Rijeka 2020 - European Capital of Culture (ECoC)

CTB Lab 03 Rijeka

Third iteration of CTB-Lab (Octobre 2019 - Octobre 2020) driven by the question: How to use hallmark-events (such as prestige ECoC title) to address the urban challenges systematically left behind or dimmed by entertainment spectacles, cosmetic infrastructural improvements and urban marketing?

Our main aim was to find a rather neglected urban area and join already existing actors active in the city, which is usually seen as a shrinking post-industrial port.
In collaboration with local partners we found out about the industrial pioneering area and once border of the divided city: Skoljic area, with the crystal clear river Rijecina and less-populated streets of Vodovodna and Ruziceva streets. 
First challenge was to find the appropriate frame for the project, focusing on the needs of the local population and precarious cultural scene. In the framework of Sweet&Salt (one of the Rijeka’s 2020 flagships) and in collaboration with Goethe Institut Kroatien, Delta Lab Rijeka, and local ngo Urbani Separe, we developed a holistic view on the  Rijecina’s canyon and named it kvARTera.

KvARTera

Instead of applying a particular CTB-tool or combination of them, this time we decided to develop site-specific ones: deriving from the local context, constellation of project partners and after all local challenges. Out of desire to create a fictive Local Council (Mjesni Odbor Hartera) as an imaginary ‘political body’ for this neglected and patchworked area, we started the so-called Dictionary of the Collective Action, conceptual orientation and new content producer. Combination of those two ‘tools in making’ became the foundation for the project kvARTera.
 

kvARTera is a community development project with an aim to start multiple conversations about the future of post-industrial ruins of Hartera (ex paper factory) and streets leading to it. With support of various formal and informal actors from Rijeka, the project offers diverse development scenarios based on the idea of collective action, spatial appropriation/activation and neighborhood solidarity.
Selected micro-locations along Rijecina river are conceptually grouped around the idea of a collectively made dictionary, where single ‘letters’ represent contested local challenges. Around those challenges new alliances have been formed, questions are being asked and conversations triggered. Every single micro-location at the end consists of a conceptual or imaginary letter, flag, tree and local organization who test and activate it, showing possible future scenarios.

Project also seeks to develop new political culture in collaboration with local councils (MO Kozala, MO Trsat, MO Sušak, MO Školjić-Stari grad), by organising unusual forms of parliamentary discussions, knowledge-exchange formats, sport events and guided tours; positioning Hartera as future socio-cultural centre.

This approach also allows gradual growth of the dictionary and partners-network, with an aim to reach a critical amount of active citizens at the end of 2020, which could hopefully overtake the program in the years 2021-22 and advocate for a change of Hartera’s status-quo.

Team: CTB Network and Urbani Separe Rijeka
Partners: Goethe Institut Kroatien, ZK/U Berlin, DeltaLab Rijeka, Kombinat, City of Rijeka- ECoC2020 (Sweet&Salt flagship)
Local Partners (MO Hartera) : Skate Club Kvarner, Skradin Bar, Bee Union Milutin Barac, Transition Initiative Rijeka, RiUSE-Molekula