Call for Participants: City Change Masterclass

Call for Participants: City Change Masterclass

Dates: 29-31 May 2019

Location: Dublin city

Attendance: This workshop is free of charge to successful applicants. See application procedure below.

The City Change Masterclass will be delivered over 3 days, and will explore how producers, artists, architects and community organisers and activists can more effectively make artwork in and for the city of the future. The group will look at successful and unsuccessful case studies in cities around the world, through the prism of The Playful City ethos, before developing ideas for Dublin city, and workshopping how these can be achieved, with participants equipped with a realistic work plan at the end of the workshop. The curator and facilitators will introduce participants to Dublin City Council staff, producers and activists who are and have been involved in working with artists and arts organisations to deliver projects in and about the city, while discussing the challenges and opportunities presented by current planning for the future of Dublin’s city spaces.

How to apply:

Tell us about yourself (150 words max)

Tell us about an idea you have for the city that you are working on now or want to work on into the future (300 words max)

Tell us why you want to take part (150 works max)

The deadline for applications is the 28th of April at 12 midnight. Please send your application to citychangemasterclass[at]gmail.com.

Please note you must be available to participate for all of the 3 days.

Biographies

Michelle Browne is an artist and curator based in Dublin. She works in socially engaged practice, using performative methods with a focus on the built environment. She has performed and exhibited both nationally and internationally most recently taking part in Engaging Places, Tate Liverpool, UK (2018); Invisible Cities, St. Helen’s, UK (2016); Border Crossings, SASA Gallery, Adelaide, Australia (2016). Browne is currently presenting Bring Your Own Chair, a performance in public space in 12 acts, across 12 small towns and villages in South East Ireland. She has also curated a number of exhibitions including Out of Site, a series of performances for public space in Dublin (2006-2008) and These Immovable Walls: Performing Power at Dublin Castle (2014). From 2011-2013, she was Artist Advisor to the Dublin City Council Grafton Street Design Team and is currently a lecturer in the Department of Sculpture and Expanded Practice at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin.

Leticia Lozano, Co-founder & Director of Macia Estud, is passionate about public space, cities and experience creation. As co-founder and director of Macia, she is involved in the development of integral processes that give an answer to urban communities’ real needs and are manifested as placemaking strategies, participation, prototypes or urban public policy recommendations. Leticia has collaborated as an experience designer, creative strategist and play researcher with organisations, governments and universities in Mexico, Italy, UK, Czech Republic and Japan. Leticia has been an associate lecturer at UDLAP, UNARTE and CENTRO, as well as speaker at various panels and conferences.

For the past four years, she collaborated with the Lab for the City — the experimental and creative area of Mexico City’s government— as a Coordinator of Playful City where she researched how play and playfulness can reconfigure urban imaginaries and provoke citizens to take an active role in the process of creating a city. She co-authored “Architecture for Urban Play: Guidelines to design playscapes in Mexico City” and collaborates with articles for various magazines or architecture and design.

Leticia has a BArch from UDLAP, with studies in restoration and set design at Politecnico di Torino and an MA in Narrative Environments from CSM, UAL. She is currently a member of the Creative Producers International program and a Salzburg Global International Fellow.

Ryan Swanson is a creator, architect, place maker and the Founder/ CEO of The Urban Conga, a multidisciplinary design firm that promotes community activity and social interaction through play. They achieve this by creating interactive installations and environments that spark creativity, exploration, and free-choice learning into a variety of spaces. The work ranges from their playable products such as musical public park benches, public ping pong tables, sound sculptures, touch sensor murals to custom immersive environments for both public and private clients. Their work has achieved a multitude of international design awards and publications.

Along with running The Urban Conga, Ryan is also a visiting professor at The University of South Florida School of Architecture and Community Design. Where he is working with students on exploring the importance of different scaled interventions within the urban infrastructure. He also was selected by The British Council as part of fifteen exceptional Creative Producers from all over the world, encouraging a new kind of conversation with creative communities, citizens and city authorities.

Kate Stewart is CEO of Liverpool based Social Enterprise We Make Places where she leads their creative and engagement strategies and curates the annual symposium on citizen-led interventions in the built environment The Maverick City.

Her community engagement role sees her designing and running participative processes to give a voice to the unheard, using culture, conversations and design to challenge perspectives on place. Having started life as a theatre producer and director over 30 years ago, Kate still works as a freelance Creative Producer, her most recent project being the Punk! exhibition at Liverpool Central Library.

In November 2018 she undertook a research trip to South Africa to explore how the We Make Places learning and construction project Urban Workbench could support communities there.

Over the last 30 years Kate has won various business accolades, and was recently named in the WISE100 list recognising Women in Social Enterprise. She is proud to also be one of 15 individuals selected to be part of the Creative Producers International programme alongside her fellow masterclass facilitators.

Pete Vance is the lead producer for Creative Producers International, a talent development programme led by Watershed, developing the capacity and skills of Creative Producers from the UK and around the world to become the city change-makers of the future. His background is in factual television, exploring real people through documentary and finding innovative ways to share their stories with audiences who might not otherwise have access to, or interest in, such different perspectives.