One of the consequences of urban development based on the logic of the current real estate market is visible social and economic inequalities. The current crises – ecological, climatic, migratory or pandemic – deepen the inequalities even more significantly and affect not only human but also more-than-human actors.
We envision cities as places for all, where populations have the opportunity to live safely and well without catastrophic consequences for their surroundings and the planet. The concept of care seems to be the prism that will enable this value reversal, where instead of economic returns we put the quality of life for all residents – humans, animals, plants and the planet as a whole – at the forefront.
We understand care as Tronto and Fischer:
“Care is a species activity that includes everything that we do to maintain, continue, and repair our world so that we can live in it as well as possible. That world includes our bodies, ourselves, and our environment, all of which we seek to interweave in a complex, life-sustaining web.“ (Tronto, Fischer 1993)
This means that how we want to live in our cities is also dependent on caring for each other. The possibility of caring, of creating and developing caring relationships and communities in one's neighbourhood, thus stands at the heart of the caring city – whether in academic discourse or public life.
Attentiveness to the needs of different actors also stands at the centre of caring for us. For each of us has different needs, based on our perspectives, backgrounds, and experiences. Our needs are also reflected in our ideas about the shape of a good city, which is thus slightly different for everyone.
One way for us to move closer to our shared ideals of caring cities is to create and write caring stories about their possible futures. Writing can take many forms: discussing, playing, designing, or building. During Never Never School we will discuss how we imagine caring cities, while testing aspects of caring city-making in practice, situated in specific places in the city. At the core is the need to move away from universal ideas of the good life and towards particularistic and pluralistic ideas under question:
How to write situated caring stories of the future for the good life for all?
By focusing our gaze on urban design, we further ask:
Who, what, and how do we care for cities? Under what conditions?
What does care mean in urban design?
How do we create and support resources for care?
How do we care for and with the planet?
What spaces and infrastructures of care do we need in cities?
Is our city caring? Who does our city care for and who does our city exclude from care?
How do we bring sensitivity to context into decision-making about the shape of the city?
How can we distinguish between good care and the quest for dominance cloaked in the rhetoric of care?
How does the specificity of the post-socialist context affect the approach to care?
What role does imagination play in caring approaches?
a many more…
We reflect on this topic together with the following authors.
Never Never School 2021 offered a unique scientific and educational programme created by the 9 participants of the symposium together with the Spolka collective and expert advisors. The peer-to-peer educational symposium hosted interdisciplinary lectures, workshops and discussions on the topic of care in the city-making.
| Event | Space | ||||
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15. 9. | 13:00 | 15:00 |
| RUVK - Realistická utópia Veľký Krtíš (Realistic Utopia Veľký Krtíš): Care from the future |
| Kino Úsmev, Kasárenské námestie 1, Košice |
13:00 | 15:00 | Michal Mitro: Value: New translation | Židovská náboženská obec Košice, Zvonárska 5 (vstup z Krmanovej 4), Košice | |||
15:00
| 15:30 | Never Never team: Welcome | Poď na dvor, Kisdyho, Košice | |||
16:00 | 20:00 |
| MAK!: Cooking on Košice metal plate |
| Poď na dvor, Kisdyho, Košice | |
16. 9. | 9:00 | 13:00 |
| Ladislav Bíro & Juraj Havlík: How to revitalise with care and not forget the people or the planet (?) #lecture |
| Kino Úsmev, Kasárenské námestie 1, Košice |
14:00 | 18:00 |
| Lívia Valková: Urban activity: Relaxation |
| Trhovisko na Dominikánskom nám., Košice | |
19:00 | 21:00 |
| Mestoláska X Never Never School: Caring cities |
| Kino Úsmev, Kasárenské námestie 1, Košice | |
17. 9. | 9:00 | 13:00 |
| RUVK - Realistická utópia Veľký Krtíš (Realistic Utopia Veľký Krtíš): Care from the future |
| Kultúrno-vzdelávacie centrum Štátnej vedeckej knižnice v Košiciach, Pribinova 1 |
14:00 | 18:00 |
| Milan Kroulík: Framing as a tool for tuning to the environment |
| Poď na dvor, Kisdyho, Košice | |
19:00 | 0:00 |
| Never Never team: Evening at Červený Breh |
| BIKE PARK Červený Breh, Košice | |
18. 9. | 9:00 | 13:00 |
| Michal Mitro: Value: New translation |
| Židovská náboženská obec Košice, Zvonárska 5, Košice |
14:00 | 18:00 |
| Juraj Horňák: Caring city hacking |
| Kino Úsmev (parking), Kasárenské námestie 1, Košice | |
19. 9. | 10:00 | 12:30 | Spolka: Caring cities: Reflections and utopias at the common table | Židovská náboženská obec Košice, Zvonárska 5, Košice |
LEGEND
1. Židovská obec
2. Vedecká knižnica
3. Dominikánske námestie
4. Club Coloseum
5. Kino Úsmev
6. Poď na dvor
MAK!
