Project title
Description of initiative
Heritage management institution, local arts initiative, urban gardening community and passionate heritage volunteers working together to change the abandoned First World War heritage site to a resilient community hub in harmony with nature and history. Largely based on voluntary effort and with limited funds, this has been a long, open co-creation process which has led to a unique place for arts and culture, biodiversity and community urban gardening with sustainability at heart.
"Kaunas Fort no. 8" is an ongoing reinvention effort within the city of Kaunas to develop Fortress No.8 based on the principles of sustainability seeking synergy among community, nature and history. Fortress No.8 is part of the city wide, circular network of fortifications where artificial reliefs and underground structures are dominant. “Resilient Fortress of Community” created inclusive cultural spaces in Fortress No. 8 and around for the inhabitants that have been slowly separated by socio-economical reasons from the city’s cultural life.
Artists’ residencies that invited international artists to reside with families from the community in the same apartment buildings were a bridge for crossing cultural boundaries, and creating exposure to diverse thoughts and cultures. Moreover, cultural performances and gatherings not only strengthened already existing culture such as community celebrations but also introduced inhabitants to less familiar contemporary art and culture.
Fortress No. 8 became a site for both climate and cultural activism. The collectivity of the neighborhood was expressed through collaboration with artists, conversations, and the growing ownership of the space. Neighbors were involved, engaged and became the artists themselves. The co-creators of the community hub continue to provide activities that educate, while weaving a historical relation to the place. Excursions and heritage caretaking builds a strong connection to the location as well as the nation’s history.
Themes: Culture and...
Keywords
Target group
Cultural field
Timeframe
Results, benefits, impact and lessons learnt
Learning 1: With continuous mediation and facilitation, heritage and nature protection areas can become community hubs and contribute to overcoming the mental nature-society divide that is deemed necessary to pursue sustainability. Our project challenged and transformed the view of how heritage and nature protection areas should be managed. The most important part enabling this transformation was mediation and facilitation. Before we established the conversation, the fort was a sort of ‘battle’ field of different interests trying to monopolise the territory. Long, careful, adaptive and continuous mediation and facilitation is key to delivering inclusive projects.
Learning 2: Flexible participatory co-creation establishes ownership and responsibility for the place. Co-creation has been a cornerstone element in this project. This requires active seeking for collaborators and ‘mixing’ them in various combinations to test what works and what the place needs. We had many specialists, artists, scientists, public servants and locals co-creating and interacting as equals where we created an environment where everyone’s contributions are welcome. This intentional welcoming disperses the ownership of the project to all participating.
Learning 3: Decentralisation of decision making power, culture, arts, science, knowledge and social benefits in cities has to be a long and persistent pursuit that requires contextual sensitivity on a neighbourhood and even site level rather than the whole city as a uniform unit. The more we delved into the context of our site and got to know active people practicing their interests the more we noticed the unique potential this specific place holds. The existing situation itself informed all our activities and collaborations as it continuously provides us with a to do list. Once we have the new item on the list we embark on the journey to find who could work with it on site in this way bringing everything that the place needs straight to it.