Reflection / 15. July 2021

Hybrid Workshop: Curfew Urbanism

In a workshop blending offline field work and online prototyping, we tried to design tools for the new abnormal.

In a time when movement and the ability to gather are restricted, urban activism – like so many other practices – seems like an afterthought to a host of other, more pressing matters. Maintaining your mental health, staying financially afloat, or simply getting through the day are tasks that occupy many of us during this pandemic. What if urban activism could, however, be not merely a distraction from those problems, but might even be able to address some of them in a productive way? Operating within the framework of “Curfew Urbanism”, that was the question we asked ourselves when, in April, the citytoolbox was invited to host a workshop for cultural educators and practitioners organised within the Erasmus+ programme and facilitated by 4iS.

 

The idea was simple: discuss ideas, observe phenomena in urban space, collect qualitative data outside, prototype tools. This workshop format was not only a first for the participants – a diverse group of urban practitioners, cultural managers, artists, students and scholars - but also for the hosts. During the day-long workshop, participants would first join together for an introduction to the citytoolbox methodology and brainstorm ideas for urban interventions that deal with problems related to the pandemic. After spending the afternoon outside in their respective cities, collecting information and inspiration, everyone would meet again to further prototype ideas into possible tools. Two citytoolbox members, Mio and Yannik from ZKU, as well as Joao from 4iS would be there to provide guidance and answer any question participants might have in the prototyping of their tools.

 

The workshop kicked off with Mio doing his best to provide as much practical knowledge about the citytoolbox and its methods as possible to about a dozen eagerly listening participants. The central message was the citytoolbox ethos: understand what a given situation and location requires and adapt to it. After looking at some already existing tools and thinking about their transferability, the discussion quickly moved on to the different problems and needs each one was currently facing in their cities. With participants coming from across Europe, their needs were equally as diverse as their geographical locations. While in Istanbul, for example, a strict curfew was in place at the time, things in Sofia looked much different as restrictions were relatively lax and allowed for much more interaction. Accordingly, where Eylül was more concerned with “hacking” COVID-19 restrictions to get out of the house for a walk at all, Milena was more interested in overcoming behavioural patterns learned over the past year which now felt more like an anachronism. After each participant had the opportunity to share their ideas and discuss them in breakout-rooms, everyone had at least a hunch in which direction they wanted to take their tool. Equipped with a new set of tools to tackle their issues, everyone logged off and ventured into the “real world” for some more inspiration. Spaces such as parks, markets, trainstations, and urban wastelands were visited for ethnographic observations, chats, to find inspiration or otherwise gather data and ideas for a possible new (or newly interpreted) tool.

 

Meeting back online about fours hours later (everyone showed up again – a novelty according to Joao who had hosted two other workshops the days before) everyone was ready to move from idea to prototype. While actually going outside already proved to a challenge, such as for two participants in Istanbul, the rest had benefited from actually being in the physical space they wanted to intervene in, make observations and speak to people. It is almost impossible to design a useful and successful tool simply in front of a keyboard and without the iterative process of engaging with and adapting your idea to the actual environment and those that dwell in it. With some, the excitement about their ideas and the progress they had made in the meantime was palpable, even through a screen. Stella’s idea of bringing together performativity, expressing yourself through your body, and experiencing dance collectively and spontaneously in a public space had taken a more concrete shape and received the charming name “Non-Verbal Plague Alphabet”. The curfew-suffering Eylül proposed a “Walk of Excuses”-platform for Istanbulites to organise their occasional relief from being stuck inside while Mila was interested in further developing her “Activity Cookbook” for Gotenburg teens who had lost most of the spaces in which they could usually engage meaningfully.

 

A further round of breakout-sessions provided another opportunity to discuss the now more concrete proposals in more detail and get feedback from peers. After some fine tuning in the small groups, each prototype was briefly presented and discussed again in the full group. Most showed real promise to be (at least theoretically) implementable in a real setting if some final steps were taken. It is certainly remarkable how quickly a useful urban intervention, big or small, can be thought of and sketched out if the will and framework are provided!

