Making The City Tangible - Using Urban Spaces

In October 2022, several workshop days with young people on the theme of "Discovering the City'' took place in Berlin. The workshop series was planned and implemented with the two great local partner organisations S27 and StreetUniverCity from Berlin.

The workshop series is part of the two-year Erasmus+ project "UrbEX", which is realised by the five international partners Tesserae from Berlin (Germany), Nomadways from Toulouse (France), ZEMOS98 from Seville (Spain), 4change from Lisbon (Portugal) and Bond of Union from Palermo (Italy). In each of the five cities, urban exploration workshops will be offered, designed according to the local context - more information here.

The workshop series in Berlin was divided into two coordinated parts and followed a playful-practical approach to city discovery. The participants were young people, mostly newcomers to Berlin and with migration experience, between 16 and 24 years old and living in different parts of Berlin.

(Re-)discover! The first part of the workshops took place in the heart of Kreuzberg in the premises of StreetUniverCity. At the beginning, the young people created collective portraits of each other, on which the young people then added their personal associations with "What does the city and its discovery mean to me"? Then it was off to the neighbourhood! In small groups, the young people (re-)discovered the area, each taking on a perspective of Kreuzberg - music, sport, food or activism were examined more closely using task cards. And of course, on the urban forays - according to the perspective - there was no missing out on trying out snack bars, basketball courts or listening to music together. The result was creative, funny short presentations full of surprises and new discoveries for the whole group.

Roll out together! On the second day of the workshop, the mobile StreetBlaster from StreetUniverCity was used. Together, the technical wonder box was rolled through the streets of Kreuzberg to Oranienplatz, which is known throughout the city. Once there, the participants had to "capture other perspectives and voices". They approached various passers-by, mostly residents of the area, and conducted interviews or made music with them. The focus was again on the topics of music, sports, food, activism and neighbourhood life, in order to further expand the facets of Kreuzberg on these topics. The participants themselves also had their say. A video will be produced from the recorded sound and photos.

Build, build, build! The second part of the workshops took place in Neukölln on the new urban experimental field "Falscher Fisch" of the S27. What will be built has been a surprise so far. Now it's clear: we're building a raft! When the participants arrived at the large workshop, canisters, wooden parts and various tools were ready for work. The participants worked together for several hours - they learned a lot from each other while sanding, sawing, drilling, hammering or painting. The result was a bright red raft with a yellow flag - ready for a trip on the water.

Try out and use it! This was the motto for the last of the four workshop days. The final work for the test raft trip was done - without further ado, paddles were designed and built. Then it was time to “get out of the workshop ... and onto the road”, because the raft was rolled to the entrance of the Landwehrkanal. The insertion on the water succeeded - the raft that had been built was able to float. The first two brave ones venture onto the raft and paddle along the Landwehrkanal, sometimes standing, sometimes sitting. The action is accompanied by an inflatable boat and a few onlookers follow the urban raft trip from the banks. The enthusiasm for their own work is great, because: looking at urban space from the water, with a self-made object, is a powerful form of using and appropriating the city.