Re-Opening the Public

Five teams from different Russian cities participated in this forum: Archangelsk, Chelyabinsk, Ulyanovsk, Volgograd, and Astrakhan. The teams were composed of people from many different sectors and included curators, artists, cultural managers, city planners, representatives of the administration, and NGOs.

These participants from the Russian regions worked with a team of international experts, which included members of the Robert Bosch Cultural Manager Network experienced in public art and community-based artwork: Olga Vostretsova, Christine Rahn, Christian Gracza and Matthias Einhoff. Maria Veits (TOK Curators, St. Petersburg) and Darya Tkatsheva (State Center for Contemporary Arts, Kirov) were invited as Russian experts.

The aim of the Forum was to initiate sustainable, long-term, transregional, and international projects, which were then later realized in the five Russian regions. During the Forum, each of the teams developed a plan for their specific undertaking. All of the planned projects aimed to revitalize unused urban spaces through public art projects and local community involvement. The approaches taken by the different cities showed great variety, and included the rehabilitation of abandoned parks, the rethinking of industrial zones, and the reconceptualization of urban functional buildings.

A project organized by Barbara Anna Bernsmeier, Kathrin Oerters and Cornelia Reichel, Robert Bosch cultural managers in the Russian Federation.