 

So far, we are still excitedly waiting to hear which one makes it out of the conceptual stage eventually. Even if they all remain ideas forever unrealised that might be beyond the point of the workshop as the feedback illustrates. The citytoolbox is not about one specific tool, but about a method of consideration, adaptiveness, and transferability – a notion that seems to have resonated with the participants who expressed gratitude for the new perspectives and skills they were acquainted with during the workshop. If it isn’t this tool that will make it from the drawing board into the city, participants are now equipped with the know-how to design and deploy their own tools without the framework of a workshop.

 

From the citytoolbox’ perspective, the workshop was certainly a success as well. The new approach that alternated between online, offline, and online work engaged participants and showed promise for the future. In a situation in which were forced to work with what was possible – meaning no in-person work – an online workshop opened up new opportunities. Bringing together individuals from very different settings and collectively thinking about suitable interventions was not only enriching for participants but for the citytoolbox as well. While we hope to be able to do as much face-to-face work without a screen mediating the interaction going forward, this “forced” approach has also opened up new perspectives on opportunities to spread the citytoolbox approach to corners it would otherwise not reach.

 

As of the writing of this report, the pandemic has somewhat eased in most European cities and with it restrictions have as well. Although this might make, for example, a few of the ideas from the workshop redundant (for now, at least) as they operated within the specific context of a “locked-down” city, the need for approaches to urban intervention and transformation through methods such as the citytoolbox is as pressing as ever. As the spaces of our cities are becoming more accessible again and sentiments of a departure for post-pandemic chapter are growing from tentative to tangible, everyone is scrambling for their piece of the urban space. The past year seems to have seeded (even more) doubt about the private sector’s and government regulator’s ability to design and organise space adequately in the minds of citizens across nations. We hope that the citytoolbox as a platform and a method can help people take matters into their own hands going forward, enabling everyone to play their part, big or small, in the re-shaping of our cities.

In a time when movement and the ability to gather are restricted, urban activism – like so many other practices – seems like an afterthought to a host of other, more pressing matters. Maintaining your mental health, staying financially afloat, or simply getting through the day are tasks that occupy many of us during this pandemic. What if urban activism could, however, be not merely a distraction from those problems, but might even be able to address some of them in a productive way? Operating within the framework of “Curfew Urbanism”, that was the question we asked ourselves when, in April, the citytoolbox was invited to host a workshop for cultural educators and practitioners organised within the Erasmus+ programme and facilitated by 4iS.

 

The idea was simple: discuss ideas, observe phenomena in urban space, collect qualitative data outside, prototype tools. This workshop format was not only a first for the participants – a diverse group of urban practitioners, cultural managers, artists, students and scholars - but also for the hosts. During the day-long workshop, participants would first join together for an introduction to the citytoolbox methodology and brainstorm ideas for urban interventions that deal with problems related to the pandemic. After spending the afternoon outside in their respective cities, collecting information and inspiration, everyone would meet again to further prototype ideas into possible tools. Two citytoolbox members, Mio and Yannik from ZKU, as well as Joao from 4iS would be there to provide guidance and answer any question participants might have in the prototyping of their tools.

 

The workshop kicked off with Mio doing his best to provide as much practical knowledge about the citytoolbox and its methods as possible to about a dozen eagerly listening participants. The central message was the citytoolbox ethos: understand what a given situation and location requires and adapt to it. After looking at some already existing tools and thinking about their transferability, the discussion quickly moved on to the different problems and needs each one was currently facing in their cities. With participants coming from across Europe, their needs were equally as diverse as their geographical locations. While in Istanbul, for example, a strict curfew was in place at the time, things in Sofia looked much different as restrictions were relatively lax and allowed for much more interaction. Accordingly, where Eylül was more concerned with “hacking” COVID-19 restrictions to get out of the house for a walk at all, Milena was more interested in overcoming behavioural patterns learned over the past year which now felt more like an anachronism. After each participant had the opportunity to share their ideas and discuss them in breakout-rooms, everyone had at least a hunch in which direction they wanted to take their tool. Equipped with a new set of tools to tackle their issues, everyone logged off and ventured into the “real world” for some more inspiration. Spaces such as parks, markets, trainstations, and urban wastelands were visited for ethnographic observations, chats, to find inspiration or otherwise gather data and ideas for a possible new (or newly interpreted) tool.

