TUESDAY
Project introduction into gentrification and meeting our main tutor, Boo van der Vlist, who gave a short introduction into her work. I also started to become accquainted to the topic of gentrification, displacement, and artwashing, which are a wide field with many different facets. I was initially interested in artwashing and the dilemma of a social artist in an urban landscape.

WEDNESDAY
I started my own visual experimentation on the topic of artwashing and making art for Rotterdam after some desk research. I still had to complete an assignment about visual symbolism for my major theory class, so I combined that with the topic of artwashing to start exploring the topic visually.

THURSDAY
The class on this day was a city walk. Boo gave small introductions into the work of different social artists. Some work was diverse but I began to notice a theme of event planning or soup kitchens as the end result of such projects. We also formed groups, in which I paired up with Manasa. I think we are very compatible and I predict a smooth collaboration – our fields have spots of overlap where we can work. We both seem to value having a visual result of our projects and aimed for that.
The city walk was very enlightening. Boo showed us parts of Rotterdam I’d never seen before, and pointed out how one neighbourhood or income area flows into the next. I learned of the initiatives in my own area that I hadn’t been aware of, and I noticed them more and more in the days after. I started to feel like Rotterdam was a nice place to be.

FRIDAY
System analysis class. The class, a collaboration of a couple of social practice classes, provided some valuable skills for system analysis, mapping and problem analysis. I wish we had had a bit more of an introduction to the topic, as the other classes seemed to have already dealt with system analysis in theory - I think that would have been valuable for Powerplay also.






MONDAY
I met up with Manasa to do desk research. I tackled the history of Rotterdam, as most of those sources were in Dutch, while she tackled artwashing. I found a bunch of interesting stuff about Rotterdam, and then the neighbourhood we chose, Oude Westen. A great asset was the book 'Rotterdam 2040' by Gyz La Riviere, in which the Rotterdam artist uses his reflection on the city's past and his own to speculate the future of both. I would also like to mention how helpful the staff of the Research station were in helping us find useful information.
After the desk research, I did some more sketching. We were working with the idea of projection mapping on houses in that area, so I used a google maps screenshot to make a mockup of what we could create. The slogan - "We need the past to make homes last" - is partly inspired by a quote from La Riviere, and partly inspired by the vast amount of mottos, slogans and sayings in the public space of Rotterdam.

TUESDAY
Manasa and I went out to dip our toes into the area in the morning. We mostly took pictures and scouted for street art and galleries in that area. We focused on getting our own feel of the area before we talked to residents – we took lots of pictures, focusing on typography and language to get an idea of the expressions of the place and how people communicated. I had quite a positive image of the area – I thought it was a diverse and lively area with a young population, but we saw all ages on the streets. Neighbours talked, kids played and shops sold.
In the afternoon, we had theory by Maurice Specht. He first talked a bit about his own studies and projects, which was interesting as he had his own initiative in Oude Westen called ‘Leeszaal’ which we had spotted earlier that day. It was nice to hear that teachers had also seen our area and found ways to work in it. During class, we covered the writings and perspective of Arturo Escobar and Michel Foucault.
Maurice also underlined the importance of starting a dialogue with the people in the area you want to work in. This was something I was a little apprehensive about, but he also addressed that; it can be hard to go up to someone you don’t know and admit you don’t really understand them, but that openness can open doors, and is necessary to progress the project, so we decided to do street interviews the next day.
In my own time, I worked on a short animation loop on the theme of gentrification. Regardless of whether we would end up using it, including my major in my research was a requirement for me for this project.

WEDNESDAY
Manasa and I hit the streets in the afternoon for dialogue with the residents of Oude Westen. As previously mentioned, I was a little apprehensive about this, especially as I would have to translate the interview afterwards for Manasa, but we agreed that even if a person spoke English, Dutch would most likely be their most natural language, so we did it that way. I felt a bit frustrated that I couldn’t include Manasa in the conversation as it was happening, and I worried that I wouldn’t ask all the right questions or get the info we needed, but we managed all the same.
We spoke to a wide demographic of residents – young mums with kids, older women who knew the area very well and a pensioner who had lived there for 80 years. The interviews are depicted in bullet points. To be quite honest, these interviews were really depressing. The impression that I had gotten the day before broke apart and turned out to be false – all of the residents, besides the pensioner, were negative about their environment, naming discrimination, drugs, and crime as large factors in the living standard. Some were even planning to move away quickly to get away from it. I was a bit shocked that I read the area so wrongly, and also frustrated that we wouldn’t be able to change the area for the better in the time we had, and that whatever we did wouldn’t really matter.
Besides residents only, we also went in to an art gallery near LeesZaal, where we were lucky enough to speak to artist Edward Teeuw and the gallery manager Richard. We talked to them for a bit about street art and wall art, and it was good that we did, so that we could hear their side of the artwashing story.
Finally, we went round to Aktiegroep Oude Westen, but there wasn’t anyone in who could help us in depth, so we found out a little about the history and workings of the Aktiegroep instead, before coming back the next day.

