LABAttoir  project. 2015 - 2019 by ArtBOX.gr

LABATTOIR PROJECT

2015 - 2019 ART FOR SOCIAL CHANGE

LABattoir project 2015-2019

A SOCIALLY ENGAGED MACHINE FOR THE PRODUCTION OF CULTURE. LABORATORY OF APPLIED CREATIVITY RESPONDING TO SOCIETY’S NEEDS AND PROBLEMS INTRODUCING SOLUTIONS AND ALTERNATIVE STRATEGIES WITH THE ARTIST AS CATALYST AND THE CITIZEN AS CO-PRODUCER.

LABattoir project 2015-2019

2015 - 2019

IMPACT REPORT LABattoir (2015-2019) is a project by ArtBOX nonpro it organisation in collaboration with the Municipality of Thessaloniki, implemented through a founding grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF), as part of SNF’s €10 million grant allocated to the Municipality of Thessaloniki.

- University of Southwestern Switzerland), and Kalliope Kati (human geographer), in collaboration with ArtBOX and LABattoir’s core team - Christos Savvidis, Lydia Chatziiakovou and Sotirios Bahtsetzis.

This publication documents the project’s concept, experiences, methodological approaches and continuation via the follow-up project Common Lab (2020-21), developed by ArtBOX in partnership with Goethe-Institut Thessaloniki, in the framework of GoetheInstitut’s Excellency Initiatives 2020. The chapter “About LABattoir” is based on the Executive Summary of the Final Impact Report of the project, written by the project’s research team -Prof. Max Spielmann, Rainer Rosegger and Andrea Iten from Hyperwerk Institute for Postindustrial Design (Academy of Art and Design

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LABATTOIR PROJECT

THE TEAM

Secretarial Support Stela Anastasaki (August 2018-September 2019) Konstantina Drosou (March-July 2018)

General Coordinator Elli Chrysidou, artist, Vice Mayor of Culture Municipality of Thessaloniki 2013-2019

Technicians Themistoklis Sevastiadis (March 2018-Dec 2019) Likourgos Leisos (March 2018-October 2019)

Board Yanis Boutaris, Mayor of Thessaloniki 2010-2019 Elli Chrysidou, artist, Vice Mayor of Culture Municipality of Thessaloniki 2013-2019 Lydia Chatziiakovou, curator, Co-Director ArtBOX.gr Thouli Misirloglou, President - Atelier 3-103 Yiannis Stavrou, Executive Vice-President Federation of Industries of Northern Greece

Interns Maelle Julou, Dylan Lehmann, Anastasia Panagou, Annie Tsevdomaria

Artistic Director - Project Manager Christos Savvidis, Founding Director - ArtBOX.gr Curator - Project Administrator Lydia Chatziiakovou, Co-Director - ArtBOX.gr Theoretical Advisor Sotirios Bahtsetzis, Research Director - ArtBOX.gr

Resident Artists1 Evi Karathanosopoulou Thomas Koch Christof Mayer - raumlaborberlin

Research Team Prof. Max Spielmann, Rainer Rosegger, Andrea Iten (Institute Hyperwerk for Postindustrial Design) Kalliope Kati (human geographer - Member of of LABattoir’s Research Lab)

LABATTOIR PROJECT

Production & Communication: Christina Vlachou (March 2018-December 2019) Giannis Fourkiotis (September-October 2019) Stella Manikati (March 2018-August 2019)

Media Lab Coordinator Giorgos Kogias ( ilmmaker, photographer) Media Lab Consultant Martin Scha ner (Institute Hyperwerk)

Visual Communication Studio Hervik

In collaboration with ARTECITYA by Goethe-Institut Thessaloniki 1.

