The aim of the project is to engage inhabitants in activities concerning their environment and to make them aware of the fact that they have an impact on and are responsible for the common space that surrounds them.
Inhabitants are consulted intensively about all activities. "At first, we asked inhabitants what they would actually need in their own backyard", said Majka Zabokrzycka, one of the co-ordinators of activities in the backyard in Ołbin, in July. "We organised a number of meetings during which inhabitants suggested what they missed and how they would like to shape their most familiar space. In the first place, they wanted much more greenery. Then two architects, Agnieszka Bocheńska and Tomek Bojęć, elaborated a concept of this backyard and we began to work", she says. Together with inhabitants and volunteers, they built wooden boxes with flower beds in which plants have been planted, and this will also be a place for inhabitants to grow fruit and vegetables for themselves.
Backyard in Ołbin
Inhabitants and artists
One of the most important elements of the "Wroclaw – entrance from the backyard’ project is co-operation between inhabitants and artists, their mutual understanding and acceptance of activities being undertaken or installations being erected. Therefore, for the purpose of moderation and facilitation of this process, a group of animators was engaged in the project to keep in touch with inhabitants and talk to them during picnics, workshops or happenings being held under the project.
The introduction to planned activities and the basis for them is an in-depth description of the situation created by Wroclaw sociologists co-operating with the Association of Creative Initiatives “ę” – Katarzyna Wala and Bartłomiej Lis, who carried out surveys in selected backyards of Wroclaw. Their results were compiled in the form of a report aimed at answering the question: how to prepare participatory activities in the immediate neighbourhood? The report is available to the public under a free licence and can be downloadedfrom ECC’s website.
