The Arts Tower (room 16.03), Western Bank, Sheffield
4 - 7 pm, 18 March 2015
The Agency research group invites you to a seminar jointly organised with Marc Neelen, Visiting Professor at SSoA, and his international practice STEALTH.unlimited:
Urban - Makers - Makers - Economies
Contributors:
Kathrin Böhm
Cristina Cerulli
Tom James
Jenny Pickerill
David Rodgers
Ana Dzokic and Marc Neelen (STEALTH.unlimited)
Myfanwy Taylor
Increasingly, citizens find themselves jointly re-inventing part of urban life, and with that, part of urban economy. “We, the citizens” behind these initiatives are a broad range of neighbourhood activists, artists, spatial practitioners, architects, and many others trying to give urban life a new horizon. They are determined to take things into their own (collective) hands, to address existential needs (housing, workspace, work) or fundamentally reshape the city away from the terrain of speculative development and financialization into something that provides a ground for all of us.
The seminar Urban Makers, Makers Economies does not just further delve into the motives behind this and the perspective for such initiatives to induce systemic change on a larger, urban scale, but equally explores the economic models and power relations that are getting shaped through various projects and initiatives. The seminar is therefore the domain of those actively engaged in such endeavours, those researching them or interrogating them in the larger framework of things, as well as the many of us curious as to what this breed of initiatives has to offer, as it is from the onset clear that we face a wide range of both inspiring, but rather different approaches to the “making” of a different urban reality, like co-operative initiatives, or radically non-profit models. Even if we have witnessed a surge in such initiatives, there is still limited experience with them, with their implications and differences, and with their possible viability as urban change makers. Are they indeed the seeds for a much needed, immanent change?
