Dear Writing Urban Places network members,
As we approach the second phase of Writing Urban Places and COVID-19 restrictions are being progressively lifted across Europe, we could start moving from reflection to action. The thoughts and conversations we’ve had in the past two years around theories, methods, fieldwork, and communication should also affect reality. It’s time to put into practice all the important things that we’ve learned.
In this second phase, we would like to reshuffle how we organize ourselves, moving from thematic Working Groups to teams that can focus on specific mid-size cities where different WG members collaborate, based on their interests and affinities, with external parties.
With these ambitions in mind, we now reach out to you, hoping that together we can collect proposals to develop several fieldwork events to take place in mid-size European cities throughout the two final years of our Action (i.e. 2022–23).
What could these fieldwork events look like?
First of all, and according to the focus of our Action, they would take place in mid-sized European cities, understood as cities with regional importance in economic, cultural and social sense; not small towns or villages, neither capitals nor metropolises.
Secondly, these events would take many shapes and make use of different formats. For instance, teachers could develop a particular aspect of their research on-site with students as an event. Other events could be workshops, training schools, public debates, or meetings with a specific purpose; or festivals, the collective production of works of art, performances, and much more. Whatever form they may take, though, proposed events should offer all parties involved clear opportunities to examine, evaluate and discover specific aspects of a city, especially concerning our ambition for meaningful, appropriable, and integrated built environments.
Who should come up with and/or propose one of these fieldwork events?
We are reaching out to all Action members who live, know or work in a mid-sized European city, and feel capable of establishing concrete and productive collaborations via their academic institutions or with local private and public institutions, media, other researchers, students, citizens and communities.
To cover all these points, each proposal should include the host city, a responsible organizing party (individual + institution), potential stakeholders to involve, and a succinct description of the activities that would constitute the event (up to 500 words). By keeping this call and the definition of fieldwork events somewhat open, we want to embrace the enormous viewpoint diversity that defines our network. In return, we hope to receive wonderful, exciting, and clearly formulated proposals, which can be sent via email to writingurbanplaces@gmail.com before September 15, 2021.
A pre-selection of these proposals will be presented and jointly discussed at the Mid-Term Conference in Porto on October 27, 2021.
Thank you for your cooperation!
