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LOCAL COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

Temporary by definition, a pop-up structure creates a sense of novelty and urgency. This in turn heightens the curiosity and anticipation among residents in a given location, promoting active participation and engagement. A pop-up model can quickly respond to a new emerging need within a community and provide a light infrastructure for new collaborative projects to emerge. It acts like a spark, facilitating a rapid reaction to local issues by community members themselves.

First and foremost, a pop-up structure can develop new networks and the exchange of ideas among actors who might not have otherwise been in regular contact. It thereby increases visibility and raises awareness of new issues within a community and promotes engagement among members.

Based in several cities around the world, the Edgelands Institute developed projects with community members on critical location-specific issues, such as discriminatory surveillance practices, relations between locals and migrants, perception of security, and the impact of digital technology on one’s experience of the social contract. Organized around workshops, art exhibitions, and other closely-knit collaborative platforms, these projects facilitated discussion, dynamically confronted different perspectives, and elicited new ideas. These small-scale discussion platforms made it possible for specific groups within a community to share their lived experience with others, to consolidate a network, and to devise strategies to tackle these issues together.

The following multimedia documents are a representation of how a pop-up model facilitates community engagement.

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