Social
Spaces

On March 28th, Social Spaces – together with the other project partners – organized a press conference on the current project “Future Formers”. Future Formers is the winning concept of the “GO 2030” competition and will be developed in five cities in Limburg (B): Beringen, Genk, Hasselt, Overpelt and Sint-Truiden. The youth of these cities – together by a coaching designer or artist – will translate their vision on the future in an artistic production (which will also address the problems and possibilities of public space in the city). By building on each other’s adaptions to a common design, the youth of the cities will create a collective Gesamtkunstwerk.

The press conference took place at Cultuurcentrum Genk. During the conference, also the designers/artists that will be coaching the youth of the five cities were presented: Aifoon (Beringen), Daan Gielis (Genk), Gert de Clercq (Hasselt), Karl Philips (Sint-Truiden) and Peter Westenberg (Overpelt). Three skaters (Mathias Ricour, Michael Reyskens, Sander Thys) introduced the speakers and, with their skateboards, made sure the press conference went like planned.

First of all, Eef Briers presented the scenario she wrote – called “Even bijkletsen” – that won the “GO 2030” competition and led to the setup of the Future Formers project. She wrote the text in the framework of an internship she was doing at eeland, an organization from Genk that works with youth and deals with communication and new media. During the press conference, Eef read aloud a fragment of the scenario in which she sends a ‘mental mail’ to a friend that she hasn’t seen for a long time. In the mail, she tells her friend about the changes that have taken place on Earth since her friend has moved to “De Kroon”, a new and virtual world that covers the old and physical world.

The next speaker was Marnic Speltdoorn, delegate of Stichting P&V. Stichting P&V organizes projects for and by young people, thus supporting their involvement in the community and letting them actively participate in building a solidary world. By setting up the “Go 2030” competition, Stichting P&V challenged young people to express their ideas and suggestions on our future society.

Then, Valerie Del Re and Wim Dries, who represented eeland, talked about the organization and the work it does. Eeland wants to grasp the new communication between youth on the one hand and education, government and the labor market on the other. The current communication between them is often considered by youth as being classic, boring or dominant. Eeland wants to open up new media, social media and gaming as mainstream media for the ‘digital natives’ of today.

The next speaker was Liesbeth Huybrechts (representing research group Social Spaces) who also talked about the more practical matters of the project. The starting point of the artistic production will be Thomas Lommée’s “Open Structures”. OpenStructures departs from a common geometric grid that anyone can download and use. In the framework of Future Formers, Lommée designed a new, loading body for a three-wheeler VESPA APE. This loading body and the common grid form the core of individual artistic projects per town. The youth of each city will be remixing and reacting to each other’s adaptations to the grid. Each adaptation reflects on the views the young people have on their futures. During the artistic production, the youth will have to follow the rules of the game:

Next, designer Thomas Lommée – who will be the over-all coaching designer, monitoring the entire artistic production – explained the Open Structuresprinciple a bit more. The growing need for materials, the scarcity of raw materials and the growing of our waste dumps are the starting point for Open Structures. An important element of this system is that it’s open, meaning everyone can participate in the design and can build on existing designs. This ‘remix’ element allows for respecting the individuality of the towns and the other designers and artists. It also makes it possible for the designers and artists – together with the young people – to always find a solution that meets the specific needs of the individual cities.

If you want to know more about the project Future Formers, check out its weblog. Other reports on the press conference can be found on Limburg Actueel, Jeugdwerknet and Steunpunt Jeugd.

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