LABATTOIR PARTNERS STRATEGIC PARTNERS Hyperwerk Institute for Postindustrial Design Goethe-Institut Thessaloniki (Rudolf Bartsch, Director, and Aris Kalogiros, Head of Cultural Department) Cultural Entrepreneurship Hubs by Goethe-Institut Artecitya Thessaloniki Fraunhofer Gesellschaft

Goethe-Institut

PARTNERS Freiraum Platform Goethe-Institut Brussels Goethe-Institut London University of Thessaly - MA Postindustrial Design Aristotle University of Thessaloniki TIF - HELEXPO AFI - Action Finance Initiative Greece Communitere Arsis Praksis Solidarity Now

Cultural Entrepreneurship Hubs

FREIRAUM Platform

HYPERWERK

FRAUNHOFER

ABOUT LABATTOIR

SOCIALLY ENGAGED MACHINE FOR THE PRODUCTION OF CULTURE LABORATORY OF APPLIED CREATIVITY LABattoir is a project by ArtBOX Non-Pro it Organisation, realised between 2017-2019 (with a preparatory period between 2015-2017) together with the Municipality of Thessaloniki and in strategic partnership with Institute Hyperwerk for Postindustrial Design (Basel), Goethe-Institut Thessaloniki and other organisations. LABattoir was implemented thanks to a founding grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF), as part of the SNF’s €10 million grant allocated to the Municipality.

LABattoir was conceived by ArtBOX as a socially engaged machine for the production of culture; a laboratory of applied creativity responding to society’s needs and problems, introducing solutions and alternative strategies with the contribution of the artist as catalyst and the citizen as co-producer. LABattoir’s mission was to introduce a new conception of creativity, to invent new activities and practices, and engage

artists and creative citizens with art, design and new forms of “social practice”. To that end, LABattoir was developed based on these concepts and practices: art for social change, non-formal education, work as invention, post-industrial design and commoning. The project was also based on initial, mostly empirical, research on identifying the problems and needs of the local society, with the intention to use research as an integral part of the programme throughout, as a tool for selfre lection that would serve to make adjustments necessary according to the participants’ feedback.

LABATTOIR GOALS

LABATTOIR MAIN TARGET GROUPS

According to its overall mission, LABattoir set the following goals:

According to its overall mission, LABattoir addressed two main target groups:

• Enhancement of existing capabilities and acquisition of new ones, leading to a more meaningful engagement of individuals within the expanding realm of social entrepreneurship.

Creatives, with a focus on the young and emerging.

• Consolidation of innovation, empowerment for self-action, and community-building within the real economy.

• Expansion of participation and enhancement of social cohesion through specially conceived projects for the city of Thessaloniki.

Marginalised groups, which in the course of the project were identi ied more speci ically as the people living or working in the Second District of Thessaloniki, the area where the Old Municipal Slaughterhouse, base of LABattoir, is located - an area which faces a lot of socio-economic challenges.

LABATTOIR PROGRAMMING PRINCIPLES

LABATTOIR WORKSHOP CATEGORIES

To address the needs of those target groups, LABattoir’s programme was oriented towards informal education, capacity building, vocational education, empowerment, collaborative working, participatory design, self-organisation and social cohesion. This translated into workshops and training with experts from Greece and abroad, as well as public events, which apart from serving as agents of visibility and dissemination, also functioned to a large extent as opportunities for the participants to apply the knowledge and expand the network acquired through the programme.

The workshops were divided into three categories: the Urban LAB, the Media LAB and the Research LAB - all three referring to the workshops themselves and the teams of participants that emerged from them.

PROJECT DEVELOPMENT

PROCEDURE AND CHALLENGES RESULTS AND LESSONS LEARNED

In retrospect, one can identify ive phases in the development of the project:

WAITING FOR START (0)

Each of these phases was associated with certain circumstances and challenges. In the irst operational phase of the project, for example, it became apparent that the cooperation between the project team and the permanent city administration presented more challenges for both sides than expected at the time of planning, regardless of the ongoing support from the Mayor’s O ice and the Deputy Mayor for Culture. This is due to two di erent organisational cultures being brought together.

