IMPROVING COMMUNICATION AND SAFETY PERCEPTION INSIDE THE NEIGHBORHOOD
We start this project with the clear intention to have a direct action with the people and for the people, without aiming to change the world with our actions, but still believing that even for just two people, our project meant something: a laugh, a good conversation, an exchange of experiences or just a leaflet in a mailbox. Safety is a concept that can be applied on several levels, from nation to individual, passing through social groups you are involved in, like family or colleagues. But there’s another group, a community, based on where you live: the neighbourhood. A very heterogeneous group of people that sometimes share just one thing: living near each other.
In event like burglaries the physical proximity it’s fundamental to prevent and help the victims during and after the burglary. How can this proximity become something more than just physical? The answer is pretty obvious to know, but difficult to apply. It’s a basic daily life relationship between people, made of a greeting, waving hands or small talks about the weather: a starting point of a new relationship that can develop or remain like that for years. Our project is the contact point between safety and communication, a combination that could be stronger than every lock on earth in preventing burglary.
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1. BURGLARY PREVENTION EVENING IN A FORMER CHURCH IN SCHUTTERSBOSCH
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Talking about burglary prevention and neighbourhood in Netherlands, one of the first possibility already existing is Buurtpreventie (neighbourhood watch): it is a system in which inhabitants check for irregularities in the neighbourhood in collaboration with police.
Conclusions from the event were drawn, among the others: the personal relationship between Buurtpreventie team and inhabitants is missing and there is a need for a real social network.
We set some goals for our next steps: [1] giving people opportunity to conWe contacted Eric van Kassel (Safety tribute and work for their community; Advisor Gemeente Eindhoven) to have [2] creating pretexts for people to further information about this system meet; [3] fostering any kind of exand he invited us to a Burglary Prechange (favours, information and vention Evening for two neighbourexperiences). hoods in the south, Gijzenrooi and Schutterbosch. Later on, we prepared a survey for the participants, asking basic questions about the awareness of the system and about safety perception and personal experiences about it.
preventie meeting
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networking and filling in the survey
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2. WHY GIJZENROOI?
CHOOSING GIJZENROOI FOR OUR PROJECT
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At the prevention event we meet Johan Blaazer, the buurtcoordinator of Gijzenrooi, the responsible of the Buurtpreventie program in the neighbourhood. He told us that they were introducing round in the neighbourhood and that they were searching volunteers to walk around. We kept in contact with him and we sent him the results from the survey, to start a possible collaboration between us, sharing knowledge and possible improvements of the system: we want to be his hands helping him promote buurtpreventie and the first rounds through the neighborhood. After a walk in the neighbourhood, mapping all the relevant information (meeting point, inhabitants social class, parks, services) and the first meeting with Johan Blaazer Buurt- en Straatcoรถrdinator Johan, we decide
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TO CHOOSE GIJZENROOI FOR SEVERAL REASONS: [1] No meeting point; [2] Three different social classes living in three different areas of the neighbourhood; [3] Already existing association, that deals with organization of events and facilitating contact between people; [4] The opportunity to follow and promote the implementation of buurtpreventie, with the first rounds.
Buurtpreventie team from Gijzenrooi
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3. BUS STOP EVENT
PRODUCING A CAMPAIGN TOGETHER WITH INHABITANTS GIVE A SAFETY ADVICE TO YOUR NEIGHBORS.
The first event was made with the purpose of introducing ourselves and the project to the people of the neighbourhood: getting to know each other is fundamental in order to gain the trust of people you are working with. We chose the last stop of bus number 12 because of its benches, the constant flow of people going to the lake, getting off the bus and because is perhaps the only meeting point of the community, in particular for elderly people. Few days before the event, we invite everybody with a leaflet, given door-to-door to each house of Gijzenrooi (about 800). THE EVENT HAD 3 MAIN GOALS: [1] meeting buurtpreventie team; [2]sharing safety tips; [3] collecting ideas and proposals from inhabitants to improve safety and communication in the neighborhood. 13
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Giving tips.
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Writing advices
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4. ROUND WITH BUURTPREVENTIE TEAM PROMOTING AND MAKING THE WALK MORE VISIBLE
Highlighting a round is very important to communicate your presence and your service to the people you are checking on. For us it was a very practical assignment, because we were responding to their need of an identity that makes them feel legitimized of their role. We create a banner with buurtpreventie logo, t-shirts for all the team and warning card whenever an irregularity occurs. OUR GOALS FOR THIS WALK: [1] highlighting buurtpreventie round with t-shirt and banner; [2] testing people reactions to our passage; [3] checking irregularities of houses and communicate them to householders (personally or with warning card).
