Beyond impact: initiative for sustainable, inclusive, beautiful city-making

Cities across the world are facing multiple crises connected to ecological and democratic challenges.This minor invites you to play an active role in the city as a site of engagement, transformation and action. You will critically reflect upon and enact a value-based approach to city-making, to imagine, identify and evaluate approaches to city-making centred on values of sustainability, inclusion and beauty.

This minor calls on you to take an active role in the city as a site of engagement, transformation and action. The city is not a finished product, it is contested, lived, and constantly in the making. In this minor, you are invited to critically reflect upon and enact a value-based approach to city-making, to imagine, identify and evaluate approaches to city-making centred on values of sustainability, inclusion and beauty. You are mentored to take on the role of designer, activist, and researcher, using creativity, theoretical knowledge, embodied and lived experience, and collective action to engage with urgent urban challenges.
Truly transformational change starts from bottom-up, from lived experience, local knowledge, and shared responsibility. You will work with communities and stakeholders engaging with grassroots initiatives that contribute to a just transition, socially, ecologically, and democratically together with peers from arts and science. The minor encourages participants’ and stakeholders’ mutual learning and combined experiences, knowledge and disciplines as a way to address complex societal challenges. Students work in interdisciplinary teams involving local stakeholders and together develop a civic action for the common good.

This inter-institutional Minor(EUR, Codarts, Willem de Kooning Academie) connects artistic practice and scientific education. It is embedded within day-to-day lives and local societal challenges and opportunities in Rotterdam South. Guided by transformational city making paradigms, including the New European Bauhaus and its core values of sustainability, inclusion, and beauty, you will use the art and design together with science as tools for questioning, imagining, and intervening.
All meetings and workshops are planned at the Culture&Campus Putselaan, a shared place for learning and community hosted by EUR-WDKA-Codarts and Municipality of Rotterdam and situated in Rotterdam-South.

By the end of this minor students are able to:

• Understand and engage critically with a value-based approach to city making, by engaging with local practices in Rotterdam neighbouhoods.
• Identify and analyze complex city-making challenges from a multi-stakeholder and multi-disciplinary perspective.
• Critically appraise individual and institutional positioning and practices in sustainable, inclusive and beautiful city-making, through the examination of challenges relating to growing inequalities, health and wellbeing, gentrification.
• Applying course learnings to a public city-making collaborative action that combines ethics, theory and artistic practice.

• Joint minor of EUR, WdKA, Codarts.
• The EUR TER applies to the first part of the Minor (15EC), with implications for attendance and examination among others.
• 420 hours study load for 15 EC Minor.
• The main language of instruction is English. Passive command of the Dutch is desirable, given stakeholders collaborations.
• The Minor takes place at the Cultuur&Campus Putselaan hub

Teaching methods
Focusing on city-making and active engagement with the C&CP hub, teaching methods range from seminars/workshops to relevant field-visits in Rotterdam (e.g. ecological, cultural and social grassroots initiatives). Practitioners in Rotterdam that exemplify sustainable, beautiful and inclusive city-making will be involved in teaching. Each week integrates theory, research, with experiential, hands-on practices, drawing on artistic practices at WdKA and Codarts. Students learn by doing, developing recommendations and initiatives to be integrated in the hub’s operations.

Teaching materials
The minor is administered via Canvas. Teaching materials include (academic) literature and journal articles on key concepts/debates in political philosophy/ethics of just cities, transition theory, creative placemaking, gentrification and inequalities. We also use field-visit observations, news clippings, policy documents, artworks, creative practices, conversations with local stakeholders, developing a database as resource for future cohorts. Stakeholders (e.g. partners Afrikaanderwijk Coöperatie) are remunerated fairly, via C&CP/institutional funds.

Method of examination
The coursework is further structured around a portfolio format composed of individual and group assignments, formative and summative. Examination takes the form of written and oral assignments based on theory and independent and group research (individual papers, group presentation, collaboration in artistic practice and policy recommendation). Community-based learning/research is central to the Minor, with special focus on research ethics, addressing extractivism and considering reciprocity in learning, focusing on coursework and assessment that be of societal use and application. Learning also means unlearning and reflecting (un)sustainability of existing practices and biases, embracing complex and diverse knowledges.

Composition of final grade
The assessment for the course will be structured around the following final grade composition:

• Individual field and reading notes and critical reflection (25% of grade)
• Individual assignment in narrative written form (45% of grade)
• Group project presented at public symposium (30% of grade)