Our urban environments are more than just spaces for living. Existence in the city is formed by the intersection and interaction of people and objects, spaces and material, and personal and shared identities. The urban environment and its peripheries are in a constant process of (re)arrangement, movement, and negotiation – with many loops of access, boundary, causation, and opportunity. However, with increasing urbanisation, cities are shifting in response to the high pressures of imposed modernisation, changes in climate, and burgeoning populations with implications for ways of living together in city spaces. With this, there is a need for space to call into question what cities we are shaping and what we are losing in the cities that we build.

African cities, their peripheries, and their (sub)communities are continuously consolidating the material conditions of the physical city with the dynamics of the living city. As such, African cities are poised as places of fluidity and (re)configuration that move the built environment out of its perceived confines. They allow us to look at the constellations that our urban environments hold and as we move forward in our city-making they prompt us to ask: Who narrates? Who represents? Who creates? Who is invited? Who belongs?

Building Beyond brings together 12 experienced creatives working across diverse mediums, approaches, and interpretations the city and its peripheries. Building Beyond is a learning structure that convenes a group of peers to reflect on their practice, activate it within their local context, and collectively assemble ideas and universalities from across the continent – aimed at engaging with the built environment as an interpretive and alterable world. Building Beyond supports practices that engage with relational worlds of communities and public space in this setting. It fosters conversation on how resilience, humanity, and creativity in our urban environments can create opportunities for communally imagined realities in the city.

About the Prince Claus Fund

The Prince Claus Fund is an independent foundation dedicated to culture and development. With trust-based funding, connections and recognition, we serve engaged artists and cultural practitioners in places where culture is under pressure. By creating a global network of changemakers and amplifying the ground-breaking work they do, we contribute to a more equitable, peaceful, sustainable and inclusive future. Because culture is a basic need.

About the Creative Industries Fund NL

The Creative Industries Fund NL is the national cultural fund for design, architecture and digital culture. We finance innovative design projects of makers and cultural institutions in the creative industry. Many of these projects are interdisciplinary.