Cooking on Košice metal plate
Among architects and structural engineers, the term "Košice metal plate" is well known. We think that you can cook on it. At the same time, it can be made into urban furniture (a bench). Knowing that the Košice vast iron industry is far from having only a positive influence on Košice, it can contribute to the shape of public space.
Ladislav Bíro a Juraj Havlík
Ladislav Bíro & Juraj Havlík: How to revitalise with care and not forget the people or the planet (?)
And although it's always about the same things: participation, sustainability, greenery, quality, all on time... what does it really look like in practice in a post-socialist context? How to revitalize with care and yet not forget the people or the planet? Laco and Juraj share a concern for our environment and an interest in placemaking. Their contribution consisted of short presentations, a group activity, a walk and discussions. The aim was to share, connect, question and reflect together.
Lívia Valková
Lívia Valková: Urban activity: Relaxation
The topic of the activity of relaxation and, in an exaggerated way, storage space for the body is based on the experience of the city of Košice as a transfer station. The symbol of the waiting room as a place where a person waits for the next process, but at the same time exists with his/her natural needs, translates into the motivation to create and dedicate a space for (non)citizens in the city where they could rest, physically and mentally, lie down or switch off in all seasons and needs, including the needs of hygiene.
Mestoláska X Never Never School
Caring cities
One way for us to move closer to the shared ideal of caring places is to create and write caring stories about their possible futures. This can take many forms: discussing, playing, designing, or building. Mestoláska – public lecture with discussion – concludes the thematic year of caring by discussing concrete examples of how we imagine caring cities, while also bringing aspects of caring city-making into practice.
Hosts
Irena Lehkoživová – curator of the VIPER gallery in Prague
Adriana Jesenková – philosopher, Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice
Michal Synek – sociologist, Centre for Theoretical Studies, Charles University
moderated by Lýdia Grešáková – Spolka & Never Never School
RUVK - Realistická utópia Veľký Krtíš
(Realistic Utopia Veľký Krtíš): Care from the future
This workshop is a tool for public administration, a game, but also a method of thinking about possible futures, scenarios, phenomena or organisations that go beyond the usual political agenda. Care from the Future is an innovative version of the game Thing from the Future, which is already used in the context of public administration.
Milan Kroulík
Milan Kroulík: Framing as a tool for tuning to the environment
The workshop focused constructively on framing as a creative tool for grasping and shaping the environment and finding the germs of novelty in the seemingly already fixed. A philosophical interpretation was complemented by a walk to cultivate attention and sensitivity to one's surroundings and culminated in a more permanent material intervention.
Michal Mitro
Value: New translation
Workshop of reflection, imagination and speculation on forms of creating and understanding value. Value needs a new translation – from the abstract to the tangible, from the hyperobject to a graspable human scale. Only in this context can what constitutes it be intimately explored and proposed. The workshop was devoted to thinking about and imagining alternatives to monetary structures as a "universal value system". How can we value the care, solidarity or education or energy contingencies of non-human actors?
Juraj Horňák
Caring city hacking
Public space is the nervous system of the city. For a city to be healthy, it must function well. Whether it does is not just a question for the city government. Each of us has the power to contribute our impulse and revive the dead parts. In this workshop, we used abandoned shopping trolleys often found in the streets to hack a city simply and with care.
Caring Košice creates caring communities and spaces. That's why we invited a diverse range of local actors to collaborate with us in this year's Never Never School. In their spaces and in collaboration with their communities, it is possible to situate individual activities.
Židovská obec
This place is primarily concerned with people who profess Judaism and protects against manifestations of anti-Semitism, racism, xenophobia, Nazism, fascism or any kind of discrimination. It is dedicated to the restoration of their architectural and cultural heritage.
Štátna vedecká knižnica
The library is mainly visited by students of medicine and other natural, humanities, applied and other sciences. Foreign pensioners and women in retirement are also regular visitors.
Dominikánske námestie
Markets provide an essential opportunity to sell local agricultural produce and are also an important meeting place.
Kino Úsmev
It looks after lovers of cinema and traditional urban cinema as well as the general public and casual passers-by. It is a lively place on the city map.
Colloseum Club
Behind the creation and running of the club is a group of local residents who for almost two decades have been creating conditions for work, presentation and interaction of people from different subcultures in the city.
Poď na dvor
Through their activities, the people of this community take care not only of neighbourly relations but also of the environment in which they live.
Advisors:
Adriana Jesenková – philosopher, Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice
Irena Lehkoživová and Barbora Špičáková – curators of VIPER gallery in Prague
Michal Synek – sociologist, Centre for Theoretical Studies, Charles University
Team of organizers:
Spolka+
This edition of the Never Never School is supported by the Slovak Arts Council.
The programme was conducted in a pandemic situation and the format of the symposium was continuously adjusted to suit the pandemic measures currently in force. This is also why this year's Never Never School was open primarily to Czechoslovak participants.