Project development

AND CHALLENGES Among other things, this manifested itself in strong restrictions on the possibilities for using the main spatial resource of the project: the old slaughterhouse. This in luenced the entire course of the project and the results achieved. Essential to this were adjustment processes in project management and project implementation. The inal phase in 2019 is designated “Phase 4 - Seed II” and forms the basis for the follow-up project, Common Lab (CoL). Based on preliminary work, successful access to the neighbourhood had by now been established. This made it possible to take steps towards “art for social change” in a social ield characterised by diversity.

2015-2017

Project development

RESULTS AND LESSONS LEARNED Since this project was located in a complex ield of actors and social milieus and pursued the goal of enabling change through innovative activities, accompanying research was implemented from the beginning. This research was oriented towards the Theory of Change and should thus at the same time provide results for assessing an impact in the sense of an evaluation. Successes can be seen in the areas of attracting the attention of target groups and stakeholders to the project’s agenda and in the change of attitude and approach to the activities.

Due to this broad awareness among certain target groups, many people could be addressed and involved with knowledge transfer through the many activities and training sessions. Overall, numerous activities and events (59 activities, including 35 workshops and training sessions) were implemented and many people (2.169 unique participants and visitors) were reached. After the preparation period, the implementation activities in the neighbourhood were successfully implemented.

59 ACTIVITIES

Results

SKILLS DO YOU BELIEVE YOU ACQUIRED ADDITIONAL KNOWLEDGE / SKILLS DURING YOUR PARTICIPATION IN/ COLLABORATION WITH LABATTOIR, WHICH COULD BE USED FOR YOUR PROFESSIONAL ADVANCEMENT?

Results

SATISFACTION HOW SATISFIED WERE YOU BY THE ACTIVITIES?

Results

NETWORK DO YOU BELIEVE THAT PARTICIPATION IN THE LABATTOIR ACTIVITIES OFFERS A CHANCE TO NETWORK AND COOPERATE WITH INTERNATIONAL ARTISTS, ORGANISATIONS, AND INITIATIVES?

Results

REPETITION WOULD YOU TAKE PART IN ANOTHER ACTIVITY, OR VISIT LABATTOIR AGAIN?

Results

IMPACT HOW MUCH DO YOU BELIEVE THAT THE LABATTOIR PROJECT ACTIVITIES HAVE AN IMPACT ON ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD (B’BOROUGH OF THE MUNICIPALITY OF THESSALONIKI)?

Results

IMPACT ON THESSALONIKI HOW MUCH DO YOU BELIEVE THAT THE LABATTOIR PROJECT ACTIVITIES HAVE AN IMPACT ON THESSALONIKI?

Projects and initiatives with the aim of initiating social innovation and thus enabling changes with regard to given challenges require time. Experience from other projects shows that it takes around ive to seven years for visible and sustainable success and for signi icant impact to be achieved in neighbourhoods. Similarly, the evaluation of the LABattoir project shows that time is a key factor. The project had, after deduction of preparation and follow-up time, two years to implement e ective measures. At the end of the project, higher-level success in terms of achieved outcomes and impacts in the de ined ield of activity became apparent.

The demand to start a follow-up project to consolidate and expand these achievements was repeatedly mentioned in the discussions and interviews during the evaluation.

Project development

OUTLOOK

THE LABS’ ACTIVITIES INCLUDED THE DESIGN OF AND EXPERIMENTATION WITH THREE TOOLS AS TRAINING OPPORTUNITIES AND ACTIVATORS OF PARTICIPATION, PUBLIC SPACES AND COMMUNITIES:

THE MOBILE STUDIO, THE MOBILE STAGE, THE RESEARCH STUDIO.

THE TOOLS

THE MOBILE STUDIO A TOOL FOR THE COLLABORATIVE CREATION OF MEANINGFUL -ONLINECONTENT. The Mobile Studio is a compact broadcasting studio, that enables live recording, editing and broadcasting, eliminating the need for post-production and using simple and a ordable equipment. It is a fresh approach to the collaborative production and distribution of audiovisual content, since it does not require specialised knowledge or expensive equipment. It is purposefully easy to learn, so that the emphasis is directed towards the content itself, and towards the exploration of the possibilities simple technology gives to produce meaningful content.

