In 2021 we embarked on a collaboration between the Prince Claus Fund and the Creative Industries Fund NL based on the notion that the conversations on cities and urbanising spaces often take place in particular processes and transactions, usually about rather than with, and even less between, the people that live and move within and among them. The fact that our organisations work in different ways, animating connected yet different networks, added relevance to the idea of designing a joint programme to reflect on the various urban dynamics, spaces, and communities. We share the vision and conviction that artists, creatives, designers, and architects are essential to a dialogue about how we inhabit the world, so a main goal in our collaboration was to bring different perspectives, practices, and forms of expression together in an ongoing conversation about the built environment. 

 

The Building Beyond programme was born out of the increased awareness that the cities we reside and move in and the spaces we occupy are being stretched beyond their current limits. In its essence, urban life is an intermingling of different people, politics, relations, rituals, infrastructures, and economies. This constant exchange necessitates the negotiation between, in, and amongst, the moving parts of a city – enfolding spaces of contention and possibility. It is in these gaps and openings that communities and individuals are finding alternative ways of coming together, of resisting and engaging, or sometimes disengaging, with the (infra)structures and processes that surround them. By centering on what is happening in this in-between, in spaces where individuals and groups are critically reflecting on what their relation to the built environment is or could be, and what their belonging in it is, we believe we can find powerful alternatives for negotiating and shaping urban life. 

 

It is quite common in the discourse on the pressures of our increasingly urban condition to lay the focus on the African continent. This is most often done from an outsider’s perspective, mired in assumptions, cliches, and generalisations that grievously overlook the specificity of space and limit the plurality of identities, perspectives, and initiatives present within different geographies and cities on the continent. This was something we wanted to avoid at all costs in thinking this programme into being; so beyond defining the general theme and framework, the content of the programme – as you see it reflected in this publication – has been defined by the people participating in it, as mentors and as participants. 

 

Mapping out the space that the programme could fill, our main aim was to bring together and amplify emerging voices. Voices of artists, designers, architects, spatial practitioners, and community organisers, who are shaping spaces for collaboration, and provocation, and who are engaging with a wider and alternative discourse on the past, present, and future of cities. In this, we wanted to nurture a space for experimentation, hybridity, and surprise. Space to unravel and reconfigure, to build beyond the structures and processes apparently visible to us. To this end, the main message in our first call was an invitation to dream – and through the act of dreaming reimagine the future of African cities and collectively imagine this programme into being. 

 

The many individuals that the programme comprised of – from the participants, mentors, and guest speakers, to everyone who opened their spaces to us both in Senegal and the Netherlands – collectively assembled their ideas about what Building Beyond could mean. We extend our thanks to the mentors – Ola, Khensani, and Sénamé – for taking this step and weaving the threads of the first year together. The cohort, with their multiple perspectives, experiences, and creative practices willingly dove in the deep end, and even when things were strained, filled in the gaps and openings of Building Beyond and gave it shape. Collectively they configured this pilot.

 

What you now have before you is a collation of exchanges amongst a group that stepped into a programme without predefined form or focus, and in that developed relationships, shaped and shared ideas that not only connected, but also fed, their individual practices. The exchanges documented here take the form of letters. Near the outset of the programme, the participants experimented with the letter as a mode of interaction to reflect on diverse situations and to offer ideas, musings, and provocations. The letters were revisited at the end of the programme and shaped to their current form. Weaving these letters together are reflections and questions and prompts that resurfaced throughout the programme: How do we remember? How do we travel? How do we assemble? The publication gives the reader a window into Building Beyond. We hope that in reading these offerings that you, as readers, will be challenged and find inspiration as to what our futures could be. 

 

On behalf of the Prince Claus Fund and the Creative Industries Fund NL