User:Jorge

"Are creative entrepreneurs able to contribute to an inclusive development of the city?"

The concept of communal is in crisis. We believe it's because collectivity it isn’t an obvious given cultural factor anymore. Rotterdam will need creative entrepreneurs to constantly visualize the communal and inclusivity as our society no longer knows what this means. We live in a society that still sees a lot of individualism. Inclusive development of a society consists of ensuring that all marginalized and excluded groups are stakeholders in development processes. Which means that there is need of collaboration before we can even speak of the concept inclusive development. We, as creative entrepreneurs, can become an (in)visible bridges between individuals and stakeholders, stakeholders and marginalized and excluded groups. Bridges looking for new connections between art and society where co-creation and social- extracurricular issues are at the center of the solutions.

Delfshaven meets Gewoon Delfshaven

We, Gewoon Delfshaven, had the opportunity to be of importance for an inclusive city. Delfshaven corporation, located in the area Bospolder tussendijken and Delfshaven in Rotterdam, came to us as students of the practice culture diversity) with a request. The Delfshaven corporation wants to contribute to an inclusive development of their neighborhood by offering inclusive growth for the youth (age 13 to 18), which means economic growth that creates employment opportunities and helps in reducing poverty. It means having access to essential services in health and education by the poor. It includes providing equal opportunities, empowering people through education and skill development. After we've researched the case further we realized that there were essential differences between what the Delfshaven corporation wanted to achieve and how they approached it in reality. We noticed that the corporation and their target group lived on different planes and did not have the right communication skills to reach each other. It was our challenge as creative entrepreneurs to create the bridge between the stakeholder and the youth of the area to break the barrier of communication and close the gap that's existing. As Cultural Diversity students, we explored the commitments that bring communities together. In accessing these communities, we established a dialogue with the youth, so we could form an understanding of the community, and of its values and interests. We researched their ways of offline and online communication to eventually being able to speak their language.

Vlogging

Gewoon Delfshaven contributed to inclusive development as we gave the youth the opportunity to show their voice. Online communication became a big part of their daily habits. Using social media to express their emotions and thoughts. A very popular way of showing this online identity is by vlogging. Vlogging shows a lot of inside information about the youth of this century, what do they eat, where do they spent their free time or what kind of clothing do they wear. Gewoon Delfshaven offers the youth a platform where we challenge them to share their inner voice with us, as their daily lives matter to us. Their daily habits are of importance for us as this information can help us visualize and adjust to their needs. Social media, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Youtube are all a low key and familiar way of sharing information, this made is very comfortable for us and them to communicate and share valuable information. We showed the youth that their vlogs where valuable to us by giving them credits for completing the challenges. By taking part of this credit system they were taking part in the inclusive growth. With this platform we aim for personal development and goal driven identities with which they have control over and the support of the community they live in.

This group of the society, youngsters, have showed us trust and their hopes and dreams. At the same time we got to experience their doubts and fears which were caused not by themselves but by what the society as a whole is expects from them. We think that the influence we have on one another should not be taken for granted, especially if we're talking about creating a more inclusive city. To us, this opened up many new ways of thinking of social design. It got us feeling more connected to the youth which at first was thought to be very closed off. We also got to think of new tools that can be created by them and for them as they will need to think of their own future as well and in turn how well connected they could be to the generation that follows them afterwards.