THURSDAY
In the morning, Manasa and I returned to the Aktiegroep headquarters to interview Petra van de Berg, who knew a lot about the Aktiegroep and gentrification in Oude Westen. In the afternoon, Manasa and I presented the initial concept we had:

During Boo’s class, we developed the concept by way of ‘Reframing’ This made the idea meander a lot, to the point where we kept losing track of things such as demographic, intent and our own majors. We put our ideas to rest over the Easter weekend and decided to pick it up again on Monday.





MONDAY
Manasa and I met up to discuss the progression of the project, as the last class had left us a little confused and directionless. After some conversation, we decided we wanted to map out the skills of the area so that we could make a prototype of a neighbourhood skill/culture magazine, and a proposal for an organized event. We also wanted to We planned to do the skill mapping as our intervention, but we wanted to check in with the Aktiegroep first to see if that was what they felt would fit in the area.

TUESDAY
we went into the Aktiegroep Oude Westen early as we could to discuss our plans with Petra. She was open to our ideas, but saw that they already overlapped a bit with what the Aktiegroep was already doing. She said that the Aktiegroep would benefit more from promotion of the initiatives they already had, instead of creating new ones. She also felt that their icons and design were in need of a bit of an update, so I took on that task to modernize their lion mascot.
Petra took us a few doors down to the Leeuwenhoek, an old folk's home with an art studio, where we spoke to organizer Ellen and artist Roel. It's a truly wonderful place where old folks with dementia or other psychiatric disorders live together and are given the space to create, draw and paint whatever they want. The walls are filled with art and they also sell decorated plates, bottles and sometimes canvasses. The funding has been decreasing over recent years, and although they sell items, it doesn't have any focus and isn't really providing that much money at the moment. For them, we can create promotional material for their items and for the existence of the place, so that they could possibly take better care of the residents with the extra money.

WEDNESDAY
I started working on redesigning the lion mascot. I wanted to modernize it, but not alienate it from its demographic. I came up with ideas for designing female lions and child lions. I then made a storyboard for a video promoting the initiatives of Oude Westen and Aktiegroep Oude Westen.

THURSDAY
Today I spent all day on the animatic of the video. I wanted to create a vertical video for their promotion, because Petra mentioned that their toughest demographic to reach was young people, I wanted to make content that was social-media friendly and thus more likely to reach them. I wanted to present a number of cool initiatives organized by the Aktiegroep, and did so in a flowing video transitioning from one scene to the next. It ended up a little longer than expected (I was aiming for 10-20 seconds, and it became 45) but assuming that I had all of the 4th week to finish it, I decided to keep it at that length.
Then, Manasa and I went to the Aktiegroep to show our new work. Manasa showed posters and flyers she had designed, and I showed my animatic. Petra was very responsive to both, and commented that she would love to use this content to show to sponsors and investors at upcoming finance meetings. Manasa and I did worry that our work was catering too much to the needs of the Aktiegroep, but we decided that because they had helped us so much, and because we felt they were on the same path as us, we decided to continue with what we had decided.

FRIDAY
When we had spoken to Petra the day before, she recommended we come back to talk to Natalie, who runs a lot of the promotion of Aktiegroep Oude Westen, and Petra thought she might have some good opinions on our work.





