Re-Imagining the City

2023

Project site: Seongnam, South Korea

In partnership with Seongnam Cultural Foundation and Royal College of Art

Project Interview: www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnZFki8UWCM

The research project Re-imagining the City engages local communities in Seongnam through participatory workshops and collaborative artistic methodologies, employing dialogue, memory, and intergenerational exchange as critical strategies for reconfiguring urban identity.

By positioning lived experience as a vital and legitimate form of knowledge, the project creates a platform for collective storytelling, reciprocal learning, and inclusive cultural production. Centring the everyday and the personal, it interrogates dominant place-making discourses and proposes alternative, situated understandings of the city.

The workshops function as generative, dialogic spaces where residents across generations and social backgrounds critically examine Seongnam’s urban past and present, while collaboratively envisioning its possible futures. Through the integration of practice-based research and community engagement, the project seeks to deepen civic participation and expand cultural and social awareness of place.

01. Day 1 - with Local University students & Senior Community.
Main Focus: Narrative & Storytelling developing a timeline through collage of observed and oral histories. Through collaborative collage activities, participants share the diverse cultures of the generations, the history of Seongnam, and their own lives.
02. Day 1 - with Local University students & Senior Community.
Main Focus: Narrative & Storytelling developing a timeline through collage of observed and oral histories. Through collaborative collage activities, participants share the diverse cultures of the generations, the history of Seongnam, and their own lives.
03. Day 1 - with Local University students & Senior Community.
Main Focus: Narrative & Storytelling developing a timeline through collage of observed and oral histories. Through collaborative collage activities, participants share the diverse cultures of the generations, the history of Seongnam, and their own lives.
04. Day 1 - with Local University students & Senior Community.
Main Focus: Narrative & Storytelling developing a timeline through collage of observed and oral histories. Through collaborative collage activities, participants share the diverse cultures of the generations, the history of Seongnam, and their own lives.
05. Day 2 - with Local University students
Main Focus: Urban Sustainability, Re-imagining Seongnam City, Infrastructure, Smart City.
06. Day 2 - with Local University students
Main Focus: Urban Sustainability, Re-imagining Seongnam City, Infrastructure, Smart City.
07. Day 2 - with Local University students
Main Focus: Urban Sustainability, Re-imagining Seongnam City, Infrastructure, Smart City.
08. Day 2 - with Local University students
Main Focus: Urban Sustainability, Re-imagining Seongnam City, Infrastructure, Smart City.
09. Day 3 - with Local University students & Local artists
Main Focus: Re-imagining Seongnam City, City of Art & Culture, Diversity and Community, Sustainability, Smart City.
10. Day 3 - with Local University students & Local artists
Main Focus: Re-imagining Seongnam City, City of Art & Culture, Diversity and Community, Sustainability, Smart City.
11. Day 3 - with Local University students & Local artists
Main Focus: Re-imagining Seongnam City, City of Art & Culture, Diversity and Community, Sustainability, Smart City.
12. Day 3 - with Local University students & Local artists
Main Focus: Re-imagining Seongnam City, City of Art & Culture, Diversity and Community, Sustainability, Smart City.
13. Day 4 - with Children & Primary school students: University students also participate in this workshop to meet local children and build the Re-Imagining City together.
Main Focus: The Child Friendly City, Re-imagining Seongnam City, City of Art & Culture, Diversity and Community.
14. Day 4 - with Children & Primary school students: University students also participate in this workshop to meet local children and build the Re-Imagining City together.
Main Focus: The Child Friendly City, Re-imagining Seongnam City, City of Art & Culture, Diversity and Community.
15. Day 4 - with Children & Primary school students: University students also participate in this workshop to meet local children and build the Re-Imagining City together.
Main Focus: The Child Friendly City, Re-imagining Seongnam City, City of Art & Culture, Diversity and Community.
16. Day 4 - with Children & Primary school students: University students also participate in this workshop to meet local children and build the Re-Imagining City together.
Main Focus: The Child Friendly City, Re-imagining Seongnam City, City of Art & Culture, Diversity and Community.
17. Day 5 – Visit to Nam June Paik Art Center, with University Students, Local Artists, and the Elder/Retired Community
18. Day 5 – Visit to Nam June Paik Art Center, with University Students, Local Artists, and the Elder/Retired Community
19. Day 5 – Visit to Nam June Paik Art Center, with University Students, Local Artists, and the Elder/Retired Community
20. Re-Imagining the City (details)
21. Re-Imagining the City (details)
22. Exhibition & Guide Talk
Introducing the project’s ideas, creative process, and the work developed in collaboration with local communities