The Mobile Studio was designed and built through LABattoir's Media LAB workshops, with the support of Goethe-Institut Thessaloniki. It is based on the innovative mobile studio created by Hyperwerk Institute of Post-Industrial Design.

THE MOBILE STAGE A TOOL FOR ACTIVATING (PUBLIC) SPACES AND COMMUNITIES THROUGH PARTICIPATORY COLLECTIVE PERFORMATIVE AND ARTISTIC INTERVENTIONS.

THE MOBILE STAGE

The Mobile Stage creates a safe space for people from various backgrounds and disciplines to explore, learn and create together, through di erent art forms and engagement formats. As it does not need specialised knowledge, it functions as an "equaliser", a ield for experimentation with others. Thanks to its modular design and creative usage of light, the Mobile Stage gives the freedom to imagine a large variety of setups, shapes and forms, adaptable to di erent spaces and conditions. Users are encouraged to see (public) space as a space that allows for dynamic relationships to emerge; as a void that can be appropriated and designed by the People, and through the de inition of the various interdependent functions and roles. This is highlighted further by the fact that the Stage has no borders - its limits are transparent, de ined only by light, bringing luidity and interchangeability to the di erent elements. The Mobile Stage was designed and built through LABattoir’s Urban LAB workshops, with the support of Goethe-Institut Thessaloniki. The inal concept design was created by artistdesigner Bilal Yılmaz, with the active contribution of coalesce (creative group that emerged through LABattoir’s workshops) and other participants.

A TOOL FOR CREATING A METHODOLOGY FOR THE RESEARCH, PRACTICE AND EVALUATION WITHIN THE CULTURAL AND SOCIAL SECTORS. LABattoir’s Research Studio is based on the combination of two methodologies, the Theory of Change and the Social Reporting Standards; a new approach that can provide a tool for evaluating cultural and social projects, based on both qualitative and quantitative data. Thanks to this approach, the research feeds into both the programming and the evaluation of the project based on participatory action research.

The actual research and inal impact report of LABattoir was designed and implemented by the Research LAB workshops, whose results were taken into account for the future programming, empowering the participants to become codevelopers, guided by experts from Hyperwerk Institute for Postindustrial Design.

THE RESEARCH STUDIO

THE BUILDING THANKS TO LABATTOIR, THE OLD MUNICIPAL SLAUGHTERHOUSE BECAME, EVEN BRIEFLY, THE FLAGSHIP FOR CULTURAL INNOVATION IN THE CITY.

Built in 1896-97, the old municipal slaughterhouse of Thessaloniki functioned as such until 1988, with a short break between 1978-1980, when it was temporarily shut down to repair damages caused by the 1978 earthquake. In 1994, the building was listed as an architectural monument, being a typical example of late 19th early 20th century industrial architecture. Located in the industrial and commercial port area of the city, the old municipal slaughterhouse was among the innovations that carried Thessaloniki into a new era of inancial growth, back in the late 19th century; and it regained this dynamic role also in the period that it hosted LABattoir.

INTERNATIONAL EXPOSURE BASEL, BERLIN (X2), CARLISLE

With the support of LABattoir, Urban Lab members participated in Floating University, one of the projects for which Berlin-based raumlabor architects received a Golden Lion in Venice Biennale 2021.

LABattoir created opportunities for LAB participants to travel abroad and participate in international exhibitions, showcasing their work and expanding their network. Participants traveled as ambassadors of the project to Basel, presenting LABattoir to students of the Hyperwerk Institute for Postindustrial Design during a series of workshops whose results fed into the project development. In Berlin, members of Urban Lab participated in Floating University - the international summer academy organised by raumlabor architects. In partnership with the project Freiraum by GoetheInstitut, a series of educational activities and public events were developed and implemented by lab members bringing together Thessaloniki and Carlisle (UK). Finally, in the context of the same partnership, members of Media Lab traveled to Berlin, where they participated in an international exhibition, presenting the works they created through LABattoir.

