The project Haagse Havens (Harbours of The Hague) has been initiated by Stroom Den Haag (The Hague) to explore new ways of urban development, for which the industrial area Haagse Havens functions as a training ground. In this area the typical urbanistic “blueprint” planning failed, and a new start is sought starting from the existing situation, instead, and in active collaboration with local, small-scale actors. This approach calls for a much better understanding of the current qualities, a more flexible handling of urban planning and regulation, a different way of designing and a better use of the capital available beyond money, in form of available time, energy, love and commitment of entrepreneurs and residents in the area. With Haagse Havens, Stroom continues a line of activities that have brought this center for art and architecture over the period of a decade increasingly closer to shaping the actual physical organisation of the city; as a cultural institution it has thus become itself an active agent in the (re) development of the city of The Hague, spearheading new alliances to experiment the city’s future. In the situation where for years urban development focused on construction, growth and profit, the actors involved here have recently decided (and have been forced) to mark time. Together with the Department of Urbanism, Mobiel projectbureau OpTrek and the TU Delft new perspectives on making city are being sketched and tested. There is a need for a new working method and ethos, which will require a different way of working, looking, appreciating, financing, controlling, designing and regulating. How different exactly, is the subject of Haagse Havens.
The current process of transformation of every aspect of our life towards a higher level of individual and social responsibility, developed by the projects included in this constantly updated map and by many others not yet included, is thus made visible and above all accessible and therefore open to opportunities for connections and collaborations.
Since 2003, when at Cittadellarte we started to systematically catalogue responsible practices in their different declinations around the world, the global movement of social awareness has reached a wider and wider scope of individuals, communities and institutions.
The project Geographies of Change maps this movement into the form of a participative online archive which intends to be a utility contributing to achieving two strategic global objectives: making public, visible and usable the common good represented by the concrete experiences already active in the world, and facilitating connections, both within this geography and among its hubs and any other civil society organization with which to build bridges and collaboration paths.
Created by Cittadellarte and the University of Ideas as a platform for research and action, it aims at being an open project in progress, generated by the users themselves: everybody is invited to position themselves within this geography and to explore it experimenting its potential in the context of their own research and practice.
The ultimate goal of the Geographies of Change is making more obvious, shared, incisive and deep the impact of the practices aiming at changing our societies towards more responsible cohabitation models with ourselves and the planet. Each of us is invited to consider assuming a role which goes beyond being a member of a hypothetical democratic society and activating themselves as agents of change. At Cittadellarte, we have developed an articulated narrative and an hands-on implementation model for this process: we started off by reflecting within the open laboratory of the University of Ideas on the undelivered dream of democracy (rule of the people, from ancient Greek Demos and Cratos) and on the instituting power embedded in daily practices enacted by all kinds of organizations. Each of them constitutes an actual microstate, with its legislative and governing bodies: they perform practices by means of which they actually express power. Thus we coined the term Demopraxy, by which we mean this more effective and actual declination of an old and never accomplished dream, that of Democracy.
Please refer to our websites for further information and contact:
www.cittadellarte.it/en/attivita/demopraxy
www.cittadellarte.it/unidee/
Cittadellarte is a new model of artistic and cultural institution which places art in direct interaction with the different sectors of society, in order to inspire and produce a responsible transformation through creative ideas and projects.
Michelangelo Pistoletto's symbol Rebirth is an elaboration of the mathematical sign for infinity. The two opposite circles represent nature and artifice, the central circle is the conjunction of the two and represents the womb of rebirth.
Take part too: www.terzoparadiso.org