MONDAY
Coming back from a week of holiday, I realised we had only three full work days left, and that it wasn't possible for me to complete the video anymore, even if I worked evenings and nights. This was a bit frustrating as I had gotten such positive feedback on it and knew that the Aktiegroep would be able to use it. I think I should have followed Boo's advice better, and not have promised any result.
We also had a feedback class from Boo. She pointed out that the goal of our project was to increase traffic to the Aktiegroep website, but that the website itself was not particularly interesting or gripping for the younger audience that they had so much trouble to attract. Manasa and I decided to make mockups of a more interesting website. I am making some illustrations for this, which promote a few different local initiatives, as well as making our process video deliverable.
Boo also pointed out that what we are doing could technically be considered a commission at this point. I felt we had to heavily defend why we were helping these people, and couldn't really figure out where we were supposed to have gone wrong- we're helping a social activist group in our chosen area which had the exact same organizational ideas that we did? I felt kind of frustrated, as if the rules of the social practice were making it harder to actually help people. Boo als suggested that we could even ask money for our services, which was understandable, but still rubbed me the wrong way a bit, because we are required to have visual results for this practice, and why shouldn't we use those to help a local community? Furthermore, the whole point about making these visuals for them to use is so that besides their primary function, which is to raise awareness of the Aktiegroep's local initiatives, the visuals could also be used to help them get more funding - we knew before we started making that they didn't have a penny to spare. I can't ask money from them for what I'm doing with a clear conscience.

TUESDAY
I was mostly working on the illustrations. I have decided to make three - one for the Ruilpunt, one for the Jeugdbieb and one for the Welkomproject. Besides deciding the visual style and completing one of the illustrations, I also started work on the theory assignment.

WEDNESDAY
I worked on the illustrations, theory assignment and video.

THURSDAY
Finished the reflection video.

WEEK 1

WEEK 2

POWERPLAY: INCLUSIVE GENTRIFICATION

MAYA BLOEM

PROJECT DIARY

RESEARCH AND

EXPERIMENTS

ABOVE: experiments with artwashing and non-gentrifiable art - could that be art which is not seen as cultural enrichment due to offensiveness, or perhaps art that is conscious of its contributions to gentrification through its value?


LEFT: exploring in Rotterdam through the eyes of the residents. Taken during the city walk with Boo.

BELOW LEFT: a visual similie which puts different methods of social activism on the same level of importance.

BELOW RIGHT: projection mapping mockup.

LEFT: one of my first experiments with creating art for the city of Rotterdam. I wanted to make something that was the sum of my experiences here: I took all my loose papers related to experiences I had had: letters, tickets, reciepts, et cetera, and scanned them and used them as textures on top of my own imagery of Rotterdam. I was partly also inspired by the early work of Patrick O'Keefe, where he drew on top of all the loose papers he had - something that I used to do a lot before my model drawing teacher made me stop.

I think this particular image is a bit of a hot mess, but hey, experimentation.

- Rotterdam seems to have a history of rebuilding instead of renovating (partially due to being so heavily bombed in WW2, the city lacks cohesion in architecture). Due to this zest for rebuilding, relatively young buildings are often torn down again before they can become cost-efficient.

- Gentrification is the process of changing a poor neighbourhood in a city to richer one, for example through the improvement or replacement of buildings.

- Oude Westen was originally built in 1903, where it was mostly houses and some factories. A couple decades later, the construction of the Maastunnel puts Oude Westen on the route from Rotterdam to Den Haag and Dordrecht, and in 1938 Jan Wils makes new architectural plans to reflect this new position, but they are never realized due to WW2.
In the war, Oude Westen isn't bombed, but becomes overpopulated as it must cater to the surrounding neighbourhoods that were. The area gets a reputation for housing uneducated workers, small businesses and the unemployed. In the coming decades, many plans are suggested to reform Oude Westen, but most long-term renovation plans fall through due to the short-term housing need.
Between 1958 and 1980, many Rotterdam districts go through 'krotopruiming' (heavy renovations and displacement) which often had gentrification as a consequence. For Oude Westen, this began in 1968, and two years later the Aktiegroep Oude Westen was formed as a civil reaction. In the last 50 years, the Oude Westen has seen a continuation of the effects of gentrification and artwashing.

