Urban Talk #60 The city as a learning space

URBAN TALK
Wednesday, 23.10.2024, 6.00 p.m. | IfA Halle 2 (tbc)

Ellen Schindler - The city as a learning space

‘Can we talk about the city in a different way?’

Ellen Schindler talks about the graphic novel METRO O1O, a visual story as a platform to deal with the city in a different way. A cartoon that addresses the love of the city, civic engagement and personal responsibility for one's own living environment from a collective narrative and sensitises children to the topic of urban planning. After all, it starts on their own doorstep! ‘Do we need a new mindset to involve the young generation of city dwellers in the major future tasks of urban development processes?’

With this book, Schindler wants to awaken young people's interest in their own city and open up and intensify the discourse on urban development for young people. However, professional city-makers must also actively involve young people in urban development themselves. This is why Schindler poses the question after the book: ‘How can we involve the young generation in urban development in a serious, concrete and structural way? ' SERIOUSLY, because we need to develop a language and tools with which we can address young people at eye level. CONCRETE, because it must also lead to results and we must share these results. STRUCTURAL, because we need to institutionalise youth participation. We have to turn it into ‘brushing teeth’: we don't think about it any more, we just do it! During the Polis Convention 2024 (Düsseldorf 2024), De Zwarte Hond organised the ‘Manifesto of the City Makers of Tomorrow’ in the polis WERK.STADT. together with representatives of cities and professional city makers to offer it to cities and city makers with a concrete approach in the near future.

Ellen Schindler is partner / managing director and responsible for the Berlin office, Business Strategy & Development, MarCom and Internationalization of De Zwarte Hond, a firm for architecture, urban planning and strategy. She is the founder of Foundation YOU (Young Optimisc Urbanists) that aims to encourage young people to take responsibility for their urban living environment through multi-layered educational projects in the form of a book, a manifesto and/or manifestations, resulting in a visual story, the graphic novel METRO 010. Ellen Schindler was a board member of the Council for Culture, an advisory body to the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science. She is also chairman of the board of the dance company Conny Janssen Danst and a board member of Cultuur Concreet, an organisation that supports local cultural initiaves in the cities of Rotterdam.

Click here to download the poster.