 

Meeting back online about fours hours later (everyone showed up again – a novelty according to Joao who had hosted two other workshops the days before) everyone was ready to move from idea to prototype. While actually going outside already proved to a challenge, such as for two participants in Istanbul, the rest had benefited from actually being in the physical space they wanted to intervene in, make observations and speak to people. It is almost impossible to design a useful and successful tool simply in front of a keyboard and without the iterative process of engaging with and adapting your idea to the actual environment and those that dwell in it. With some, the excitement about their ideas and the progress they had made in the meantime was palpable, even through a screen. Stella’s idea of bringing together performativity, expressing yourself through your body, and experiencing dance collectively and spontaneously in a public space had taken a more concrete shape and received the charming name “Non-Verbal Plague Alphabet”. The curfew-suffering Eylül proposed a “Walk of Excuses”-platform for Istanbulites to organise their occasional relief from being stuck inside while Mila was interested in further developing her “Activity Cookbook” for Gotenburg teens who had lost most of the spaces in which they could usually engage meaningfully.

 

A further round of breakout-sessions provided another opportunity to discuss the now more concrete proposals in more detail and get feedback from peers. After some fine tuning in the small groups, each prototype was briefly presented and discussed again in the full group. Most showed real promise to be (at least theoretically) implementable in a real setting if some final steps were taken. It is certainly remarkable how quickly a useful urban intervention, big or small, can be thought of and sketched out if the will and framework are provided!

 

So far, we are still excitedly waiting to hear which one makes it out of the conceptual stage eventually. Even if they all remain ideas forever unrealised that might be beyond the point of the workshop as the feedback illustrates. The citytoolbox is not about one specific tool, but about a method of consideration, adaptiveness, and transferability – a notion that seems to have resonated with the participants who expressed gratitude for the new perspectives and skills they were acquainted with during the workshop. If it isn’t this tool that will make it from the drawing board into the city, participants are now equipped with the know-how to design and deploy their own tools without the framework of a workshop.

 

From the citytoolbox’ perspective, the workshop was certainly a success as well. The new approach that alternated between online, offline, and online work engaged participants and showed promise for the future. In a situation in which were forced to work with what was possible – meaning no in-person work – an online workshop opened up new opportunities. Bringing together individuals from very different settings and collectively thinking about suitable interventions was not only enriching for participants but for the citytoolbox as well. While we hope to be able to do as much face-to-face work without a screen mediating the interaction going forward, this “forced” approach has also opened up new perspectives on opportunities to spread the citytoolbox approach to corners it would otherwise not reach.

 

As of the writing of this report, the pandemic has somewhat eased in most European cities and with it restrictions have as well. Although this might make, for example, a few of the ideas from the workshop redundant (for now, at least) as they operated within the specific context of a “locked-down” city, the need for approaches to urban intervention and transformation through methods such as the citytoolbox is as pressing as ever. As the spaces of our cities are becoming more accessible again and sentiments of a departure for post-pandemic chapter are growing from tentative to tangible, everyone is scrambling for their piece of the urban space. The past year seems to have seeded (even more) doubt about the private sector’s and government regulator’s ability to design and organise space adequately in the minds of citizens across nations. We hope that the citytoolbox as a platform and a method can help people take matters into their own hands going forward, enabling everyone to play their part, big or small, in the re-shaping of our cities.