Dear members of the Writing Urban Places Action, 

In this final stretch of our COST Action Writing Urban Places, this period is one of harvesting yet looking on possible ways to further evolve. 

Many of the projects that have been initiated within, as well as across, our working groups are now coming to a conclusion, edition, production, and presentation. We are looking forward to delivering, in the coming months, the new issue #7 of the Writingplace Journal, a special edition of the NALANS - Journal of Narrative and Language Studies, the Repository of Methods’ book, and the Other Destinations´ collection of translations of literary renditions of different European cities. Many active members of the network are involved in these projects, as authors, editors, reviewers, creatives and participants, and we are more than grateful to all who have shared their time, expertise and enthusiasm with us. 

Our main event this year will be the conference in Delft, on June 2nd, where we will look back at the objectives and ambitions with which we started this Action, and present the key moments and outcomes. On that occasion, we will also celebrate the projects mentioned above as all events and activities that resulted from this network, and present a preview of our final publication Writing Urban Places, which will contain reflections by each working group, plus contributions from all the mid-size European cities that have hosted our activities during the Action. We are currently drafting the programme for the conference and expect to announce more details soon. 

In the coming period, some more activities will unfold, such as our third Training School (following our Training schools in Tallinn in 2021 and in Osijek in 2022) which will be held in Tirana, Albania, in late March. Warm thanks go to the local organizing team for preparing this promising event. 

From the Action Chairs, 
Susana Oliveira & Klaske Havik

Literary Geographies: Social and Educational Views from written Cities

Members of our Cost Action Klaske Havik, Silvia Quinteiro, Angeliki Sioli and Sonja Novak, were invited speakers at the Fourth International Congress Literary Geographies “Social and educational views from written cities” which was held 26 – 28 October 2022 at the University of Valencia, Spain and had the opportunity to present results that emerged from our Writing Urban Places network over the past three years. Read more.

Narrating Hiedanranta Archive – Stories to Keep Alive 

Edited by Elina Alatalo, Dalia Milían Bernal and Mathilde Merolli, the book is a digital archive of the materials created during the tree-days workshop Narrating Hiedanranta: Stories of Objects and Subjects of Urban Places held in Tampere, Finland, from 8 – 10 June 2022. 

The city and the myth:
Journey to Çanakkale 

The fieldwork was organized on 18 – 20 July 2022 by Giuseppe Resta and explored what is believed to be the setting of the mythic Troy, overlooking the Dardanelles strait. In line with the focus on narrative methods for urban development in European medium-sized cities, the organizers decided to investigate the relationship between the city and the myth, namely the visible and the invisible, travelling from Istanbul to Çanakkale. Read the full report here.


Following the outdoor itineraries, the participants collected personal visual interpretations of Çanakkale. The material has been recorded in a personal travelogue, which reflects the experience of the journey that each participant took on in Çanakkale, exploring the narrative potential of the myth and the site. 

Skopje Brutalism Trail 

The workshop Skopje Brutalisam Trail was held at the Faculty of Architecture, Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje from the 28th to the 30th of September. The theme of the workshop referred to the Brutalist architecture in Skopje, an important legacy that represents the act of world solidarity in rebuilding the city after the catastrophic earthquake in 1963. The fieldwork was organized by Slobodan Velevski, Marija Mano Velevska, Blagoja Bajkovski and Ana Rafailovska and a detailed report was published on our webpage. Read more.

The third day was dedicated to adapting the findings and the writings for the purposes of a public performance. The intensive, creative and productive experience culminated with the performance that took place in the yard of the Faculty of Architecture in Skopje where a scaffolding installation was constructed insinuating a part of Domche’s inner space. You can watch the first act which tells the story of far-away buildings, in relation to the first task I am building.

Open Meeting #3

Our #3 Open Meeting, organized by Working Group 1, took place on October 19th, 2022. We used this online seasonal gathering to discuss the news, events, and calls included in our 9th Newsletter and also to host the Management Committee annual meeting. 

STSM Grants 2023 

“The Planned and Unplanned” 
Willie Vogel

The last fieldwork event of this action will take place in Tirana and Kamza, Albania. Under the theme of The Planned and Unplanned, we will explore their notions: embodied explorations, commoning practices and material unrest. To support this fieldwork event I have done a pre-research on the theme Material Unrest under the title: “Entangled Materials in Tirana and Kamza, Albania - A reading of the material unrest.” I have followed two material ecologies through which I explored the social, political and environmental structures which write the city, namely concrete and “waste” products. By starting outside the city, around the river banks of Milot, I followed the gravel from the countryside to the city centre. With this move inside I have seen the extraction sides, the factories, the building sites, the self-made neighbourhoods under threat of being demolished and the newly constructed high-rise apartment blocks and hotels. Since the ecologies of concrete and the “waste” with which the self-made neighbourhoods are made are critically debated I want to take an objective observing standpoint which I have tried to translate into my writing (both poems and daily itineraries), diagramming plus mapping and the recordings (moving images and voices). The purpose of the produced material is to unravel certain city-making activities so we can reflect upon them.

  

WG3  entered 2023 with fresh news. The book REPOSITORY: 49 Methods and Assignments for Writing Urban Places (nai010publishers/COST) is finally ready to print. It results from a collective effort offering a set of methods and assignments to stimulate new approaches in architecture, urban planning, other fields of spatial development, and urban studies. It also intends to invite creative, often embodied, sometimes playful engagements with the material and immaterial dimensions of urban places, within academia and beyond. A book launch is scheduled to take place in Tampere (Finland), while some Zoom sessions will allow for broader dissemination. In parallel, WG3 has been working on a book chapter to discuss the role of urban narratives and the methods to locate, understand and construct them whilst reflecting on the efforts and activities of the group to find and gather such methods. Throughout this year, our working group will focus on disseminating the book and, in collaboration with other WGs, organize a couple of activities to encourage members to use it, undertake one assignment, and report back at our final conference in Delft.

Working Group 4 (WG4) activities at the beginning of the grand period 4 are developing in accordance with the plan for continuing the successful series of fieldwork events mainly executed in the previous grand period. Within this line of activities, the last fieldwork in Tirana will be performed as a training school and will last for three days within a frame of one week. This time the training school will have a combined format of one day as an online meeting (24 March) and two days (30-31 March) with the in-situ visit of Tirana and the nearby district of Kamza as a distinctive case study area. The preparation for the call for participation and its announcement was conducted within the planned time frame during January 2023, now being in the phase of evaluation and selection of the participants. The event will try to explore the ongoing social and spatial tensions that emerged in the process of the formation of this build urban substance which is a result of concepts of the planned and the unplanned. The chosen working methods for this fieldwork event are different than the previous ones and therefore the expected results are promising yet another successful contribution to an already rich research experience from the previous workshops and training schools of our Cost Action.
We are also glad to share the information that the latest issue of Writing Places Journal No. 7 entitled Taking Place. Reflections from the fieldworker is in the last stage of editing with the proofreading and design layout already finished. This issue is planned to be published in the following month.
A number of the Working group 4 members are also involved in the process of preparation of texts for the final publication dedicated to the activities and research topics of our COST Action.
As part of the events related to the work of WG4 at least two STSMs are expected to be conducted in the forthcoming period. The procedure for the first one related to the Tirana training school is already underway, while the second one is expected to be prepared in the following months since is related to the research visit to Skopje in mid of May and is part of making a short film organized by the members of Working group 1.