WORKSHOPS LABS Informal education, collaborative learning and doing, capacity building, participatory design, selforganisation. LABattoir's philosophy is based on these principles as critical towards the empowerment of both its target groups: young creatives and the community physically close to the project. In order to instil this philosophy and the necessary skills to them, LABattoir's core programme included workshops, led by international and local experts, such as architect Christof Mayer from Berlin-based architects raumlabor, recipients of the Venice Biennale Golden Lion 2021.

The workshops were divided into three categories/ research areas: the Urban LAB, the Media LAB and the Research LAB. The LABs’ activities focused on the design of and experimentation with three tools as training opportunities and activators of participation, public spaces and communities: the Mobile Stage, the Mobile Studio and the Research Studio.

LABATTOIR NEIGHBOURHOOD INITIATIVE The LABattoir project was based in the building of the Old Municipal Slaughterhouse, located at the western entrance to the city, next to the port. This is an area characterised by transitional and multiple uses - abandoned industrial buildings, o ice buildings, nightclubs, shopping malls, car repair shops, the red district, the old train station, newly built apartment buildings next to older singlestorey houses and shops. Not so far from the city centre but very far from the minds of its residents, this area has often been the subject of redesign and investment, waiting for the gentri ication that never came.

LABattoir made a point of reaching out to the people living or working in the area, in order to activate their sense of community - something that came up as their own, common demand. Their input and participation led to the LABattoir Neighbourhood Initiative - a space for the community to get acquainted, discuss commonalities and di erences, and work towards solutions.

LABATTOIR NEIGHBOURHOOD ACTIVITIES A MEETING POINT / COMMON PLAYGROUND FOR THE MAIN TARGET GROUPS OF LABATTOIR: THE LABATTOIR LABS (COMMUNITY OF INTEREST) AND THE LABATTOIR NEIGHBOURHOOD INITIATIVE (COMMUNITY OF SPACE). In the Neighbourhood Activities, LABattoir built a bridge for creatives and community to come together and put art for social change into practice, using the LABattoir tools -Mobile Studio, Mobile Stage and Research Studio- as tools for building common ground, empowering individuals and activating collaborative action towards collective welfare.

EXHIBITIONS TRAINING TALKS PUBLIC EVENTS A rich programme of training workshops, exhibitions and talks that expanded the public of LABattoir, with short, one-o , audience-building events.

Addressed to both creatives from di erent disciplines and the general audience, LABattoir's public programme aimed towards introducing its main concepts -art for social change and post-industrial design- art as well as to providing practical skills and theoretical knowledge.

Tania Bruguera

Jeanne van Heeswijk

KIDS LAB: TV & RADIO STUDIO EXPERIMENTATION WITH THE TOOLS: MOBILE STUDIO AND MOBILE STAGE. ACTIVATION OF THE LABS.

The workshops for schools and children (ranging from elementary to high school groups) were designed as opportunities to experiment with the two main tools, the Mobile Studio and the Mobile Stage, and as a ield for the activation of LAB members to practice the skills they acquired through the project.

FROM LABATTOIR TO …

LABattoir ended at the end of 2019 according to plan.

Common Lab’s (CoL) mission is to create a Manual for Social Innovation through Art, in order to empower communities to overcome crises, employing art for social change, post-industrial design and commoning practices. Common Lab (CoL) is a programme by Goethe-Institut Thessaloniki and ArtBOX, in the framework of GoetheInstitut’s Excellency Initiatives 2020. CoL is based on the experience gained through LABattoir.

www.commonlab.info

… COMMON LAB

2015 - 2019

LABAttoir project. 2015 - 2019

LABAttoir  project. 2015 - 2019