Workshop: ‘Re-imagining public spaces and place-making through collaging’

Last August, Krea-Urbanista was invited to organize a workshop for Skol Urbano program (urban school), which was part of the latest (7th) edition of the Kaya Kaya street festival. Kaya Kaya started in 2017 as a street festival in Otrobanda, Willemstad. The event is used as a community tool to create a long-lasting positive impact for Otrobanda in preparation, during and after the festival by focusing on social, cultural, physical and economic improvements. This year, the Skol Urbano program was introduced with the goal to unleash the participants' creative side. In the week leading up to the street festival, an empty school building was transformed into a place where people could attend various performances and sign up for workshops that included art, dance, poetry and music. 

Since Kaya Kaya focuses a lot on place-making by improving public spaces in preparation for the street festival, we wanted to delve into this topic by organizing a series of workshops where participants (of all ages and backgrounds) had to re-imagine public spaces in Otrobanda or other parts of the city center. To do this in a simple, yet creative way, participants had to visualize their preferred public spaces by creating collages as a group. For the final session we were honored to collaborate with dr. Ilja Simons, who shared information about placemaking: the art of designing public spaces that bring communities together. The use of collages is something Krea-urbanista applied in previous articles and it’s a great tool to visualize ideas, start discussions and inspire others. As part of the Skol Urbano, we also presented these previous collages in the form of an exhibition. 

THE WORKSHOP

The aim of the workshop was to hear and learn from our participants; what would their ideal public spaces look like, feel like and how should they function?

The workshop was designed to enable participants and help them think outside of the box and see all the possibilities. We started by discussing past and current public spaces, and afterwards the participants worked on choosing which elements they would like to see for the future of public spaces in our inner city.

Beforehand we carefully selected about 120 distinct images and illustrations, divided in the following categories: Cultural Elements, Economic Elements, Environmental Elements, Physical Elements and Social Elements. Participants were free to look through all of these images, and additionally newspapers and magazines were also available as a source of inspiration for their collages. As part of the warm up, all 4 groups decided on an area within the inner city as a focal point. Once the materials were collected they could get to work to illustrate their envisioned future inner city.

In the end, we ended up with 4 distinctive collages, each focusing on a different part of the city. Afterwards, we analyzed the collages to extract the data within. This process was very insightful, as we were able to see and understand the vision of the participants. One important part of this is to not only focus on what the groups have selected, but also to reflect on the reasoning and meaning behind the selection. In the next section a summary of our main findings can be found.

THE RESULTS

Green third places

All the collages have a strong focus on adding natural greenery as decoration, shade and shelter. Urban green spaces, that would function as a  ‘third place’, seems to be on the top of the list for the participants. This green recreational area where people can go and spend time should feel comfortable, safe, have basic amenities, like water, shade, seating and opportunities for small-scale food/drinks selling and consumption. Therefore not creating green spaces with just green, but combining these green areas with various activities to turn it into a destination for people.

Public spaces stimulating healthy lifestyles

As mentioned before, the areas should be a safe place where people come to meet, chill and spend time with friends and family (without having to spend money to be there). Shaded walking routes to stimulate a healthy lifestyle also function as a way to connect one area with another. Furthermore, there is a need for outside sporting and exercising. Think about biking, public exercise machines, playgrounds, and skating but also an area where group (sporting) activities can take place.

Flexible public space 

It is not that there are no big spaces for public events, but when there is no event, these areas are underused and can have a rather empty look and feel. A stage or amphitheater that can be moved, built and expanded on, but also deconstructed easily, can make an empty area like this useful for ‘day-to-day’ purposes. Here, the focus should be on creating a comfortable and flexible outside space for practicing cultural activities like dance, music and theater. Flexibility can also be enhanced with pop-up activities like food trucks, small events and art installations.

Active use of waterfront views

As a port city, Willemstad has an undeniable connection with water. However, if you pay attention, most of its waterfront is underused as it is not accessible to public or obstructed by parking for cars. In the collages there is a bigger focus on activating these waterfront locations with boulevards, seating areas, terraces,water sports, atmospheric nighttime light(shows), kiosks, harbor related activities and more to turn the waterfront into places where people can spend quality time enjoying the island lifestyle.

There were some ideas and elements that didn't fit into these categories, but still stood out. How about instead of having statues spread out, a dedicated park with statues called ‘plenchi di heroe’? Or a more active nightlife use of public spaces with cosy lights and places to go out in a safe environment? A multifunctional art corridor that serves as interactive art but can also be used as a backstage for performances? How about spaces that are more pet-friendly? These are some of the creative ideas the participants came up with. 

OUR CONCLUSIONS SO FAR

From an urban design perspective, all collages showed that a combination of various activities in one public area make it attractive for a wide audience. Multifunctionality is key. This shows that we cannot approach public spaces only from one perspective, but different disciplines need to work together to create a great place. From the process side, the collaging workshop proved to be an effective tool to stimulate discussions within the groups and to visualize their thoughts. People know very well what they want and want to be involved in making their ideal places. It was a positive experience for Krea-Urbanista and for the participants. We look forward to more of these activities in the future!