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5. COMMUNITY EVENT NATUURMARTKT
PRESENTING OUR RESULTS FROM PREVIOUS EVENTS RECRUITING PEOPLE FOR OUR NEXT EXPERIMENTS
In the frame of the Natuurmarkt, a community event about biodiversity, we presented the outcomes of our previous actions and we engaged in longer conversation with people interested in the topic. Besides collecting ideas and feedback, we use this occasion to recruit people for our next event and make them fill a form about their relationship with the close neighbours of their street. Some days before, together with information about our presence at the Natuurmark, we “presented� the result in the public space, through a series of posters all signed by neighbours of Gijzenrooi: a series of personal statements from people to people, sharing the information and the process of its creation as a pretext to talk (in the occasion of bus stop event). 22
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6. SMALL TALKS
5-MINUTES PRETEXTS TO TALK TO YOUR NEIGHBOURS: FAVOURS, INVITATIONS, OFFERS, GROUP ACTIVITIES.
Talking to your neighbors is the base for a happy and safe living inside a community. Small talks is a set of 5-minutes experiments that helped us to test neighbors reactions to simple pretexts to meet and get closer to them, like asking favours, inviting them for a coffee, offering them something. One of the most active people of the team chose to join us to act as a facilitator and to get to know other people from the community. Other than the pretexts written above, the experiment was a pretext in itself to start a conversation with those people which they never had the occasion to meet or to introduce their selves to.
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Survey and gaining particpants for our further event.
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Breaking the ice between the inhabitants. Knocking to unknown neighbors with a pretext to get to know them.
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Breaking the ice between the inhabitants. Knocking to unknown neighbors with a pretext to get to know them.
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7. CONCLUSION
ARTICLE FOR THE LOCAL NEWSPAPER “HET ZEGJE”
We get to know Gujzenrooi in April, during a Burglary Prevention Evening organized for the neighbourhood. We were there as some of you to hear about Buurtpreventie, something totally unknown for us. We were working for a school project about safety (commissioned to the Design Academy by Openbaar Ministerie and Politie) and from the first moment we were willing to take our project out of the Witte Dame. We start working with Johan Blaazer, the Buurtcoordinator, to come up with ideas to promote Buurtpreventie and the upcoming rounds in the neighbourhood. We want to share with you some thoughts that came to our minds after the event we organized at the bus stop and the round with team. The response to our first action was quite good, even if we reached people already involved in the community 32
activities: the conversation easily turned out to be a complaining about the problems with just few constructive ideas and proposals about how to increase safety in the neighbourhood, but we expected this kind of outcome. It was important for us to give people a moment of dialogue about their community and getting to know them. The round with the Buurtpreventie team was an occasion to get an active role and better understand how people react to this activity. We were quite surprised that almost nobody even waved or say hi to the volunteers that were providing a service for them and the community. After this, we decided to shift our attention to the overall communication between people in Gijzenrooi, that, in our opinion, represent the basis of a safe community. 33
Safety is a concept that can be applied on several levels, from nation to individual, passing through social groups you are involved in, like family or colleagues. But there’s another group, a community, based on where you live: the neighbourhood. A very heterogeneous group of people that sometimes share just one thing: living near each other. In event like burglaries the physical proximity it’s fundamental to prevent and help victims during and after it happened. How can this proximity become something more than just physical? The answer is pretty obvious to know, but difficult to apply. It’s a basic daily life exchange between people, made of a greetings, waving hands or small talks about the weather: a starting point of a new relation34
ship that can develop or remain like that for years. We were talking about this with some of you at the Natuurmarkt: nice ideas and proposals came from your side about how to create stronger connections between people in the neighbourhood. A lot of you were very enthusiastic about it and want to take part in making some of them real. Here are some of the outcomes: having garage sale, having exchange points (where you can take some stuff and leave other clothes), street barbeque, walking dinner (a dinner in which each course is served in a different house), making marathon for children and adults, sharing food, sharing the newspaper. We commit to making one of these ideas real in September, working together with the Association and those 35
of you who want to get involved. Tell us what it’s your preference or other proposals: write us a mail to this address protocoolers@gmail.com. If you want to know more about our project, visit the website http://protocoolers. tumblr.com. A special thanks to Johan Blaazer, the Buurtpreventie team and all the people of neighbourhood who shared something with us. We have never felt so welcome, thanks for your warm collaboration!
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Gabriela Baka & Lorenzo Gerbi protocoolers.tumblr.com protocoolers@gmail.com NL 0627519643 / 0684285428 IT +39 3807897023