// TOWARDS A NEW CREATIVE FUTURE FOR WENDLAND
The FRINGES urban design studio, as the title suggests, focuses on those areas located at the margins, in a peripheral area that need to be valorised. It attends to innovative visions for those settlements that live a progressive weakening, among metropolises and economies getting stronger and attracting more and more young generations. The purpose is to discuss and debate about these territories, and further understand the influences that new creative projects can have on these places and local economies. How to reverse the course? How to make these places more attractive? Why and how to live in Wendland? Starting from these questions, the urban design studio starts rethinking the urban and territorial spaces of the Wendland region. It is a special place where creativity, cultural and natural heritage, social activism and resistance coexist. It is a site where history mixes with new initiatives and projects, where soft power acts for the improvement in local innovation. The emphasis is spatially bound in those spaces where culture and arts can reverse the current situation, where social activities can trace new creative networks and social impacts, where local actors, practitioners and policy-makers are changing the places and people’s perceptions. Beside the aforementioned argumentations, the studio aims to debate about the future of Wendland, the impact of the vision of a common habitat, making new values, enhancing the existing local resources and cultural heritage (intangible and tangible), creating new job opportunities and promoting the spatial development. In order to achieve these objectives, the studio observes and studies many international experiences and best practices of creative and
social innovative renaissance, such as the “Bollenti Spiriti” regional programme of Puglia (Italy), the Edinburg Fringes Festival (U.K.), the “albergo diffuso” of Sextantio (Italy), the reactivation of the saltworks of Salinas de Añana (Spain) and Periferica of Mazara del Vallo. From the research and exploration phase the studio examines these experiences and try to understand if a similar future is possible in this remote German territory. In order to display new pathways of spatial changes, the studio adopts qualitative and quantitative methods, with exploratory surveys, unstructured interviews to local actors, socio-economic and demographic analysis, and context mapping (local infrastructures, water system, urban settlements and natural spaces). The new scenarios and visions aim: 1) to improve the quality of the living spaces; 2) to enhance the cultural heritage and the handicraft; 3) to valorise the creative scene, starting from the “Kulturelle Landpartie” and creating new possibilities and events during the year; 4) to develop the neglected sites and define new connections and networks for the UNESCO sites of “Rundlings”; 5) to make this region accessible and attractive for young people and new visitors and workers. The DIE KUNSTLINGE project (Betancur, del Cura) has contemporary art at the core of the scene, defining a programme that spreads around the region many cultural and artistic activities. The “Rundlings” inspire this creative “invasion”, creating places to live for young people - especially artists and craftsmen - the “Kunstlings”. Thanks to the interactions with the communities, the project aims to reveal the local desires and passions for the place, and to seek the development of new ideas and innovative solutions for the urban and territorial areas. The
INTRODUCTION
Federica Scaffidi
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