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2018

Charting the Grounds
Together

In year one of our project, we set off from our current situation: 9 schools joined us together in our eTwinning Project. Cities with heavy industry, steel production, mining, coal or cities that are currently undergoing other major changes. 5 of our partner schools won the eTwinning Quality Label.

We all wanted to understand the changes that are happening to us at the moment, find ways to help steer towards a positive future together.

​We first explored topics that came out of the predominant discussion at that time: environmental protection and which mistakes should be avoided, waste deposited and recycled, looking for new natural resources and fuels and how we can move toward a fair, 'clean' economy and living in diversity.

We found that there was "so much more to changes going on than just resources being depleted". We found that our lives are about to change very fundamentally, drastically. Over the period of the next 20-30 years our lives will change dramatically -  in all our aspects of live: family, city, work, housing, social contacts, communication, leisure time, waste disposal.

We saw that it would be impossible to chart all those grounds in our project. But we wanted to at least get a basic understanding of it.

2019

Encounter

The two founders - whose cities look so alike in their 'visual appearance' - found that there was so much more under the surface to be explored than 'just mines'. That there were major differences: one city has the past of a host city, the other of being guests. And surprisingly, with the emerging coal industry, also becoming hosts for guest from more local regions.

We set out to year two with two major questions guiding further explorations:

  • What are the main 'drivers' that have shaped lives in our cities' pasts? How did these drivers function?

  • What is worth perserve, rescueing or recreating for our future?

'Digging deeper' needed cutting down from the broader aspects of initial questions that were more centered on environmental issues. We found, we needed to look at the social aspects of our lives, on integration, working together, creating city live together. On work, on families, on reering children. Aspects that are more ephemaral to grasp - and not reflected in all the main stream discussions.

Aspects that are actually so immensely important, so directly influential in all our lives.

In our second year we explored our past and future, interviewed coal miners, city changers, visited places, played together in a theatre workshop. We identified 'The Integration Machine' as central to our cities' development and worked on ideas how to recreate elements of it as one part of our future workshop.

2020

Despite the lockdown, we wanted to share our work. Since an exhibition on sight was not possible, we chose our Twinspace to invite people to focus with us on one central aspect of our work that emerged during our project year 2019 and that was the center of many of our discussions - now that 'shared work as a central integration machine is gone (with all its positive sides and drawbacks) how can we recreate this important 'heart' of our cities. How could we help recreate parts of it?"

eTwinning
Event

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