Urban Echos – A platform for thoughtful practices for common spaces
We are reaching out to you as our long-standing partners who have helped to foster creative economies in our cities and regions over many years. We would now like to shift our focus with you to new fields of action to regional economies that are both creative and inclusive, resilient and more common-grounded. We will show you practices which enable more commoning and for more multi-coded spaces where we see alternative solutions. We will echo with our partners around the globe these connections and the exchange of experiences to help you nurture your city and region.
We will showcase with you an economy that prioritises the expansion of accessible green spaces for all allowing more encounters of publics, and encourage diverse communities in our cities. It´s the need of the people, their purposes, and the collective will that drives our “next communities” against the backdrop of injustice. Amidst the global challenges of climate crisis, resource scarcity, and growing social inequality, we believe that regional and urban development must be inclusive and more than sustainable. Commons play an essential role in this critical development, significantly contributing to the enhancement of well-being, care, solidarity, equity and alternative economies.
Our interest is to show you how creative economies can embrace wider common needs and building-up new place-based communities. We connect creative economies with the need of better public infrastructures that are more inclusive, foster collective well-being, and depend on post-fossil resources. European cases will focus on more cradle-to-cradle, circular economies and up-cycling designs that have had hard times in the euphoria of the creative growth of the 2010s. Of course, smart technologies are essential, if it nurtures inclusivity, commons, and well-being. In doing so, collaborative participation will be key to foster more commoning.
Starting in September 2024 with Co-Developer Dr. Steve Harding (Birmingham), Katharina Kipp (Berlin), Dr. Sebastian Schlüter (Marseille) and Dr. Bastian Lange (Berlin) we will offer you practices and principles that shape resilient and equitable spaces. The following articles and contributions showcase practices and initiatives that create and enhance spaces of commoning in both urban and non-urban environments. By sharing case studies, experiences, and expertise, we aim to collaboratively learn and explore what it means to create commons that enhance more inclusivity, decarbonization, and spaces we love to share with others.
In 2024 we will build a range of cases studies and through 2025 we will start to pull together the threads of these experiences and fashion some key points to share with you linking creative economies, culture and well-being. Follow us on LinkedIn.
What´s next? How can we co-design collaborative solutions to help makerspaces in times of pandemic?
What are practical measures and approaches for policy makers post-Covid to help build innovative solutions? An intermediate comment by Susy Silva (Lisbon), Dr. Steve Harding (Birmingham City University) and Dr. Bastian Lange (University of Leipzig) after six months of global pandemic. The text is a proposal how to co-design collaborative solutions for makerspaces in Europe.
Author: Dr. Bastian Lange, Urban and Economic Geographer, University of Leipzig.
Cultural interface projects – digital placemaking strategies of the city of Mannheim (Germany).
The city of Mannheim is widely known in Europe for its progressive culture and creative industries eco systems. But how to adept running cultural and creative interface projects in times of pandemic? We reach out to Dr. Matthias Rauch, Cultural Creative Officer at Startup Mannheim, to interview him on city´s digital placemaking strategies in times of Covid-19.
Author: Dr. Matthias Rauch, Startup Mannheim
Youth in times of Covid-19: Where are the spaces for young adults?
How are young adults doing in times of Covid-19 and the restrictions it imposes? Dr. Bastian Lange comments from a spatial point of view on their living conditions and pleads for more niches and experimental spaces to be made available for young people in the city as well as in the countryside.
Author: Dr. Bastian Lange, Urban and Economic Geographer, University of Leipzig.
Tapping the innovation potential of crisis
Creative industries habe been heavily struck from Covid-19 but at the same as crisis-proof leverer of innovation. Inga Wellmann reports on how the city has supported creative industries making use of their innovative potential.
Author: Inga Wellmann, Head of Arts and Creative Industries Department, Ministry of Culture and Media, Hamburg
The arts approach to incubation spaces: and why do we need them?
When Susy Silva, Co-Editor of the blog, asked Beatriz Bagulho to visually translate her thoughts about her workplace, what it could be, she only made one request: make it utopian.
Author: Susy Silva