SOURCES
Rotterdam 2040 by Gyz la Riviere
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/gentrification
https://www.rotterdam.nl/wonen-leven/wijkpark-oude-westen/
https://www.eur.nl/essb/nieuws/gevolgen-gentrification-rotterdam
https://www.vn.nl/gentrificatie-nu-is-rotterdam-aan-de-beurt/
http://www.kenniswerkplaats-leefbarewijken.nl/wp-content/uploads/dynamiek_indekansrijkewijken.pdf
http://aktiegroepoudewesten.nl/assets/uploads/2015/05/Evelien-van-Es-Cultuurstudie-Het-Oude-Westen.pdf
https://rewriters010.nl/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/REWRITERS010_A4.pdf

DESK RESEARCH NOTES

ABOVE: short animation displaying the flow of gentrification, snapshots from the neighbourhood Oude Westen

LEFT: activist wall art from 1984, found in Oude Westen.

WEEK 3

WEEK 4

ABOVE: sketches for the lion logo redesign.

LEFT: animatic for the promotional video for social initiatives in Oude Westen. Featured initiatives are: Postcoderoos, Humanitas, Woonnet, Wijkpark, Welkomproject, Jeugdbieb, Leeszaal and Huiswerkklas.

BELOW: illustrations for the new website mockup, promoting Ruilpunt, Jeugdbieb and Welkomproject.

With our project, Manasa and I are looking to improve social cohesion in the Rotterdam neighborhood of Oude Westen. I will illustrate the setting using the text ‘Space, Place and Gender’ by Doreen Massey, alongside information gained from residents, articles and books.

In Doreen Massey’s text, she elaborates on a phenomenon she calls ‘time-space compression’, in other words, growing globalization and interconnection, a sense that the world is ‘speeding up’. She notes that with a continuously globalizing world, it can be hard for residents of an area to continually recognize their neighborhood as their own, as a previously homogenous environment becomes diverse. She then counteracts the idea that diversity should be followed by unease, by suggested a progressive view of space which is not static, not bordered, and not homogenous, because a place cannot exist in a vacuum without external influence.

Parts of this concept are in play in Oude Westen. The neighborhood itself has been through many architectural and demographical changes since its construction in 1903; it currently consists of a mix of social housing and real estate on North-South running streets, bordered by two busy shopping streets on the North and South, and busy roads on the East and West. In the neighborhood there is a great diversity of residents – in age, ethnicity, and nationalities, for example; however, there is only partial social cohesion in the area. There are a number of social activist groups or initiatives, but these communities do not reach everyone. The main parties at play that we could identify were the residents (with the distinction between those who took part in social initiatives and those who did not), the council, who controls the social housing, and Woonnet Rotterdam, who controls some of the real estate and some of the shop buildings.

While doing street interviews, Manasa and I met a number of people who mentioned a lack of social cohesion, and could name multiple instances of discrimination. I feel like this could be a mirror of the effect Massey describes as a consequence of time-space compression – the lively, diverse shops in West-Kruiskade and Nieuwe Binnenweg could impart a feeling of losing the comfort that the place provided – if not due to a transition from a homogenous demographic nationality to a diverse one, then certainly the transition from well-rooted shops to hipster cafes, boutiques and restaurants due to gentrification.

The question for us then, is how to suggest a progressive image of space to the parties and what that image will look like. If Massey’s theory holds true, then that image could heighten the social cohesion of the neighborhood – that is the playing ground of our project.

THEORY ASSIGNMENT - DOREEN MASSEY

This was a challenging yet somewhat rewarding project. It was nice to take a step back from being entirely in my field and actually looking at what my major could mean for other people. That being said, I did have to put my foot down to continuously include my major throughout the process, because I felt there was a lot of pressure to lean towards event management or soup kitchens or other non-visual end results. Manasa and I were very clear on what we wanted to get out of this project - a clear, visual end result that would be productive for both of our developments - and I'm glad we were able to help people on the way.

Doing the intervention - a series of street interviews with local residents, activists and artists - was intimidating at first, but after feeling encouraged by both Manasa and Maurice, it felt a lot easier and more natural to do. We progressed the project greatly from this intervention and we couldn't have created something meaningful without it - you can't guess what other people need from the outside only. I do feel however that the practice itself is not particularly rewarding, perhaps due to its short time frame, perhaps due to multiple tutors emphasizing the fruitlessness of such a short project, or perhaps due to a combination of both leading to meager end results, feeling like we shortchanged the very people we set out to work with. I am still interested in the social practice and what it can offer me, but I think I would need a longer time period to properly bring all my assets into play, and I would also be interested in more global themes. I think Powerplay itself could improve greatly from just letting students pick their own topics.

REFLECTION ON INTERVENTION,
PRACTICE & PROJECT