Kottbusser Tor as a contemporary agora – Felix Hartenstein, Technische Universität Berlin, DE Zentralinstitut El Gouna, Department of Urban Development, EG
↘ Community participation for an inclusive society: a multidisciplinary action-research in a marginalised neighbourhood of Bologna – Lorenzo Betti, Martina Riccio, Centro di Salute Internazionale e Interculturale (CSI), APS, IT
15:15-15:30 COFFEE BREAK
15:30-17:00 PARALLEL SESSIONS
ROOM A Activating communities: creative strategies for fragile territories
↘ Knowledge as energy: the role of komunitas in Bandung, Indonesia – Lenny Martini, School of Business and Management, Institut Teknologi Bandung, ID
↘ GuilmiArtProject in the puddle scenario: generating reactions, shaking immobilism, denouncing collusions through community based art projects – Lucia Giardino, Florence University of the Arts, IT
↘ Budapest100: how can open houses create open communities? – Rita Szerencsés, Hungarian Contemporary Architecture Center, Budapest, HU
↘ “Narrating Places” – Jolanda Todt, Weißensee Kunsthochschule Berlin, DE
↘ The value of the contribution of architecture to cohesion and social engagement: the example of Imre Makovecz’s work within the faluházak project during the 1970s and 1980s – Martina Giustra, PTE University of Pécs, HU
ROOM B Co-creating the city: participative tools and approaches
↘ Funding the Cooperative City: from knowledge network to local action – Daniela Patti & Levente Polyak Eutropian Research & Action, Budapest, Wien, Rome
↘ CiutatBeta a social innovation policy lab – Òscar Martínez Ciuró, Trànsit Projectes, ITD Barcelona, ES
↘ Let’s play! Enabling knowledge transfer in games based capacity building – Theodora Costantinescu, Hasselt University, BE
↘ 3 transformative scapes in Florence – Anna Lisa Pecoriello, University of Florence, IT
↘ (Re)searching for quietness in the Reuterkiez – Antonella Radicchi, Marie Curie TU Berlin, DE
17:00-17:15 CLOSING REMARKS, DRINKS AT SÜDBLOCK & NETWORKING
SATURDAY, 23 SEPTEMBER 2017
08:30-09:20 WELCOME BACK AND INTRO TO “HANDS-ON-PRACTICE” SESSIONS
09:30-11:00 PARALLEL SESSIONS
ROOM A Situated Learning: How to consolidate knowledge and competencies produced in grassroots initiatives? Facilitated by Elizabeth Calderón Lüning, Laura Colini
ROOM B Thinking platforms: technical infrastructures or political models? Facilitated by Lorenzo Tripodi, Andreas Unteidig
11:00-11:15 COFFEE BREAK
11:15-12:45 PARALLEL SESSIONS
ROOM A Urban commons: utopian wish, concrete alternative or trendy buzzword? Facilitated by Sophie Bloemen, Lorenzo Tripodi
ROOM B The future of work in the collaborative city: how far novel networking capacities open opportunities for fairer economic models? Facilitated by Ela Kagel, Jim Segers
12:45-13:15 FINAL PLENARY
13:15-15 LUNCH BREAK
15-17:00 WALKING TOURS IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD