Hacking Urban Boundaries (HUB): An international toolkit for a creative and ecological urban commons with youth (Seed Grant)

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Francesca Ranalli (Urban Planning, CUS, UvA), Jade Mandrake (visual artist, poet, and artistic researcher) & Eileen Moyer (Anthropology of Health, Care and the Body, SSGH, UvA).

In the diverse and changing cities of The Netherlands, The United States, and South Africa, teenagers have no apparent right to co-modify public spaces and help shape community spatial practices. The aim of our project is to work with youth in a spirit of ownership and creativity to connect them to local, urban spaces and encourage a sense of belonging and awareness about the roles they can play in their cities.Through engagement with nature and artmaking in a series of workshops, youth from Almere, Amsterdam, New York and Johannesburg will learn to develop their own voice in relation to their local urban environments and learn to design a project within the provided budget. In this way, the project aims to improve the mental, physical, and emotional health of this group.
The project consists of different phases, but the CUS grant will be specifically used to develop a podcast on youth-centred approached to urban spatial practices and it will involve CUS members, policy-makers and community members. Ranalli, Mandrake and Moyer received the Isaac Roet Price from the Amsterdam University Fund and the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, worth 5000 euros.