Preserving Existing, But Also Creating New Myths Across Europe
Blogs are written by COST Actions
Writing Urban Places proposes an innovative investigation and implementation of a process for developing human understanding of communities, their society, and their situatedness, by narrative methods. It particularly focuses on the potential of narrative methods for urban development in European medium-sized cities.
The Baltic wind was cool and harsh, and the hours of light were shortening in Tallinn; and yet the first training school organized by Writing Urban Places (CA18126) on mid-September 2021 was heartwarming, to say the least.
After a spring full of online webinars developed by each of our Action’s four working groups, the Estonian Academy of Arts (EKA) organized an in-person meeting again, hosting twenty PhD students at different stages of their research processes, around the topic of “Local Stories and Visual Narratives.”
During the first of three days we moved through the Estonian capital, as seen through the myths or the Old Man from Ülemiste Lake, the soviet past of the Bronze Soldier statue, the medieval story about the market square of MartBread.
These stories generated distinct atmospheres that engulfed us in the days to come, rife with lectures and discussions on the way myths are used by individuals for different purposes; on how they create value for the city and its inhabitants.
All participants were challenged to actually work with these myths, in the sense of creating something new based on them. In small groups we discussed similar myths from other parts of Europe, as we tried to achieve a joint understanding of how myth is not only embedded in our quotidian acts and thoughts, but also weaves itself into the urban fabric.
Talks swayed broadly, even wildly, from the cityscape in front of us to our very different research interests and experiences spread throughout the whole of Europe. The start of the academic year looked promising.
We told each other we would meet again in a month, after sliding diagonally to another corner of Europe for our mid-term conference, hosted by the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Porto (FAUP) in late October.
With Baltic winds still in our memories, we were suddenly amid white cubes designed by the architect Alvaro Siza – their stern white skins reflecting a warm and almost horizontal sunlight the morning the conference kicked off. After a cup of coffee we took our seats in the plywood-clad auditorium and pressed the rewind button; backwards to revisit two full years of work carried out in exceptional conditions. Yes, we’ve published several journal issues and articles, booklets and a variety of field-work projects, all connected in different and extremely interesting ways to the Action. Most importantly, though, many people from many different places and disciplines have thought and hoped and worked together, on the basis of common interests, through research and education.
The following day we started playing the tape forward, working in smaller teams on a number of new strategies for the coming two years. We want to reach out to communities of mid-sized cities across the whole continent, in the hope that we can contribute to more meaningful, appropriable and integrative environments for all. We trust that we can do so by tapping into the latent potential of the different stories these communities carry with them.
To unlock the knowledge and the understanding contained in those stories we plan to organize a number of field-work projects and events, in which the different theories and methods discussed so far can actually be tested on the field.
Our communication with local communities, via these projects and events, hopes to contribute to the preservation of existing, but also to the creation of new myths, as discussed in Tallinn; embedded in the quotidian acts and thoughts of individuals and the communities they belong to, woven in their urban fabric.
Cost Action Writing Urban Places moves forward into its third year.
Author
Willie Vogel is an architect, currently practicing in Berlin. She is also a member of WG1 (Science Communications) in Writing Urban Places (CA18126), which proposes an innovative investigation and implementation of a process for developing human understanding of communities, their society, and their situatedness, by narrative methods. It focuses particularly on the potential of narrative methods for urban development in European medium-sized cities.
Further information
View the Action website
View the network website
Cover photo @ Leon