What forms, policies, architecture, economics, collectivity, ecology, or law can help to mitigate inequalities in housing in the context of Košice?
Reading about housing, we have identified how it was formed by social factors – nuclear family, division of work and home, but also non-human factors - energy efficiency, accessibility of land, and financialization in the markets. The understanding of housing as a commodity, rather than a safe space (Madden, Marcuse, 2016), contributes to its constant unavailability. With other crises approaching we see urgency to react.
We believe a more imaginative approach to housing, crossing various sectors as well as changes in local discourse should take place. Firstly, we need relevant data and information. Drawing from recent events in Ukraine, local policymakers, architects, activists, the humanitarian sector, and academia, could and wish to work in a more intertwined way: exchange information and experience and work together. That could enable new approaches and models of housing: the architecture of change and possibility, beautiful and sustainable, delivering responses that in time promote the capacity for action, peace, and resilience.
Never Never School – as a platform – is a place to support such links, by creating collaborative and solidary safe space. Rather than seeing migration as an infrastructural, military, and economic problem to be solved, we want to find out and manifest different new layers of care, helping all of us feel safe without associating one's sense of safety with identity-based belonging (whether migrant or not). People are constantly on the move – ‘temporality’ is embedded in the housing as such. By integrating the experience and approach of the humanitarian sector in interdisciplinary spatial practice and vice versa participatory, context-based, sensitive, and collaborative approaches of planning into the humanitarian sector – we place importance on the processes that create space and affect everyday lives and also empower spatial planners and researchers to make this necessary positive change.
The context of Košice as a city in Eastern Europe has its peculiarities. Slovakia lacks public housing due to 1990’s legislation on the privatization of state housing, the new is built sparingly and commercial housing is financially inaccessible for many. Slovakia faces huge problems of housing overcrowding: 1,7 people per room compared to the EU average of 1,2. Homelessness, especially in Košice, is disturbingly common. The global market puts a lot of pressure on local governments and their zoning strategies. In 2026 in the city of Košice, a new factory is to be built and an influx of temporary workers is expected. At the same time, around 1 mil. people entered Slovakia alone due to the war in Ukraine (UNHCR). The government and the public had to deal with emergency accommodation suddenly and unprepared. Moreover, many refugees are staying long-term (estimated 92 000 according to IOM) but can't be moved out of the 'temporary' sheltering, due to the poor housing reality.
Never Never School is a contribution on a level of innovation of the imagination of what housing can be, but also, what professional capacities are needed in the future, to co-create better situations for housing planning. Institutional education is often insufficient training for critical futures. It is important to step outside the predefined political terrain and understand planning as an interdisciplinary issue and education as a collective imagination.
The Never Never School 2023 takes place September 3rd – September 10th 2023 in Košice, Slovakia.
The space of Never Never School is structured in such a way, that:
🏠 Opening of the exhibition: Housing Stories
Fiona de Heer
📍Východoslovenská galéria, Alžbetina
🗓️ 4. 9. 2023, 19:00 – 20:30
🏠 Never Never Talk: Participatory housing. What is it and what potential does it have to address housing unaffordability?
Tomáš Hoření Samec
📍 Východoslovenská galéria, Historická sála, Hlavná 27
🗓️ 5. 9. 2023, 19:00 – 20:30
🏠 Never Never Workshop: How do we organise as tenants?
Yuliya Moskvina
📍 Tabačka Kulturfabrik, Fabrik café, Gorkého 2
🗓️ 6.9.2023, 17:30 – 18:30
🏠 Taste and Share with Never Never School
📍 Tabačka Kulturfabrik, Fabrik café, Gorkého 2
🗓️ 6. 9. 2023 18:30 – 20:30
🏠Never Never Talk: Housing in times of migration
Fiona de Heer a Michal Sládek
📍Historická sála VSG, Hlavná 27
🗓️ 8. 9. 2023, 19:00 – 20:30
🏠 Never Never School: Final show
📍Kreatívny Labyrint VSG
🗓️ 9. 9. 2023, 19:00 – 20:30
Voluntary admission fee.
In August 2023, a one-month funded residency took place in Košice. Following an open call, the selected resident, Fiona de Heer, contributed to research on the topic of Housing in times of crisis.
The residency was the result of a joint collaboration between the East Slovak Gallery and Spolka. Fiona de Heer is thus a participant in the specialised residency program, which is part of the project of the East Slovak Gallery in Košice – House of Mine. Fiona is a talented urban planner and landscape architect with Dutch-Irish roots. Her passion is working on the intersections of gender and environment in complex urban contexts. Over the last 10 years, she has worked in various locations including Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Uganda, Philippines, Japan, China, Sweden and the Netherlands for various UN agencies, NGOs, academic institutions and start-ups. During her residency, Fiona focused on the topic of housing affordability for different groups in the context of Košice in collaboration with the Never Never School platform. Her research took the form of workshops she conducted with, for example, the Ukrainian community, the Roma minority, women at risk of violence and many other groups. She presented the results at the summer school. The summer school was thus based both on her research and on the experiences of the actors involved.
Supported by Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway trough Grants of EEA. Cofinanced from Slovak Republic state budget.
Supported from public funds by the Slovak Arts Council.
The project is supported by the City of Košice.
Thanks to our partners East Slovak Gallery (project House of Mine).