Let’s re.invent Athens by |Global Citizens|
We are a three-member team of Cultural Management students, interested in Athens’ regeneration through culture and co-creation. Within the context of the workshop “Athens Co-Creation City Branding Project”, hosted by Betty Tsakarestou, we took a journey around the world to explore initiatives, campaigns and cases that apply to vibrant cities and have a message to communicate to the world.
Global citizens a.k.a. Eva Anagnostaki, Ourania Mavriki & Anastasia Rizou
After several stops around the globe, we’re finally in Athens, our city! We’ve explored the city’s key stakeholders, assets, we’ve set our values and now we’re ready to step into action with our suggested Strategic Plan.
Athens is a charming city with great history, great food, creative and open people, good weather and a diverse social nexus. Nevertheless, Athens is not the new Berlin, either Amsterdam or Paris. In order to reinvent itself, Athens should and can “hack” crisis and redefine its assets, by using its citizens’ creativity and co-creating innovative structures and models.
It was a typical evening downtown and our team was strolling around Plaka neighborhood, enjoying a walk through tourists, neoclassical buildings and ancient ruins. One member mentioned that it’s like we’re living the city as tourists. Suddenly, a smiling man with a woman passed us by and the man told us:
“We, we are living the city as citizens”.
This spontaneous response from an Athenian was the basic source of inspiration, which led us to the concept of Re.inventing ourselves and therefore Re.invent Athens.
We’ve applied this concept to four main sectors, that we believe to have the greatest potential for the future of our city: food, culture, grassroots movements and public space. So after having a closer look at each sector, through interviews, research and brainstorms, we came up with the following strategic design!
FOOD: Re.experience the Greek Cuisine
During the last years, many small Greek producers have managed to brand their products and export them to other parts of Greece and beyond. Many of our interviewees indicated the importance of Athens, as the epicenter of exports, as it offers a variety of facilitations and network opportunities. This led us to the idea of a food market with branded Greek products, located in an Athenian arcade.
The primary goal of this initiative is to make Athens the main communication hub for local Greek producers, in order to outreach to the world and set the mechanism for exports increase. For this reason, it will be a prerequisite to already have a distribution channel abroad. This means that when a foreigner visits the market and tries out a product, not only he can take it home, but order it from home too!
Furthermore, the transformation of an Athenian arcade to a market place will result in a fresh, new use of the arcade, contributing to the discourse about the need for multi-use public spaces. According to Project for Public Spaces and its 10 Strategies for Transforming Cities and Public Spaces through Placemaking, we need to transform our streets into places, create multi-use public spaces and invest on local economies through local markets.
Through this action, we aspire to:
- Educate producers in becoming more extrovert, accessible, reachable and develop unique brands
- Let Athenians and tourists experience the Greek products and motivate them to adopt a healthy Mediterranean diet
- Introduce an alternative use of public spaces
To sum it up, the message is clear:
Re.adopt the Mediterranean cuisine, experience the Greek food and take it home with you.
CULTURE: Re.frame Greek Culture
Athens is defined by its cultural identity, as much as its cultural identity is defined by the city of Athens. But what is it really all about? Our experience indicated that there seems to be a historical gap between ancient and contemporary Athens, or even worse, that there is a lot of attention for the city’s ancient history and a limited focus on its recent journey through time. Based on this observation, we want to re-connect the city with its history throughout the years and offer a complete view to the city’s rich story, to both visitors and Athenians.
The idea is to create a Museum trail in order to offer a holistic and fresh perspective of the Greek cultural history. The root will be guided by young unemployed experts and will connect the Athenian museums in a historical/chronological continuum. This action will serve a double purpose, benefiting both visitors and guides. On the one hand, visitors will be able to understand the evolution of Athens through time, experiencing their museum visit in a different, innovative, interesting and pleasant way. On the other hand, the social dimension of this idea is that it will offer an enriching experience to young unemployed people, who have a degree in this field but cannot be absorbed by the shrunken market (Eurostat reports on national unemployment rates).
Through this action, we aspire to:
- Create a unique tourist experience through a holistic approach
- Offer experience to young unemployed experts
- Create a narrative which links the museums and foster collaborations
To sum it up, the message is clear:
Experience a cultural time travel from ancient times to nowadays.
GRASSROOTS MOVEMENTS: Re.connect Athens
A unique phenomenon that has flourished during the time of the crisis in Athens, is the various citizen groups that have been formed, in order to deal with daily challenges, share their dreams and try to build their future. However, there seems to be a lack of connectivity between the groups and their initiatives are sometimes left unknown to the wider local context. For this reason, we came up with The filema project in order to embrace co-existence and exploit crowd wisdom in the urban environment, starting with the concept of “filema”. The unique cultural trait of the “filema” (which means to treat another person, with food or drinks, usually home-made, as a way to welcome her and start a conversation) will be used as the starting point of a dialogue between the local communities of a neighborhood, in order to enhance connectivity in an offline environment, the public space.
So how is this going to be achieved? Once a year, the neighborhood organizes a homemade food “festival” where everyone, both individual citizens and civic groups/grassroots movements gather to exchange ideas and introduce themselves. With the help of a more humanized Citizen Canvas version, both individuals and citizen groups will have the opportunity to express their needs, show their skills and communicate their vision/work.
Through this action, we aspire to:
- Enhance connectivity in an offline environment, the public space
- Connect demand and supply in its social dimension
To sum it up, the message is clear:
Connect with your neighbors, reimagine your neighborhood and collaboratively reshape it
PUBLIC SPACE: Re.imagine Athens
“In creative placemaking, public, private, not-for-profit, and community sectors partner to strategically shape the physical and social character of a neighborhood, town, tribe, city, or region around arts and cultural activities.”
The concept of creative placemaking has inspired us so much that we want to spread it all over Athens! This is a method that brings together all the stakeholders of an area in order to co-create a better public space. By mingling the creatives with the local community we can transform the public into common space. As Tom Borrup states,
Creative placemaking builds on local human, physical, and cultural assets to enhance the social and civic fabric. It builds on distinctive local character and story. It is a long-term, partnership-based strategy that results from a commitment to social equity and a meaningful life for its residents as well as an interesting experience for visitors and a stronger economic base for the area.
We believe that this concept will be more than adequate for the many abandoned public spaces around Athens. So, let’s embrace them and give them life again through this new urban thinking!
Through this action, we aspire to:
· Introduce the concept of the common space
· Hack the urban challenges
· Foster cohesion and sense of belonging
· invest in localism
To sum it up, the message is clear:
Hack the challenges of your city, by co-creating a better common space
As a conclusion, either if is it food, culture, grassroots movements or public spaces, Athens has many assets that can be developed and conclude in an urban regeneration based on co-creation, citizen engagement, collaborations, fresh approaches on established values.
So, let’s:
You can take a look at our Strategic Plan presentation here.
Follow our next story for our Communication Strategy!!
