Port Cities – Arts, Culture & Creativity in Dockland Regeneration

Post-industrial dockland areas are a key feature in our port cities landscapes. Arts, culture and creativity play a key role in re-imagining our city futures and realising ambitious initiatives to redevelop and regenerate these areas as vibrant, sustainable places for community that contribute the wider revitalisation of our urban centres.

In the Cork context, Cork Docklands is set to be Ireland’s largest regeneration project which will accommodate a population of around 25,000, a workforce of approximately 29,000 as well as a student population of more than 3,500. Over 146 hectares of land will be developed over a 20-year period, which will see homes, schools, medical and social services, sports and recreation facilities, office space, pubs, bars, restaurants, hotels, retail and two new bridges for the city.

This year we are delighted to bring speakers from leading cases Espacio Open in Bilbao; and the European Bauhaus Lighthouse project Bauhaus of the Seas Sails in Malmo, together with a local Cork perspective to discover pioneering examples of arts, culture and creativity driving renewal and renaissance of docklands areas, as sites replete with the cultural and industrial heritage of our cities.

The third in Cork CityLabs ‘Future of Port’ Seminar Series, we connect community, city and university colleagues across the UNIC European University Alliance and Port University League. This series brings thought leaders together for conversations that help inspire us to rethink and redesign the future of our urban centers – in a citizen centered, diverse and ecological manner.

Agenda:

10:30 Welcome and Introduction from Chair 10:45 Panel Contributions:

• Bauhaus of the Seas - Linn Johansson and Anna Schröder, Malmo
• Espacio Open - Karim Asry, Bilbao
• Creativity and Cork - Yvon Bonenfant

10:20 Panel Discussion and Q&A

About the Contributors

Chairing the event - Dr Jean van Sinderen-Law is the Associate Vice President, Director of European Relations and Public Affairs at University College Cork (UCC). She is the director of UNIC at UCC and leads Work Package 2, 'Build the UNIC European University'and is representative on the UNIC Management Board.

The Bauhaus of the seas, as «marhaus» (literally «the sea as our home») or «baumar» («the sea as a space for creation and impact entrepreneurship»), aims to promote renewed ethical and aesthetic regenerative development from a widely diverse range of dimensions of our continued relationship with the sea. Conceived as a journey with Portugal as a starting point, the Bauhaus of the seas will generate a design movement that will extend to all coastal and maritime regions in Europe. Its anchors are ’recognising the environment’, reconciling with the sea’, ‘reconnecting communities’ and ‘renewing practices’.

• Linn Johansson is a marine pedagogue and nature guide at the Marine Education Center in Malmö, with a Bachelor of Environmental Science from Malmö University. Linn´s role includes spreading ocean literacy for schools and the public through pedagogic programs. Her main focus encompasses finding ways for different collaborations with both universities and students. Through her different engagements Linn wants to strengthen the relationship between human and ocean as well as explore the transition from ocean awareness to ocean action.
• Anna Schröder is a Ph. D. student at the School of Arts and Communication at Malmö University. In the intersection of participatory design, ocean literacy, and posthumanism, she is curious about alternative relationships between humans and the ocean, that stress the deep entanglements between both. Anna’s practice explores new ways to design sustainable futures that can support life with the ocean within planetary boundaries and allow to experience resonance with the living ocean. The experimental research allows participants to speculate beyond human-centered thinking through “making and doing” in direct contact with local species entanglements.

Espacio Open [Open Sapce] is a cultural centre and ecosystem of creative and social projects with a positive social impact located since 2009 in the Old Bilbao Biscuit Factory (Artiach Factory) in the La Ribera de Deusto / Zorrotzaurre neighborhood, Bilbao. Involving more than 110,000 annual visitors, 14 workers and 2,000 sq.m. of facilities, they work at the intersection between contemporary culture, technology and social issues. Spaces house the Fab Lab Bilbao digital creation and manufacturing center as well as programs such as the Maker Faire Bilbao Festival and creation residencies for artists and designers. Their monthly Vintage Bilbao event, an evolution of the Open Your Ganbara circular economy market, has run since 2009.

*Karim Asry is creative director at Espacio Open, an independent Fab Lab in Bilbao, Spain, based in an Old Cookie Factory that mixes maker culture with social projects, traditional industries and urban culture as a learning environment. Organizer since 2013 of Maker Faire Bilbao and non formal education for youngsters project Gaztea Tech. Boardmember at the Spanish Network for Digital Creation and Fabrication, Crefab. Former journalist at El País and ex open government and transparency advisor for the Presidency of the Basque Regional Government.

• Yvon Bonenfant, PhD is head of the Department of Theatre at UCC and Visiting Professor of Research at the University of Winchester. He is an artist-researcher – with a focus on the voice, sensation, tactility; and and inclusion of different kinds of voices and bodies in culture. He is involved in the emerging field of interdisciplinary voice studies and is a recognised innovator in research methods and transdisciplinary collaboration. A former laureate of the Wellcome Trust Large Arts Awards, he collaborates with researchers from speech and language science, voice and speech medicine, and vibration, materials and textile engineering, and with an array of visual and design thinkers. An expert on innovative approaches to practice-inclusive research methodologies in artistic research: especially where the voice, or interdisciplinary collaboration, are concerned. In 2017-18, his works as an individual artist and with his spin-off charity Tract and Touch reached more than 220K users across different registers of the senses: sometimes visually, sometimes through sound, and sometimes through touch. His work has been funded by, amongst others: Irish Research Council, Arts Council England, Wellcome Trust, the UK's Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British Academy, Youth Music and Postcode Community Trust (with Tract and Touch).